Found a replacement power supply ?

[Molly Tournquist]

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Kevin Cozens
> Sent: 02/10/13 03:39 PM
> 
> Greetings, all.
> 
> For those that remember, my desktop power supply seems to have died and 
> I am looking for a replacement with a higher wattage than the original. 
> I can't turn on my desktop any more so I am unable to reply directly to 
> those who had commented and/or provided info regarding my search.
> 
> Thank you for those that replied. I want to get the supply from Best Buy 
> as I can easily walk over there to return a supply if it turns out it 
> isn't suitable or goes bad. Other suppliers would mean getting someone 
> to drive me back to a store or pay to have item mailed back.
> 
> I eliminated the supplies for which I could find no detailed 
> specifications, that were less than 80% efficient, or did not have at 
> least 19A on the +12V rail (as recommended by the video card I'm using). 
> Detailed reviews on some of the remaining choices has also not been 
> easy, if any were found.
> 
> I was down to two power supplies: Antec EarthWatts 650 Green (EA650), or 
> the Corsair TX650 (CMPSU-650TXV2). They are close in price and each near 
> the limit of what I wanted to spend. I just discovered Best Buy now has 
> the Corsair CX600M (CP-9020060-NA) available for a few dollars less. 
> Some reviews mentioning short life of the Antec pushed me towards the 
> Corsair TX650, despite a common issue it has with fan noise, but now I'm 
> thinking of going with the CX600M.
> 
> The CX600M is 50W less but that won't make a difference as the original 
> supply was only 300W and being modular solves the issue of trying to 
> stuff all the power supply cables in to a mid-size tower box. There are 
> only has 3 SATA connectors which I will use for the pair of HD's and I 
> can use adapters (possibly from the original supply) to convert Molex 
> (peripheral) connectors to SATA for the two DVD drives.
> 
> The only nagging concern is the video I saw of a CX600 (non-modular) 
> that let out copious amounts of "magic smoke" when it died while idling. 
> The CX600M likely to have the same basic guts as the CX600. Videos of 
> supplies tested to failure have not died in such a fashion.

The TX650 is made by seasonic. The CX600 and CX600M are apparently made by channel well. I believe you've heard about the differences/uninterchangeability of completely different products by the same distributor/brand.

If you insist on sticking with best buy, and are okay with taking a risk with the quality anyway, you might want to look at the antec basiq 350W (BP350) , it has 23A on the pair of 12V rails. Even if it's not 80plus certified, it probably won't be much less efficient, due to not being so deep in the unloaded end of the efficiency curve most of the time. The basiq series are made by Fortron, so it shouldn't be all that dangerous, not like getting a 400 wat generic. Though a basiq bp430 would probably be a better option, if you could get one.
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists