Found a replacement power supply ?

[Molly Tournquist]

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Kevin Cozens
> Sent: 02/13/13 05:24 PM
> On 13-02-10 08:33 PM, Molly Tournquist wrote:
> > The TX650 is made by seasonic. The CX600 and CX600M are apparently
> > made by channel well.
> 
> Correct. I found a web page that lists who actually makes the supplies 
> sold under different brand names.
> 
> > I believe you've heard about the differences/uninterchangeability of
> > completely different products by the same distributor/brand.
> 
> I know the name on the box doesn't indicate who actually made the 
> supply. Other than that, I don't know what what you are trying to say.

I mean that you have to be consistantly mindful of the rebranding trail, that you cannot put faith in vague power supply name similarities.

Particularly if they're different model lines... when Antec earthwatts units switched from being made by Seasonic to Delta, that might not have been a huge drop in quality, but that doesn't make "value lines" safe, even from the same distributors as celebrated PSU models.

> > 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,
> 
> I previously stated my reasons for using Best Buy which has nothing to 
> do with taking a risk. If I really wanted to take a risk I would just 
> gone to my local outlet of Best Buy and picked up either the Dynex or 
> RocketFish supply they have available.
> 
> Since I'm going to change the supply I want to make sure it can handle 
> the two built-in HD's and a removable one all at the same time and also 
> allow me to use higher end video cards in the future. I also want an 
> 80%+ supply as my machine gets a lot of use.

I didn't claim or imply that best buy was the daring thing, that was going with a CX600M rather than the TX650 or the earthwatts, "for a few dollars less". If you were doing that, you might as well just look into the possibility of a 350 watt Fortron. Best buy glaringly excludes probably the most sensible type of PSU's(300-500 watt top quality models), that is obviously meant to push people up into the flat out extravagant models, so a very appropriate response to that is making sure if whatever modest alternative is available is or isn't actually enough. And it does have the 19 amps on the 12V rail you mentioned, though it's quite important to remember that CPU also uses 12V heavily.

Two hard drives don't really use much power, and an external one wouldn't even be able to actually get the power it needs off the USB port unless it was a 2.5 incher. Now, you might worry about if a set of hard drives is actually getting clean power, but once again that's more a case of a quality power supply not a heavy one(heavy as in expensive and high watt, literally heavy does suggest high quality).

And those generics, that's a big distance from taking a risk, that's just plunging all out into the dark, who will even know if you'd end up with an allied/deer junker? Maybe something like a Channel Well or ATNG unit which you'd be trying to *avoid* with the name brands would actually be along the lines of what you'd be *hoping* for ... still they might not even be similar designs ... they're showing themselves to be not even worth people's attention.

What 80+ means is that it's at least 80% efficient at 20% to 100% of maximum load, they test it in the middle too, but that's not a challenge, the median load is high on the efficiency bell curve. Therefor, from all the time that it's much closer to the minimum load, the higher rated a power supply you're using the *LESS efficient* it actually will be. If it's 78% efficient at 70 watts, that might just be better than if it's 82% efficient at 120 watts.


> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Lennart Sorensen
> Sent: 02/13/13 05:41 PM
> I have had good luck only buying what hardwaresecrets.com has given an
> award in a review.

Review sites that actually do a proper job tend to do eleborate, very technical tests, of course you don't have to read through their whole test documentations. Xbitlabs from what I've heard is one of the established, older PSU testers.
 
> Going by brand, series or anything else doesn't work since they don't
> make them themselves and different sizes in a given series can be
> totally different.

That is a bit of an exageration. Some brands are those of the manufacturers, like Seasonic and Fortron/FSP Group/Sparkle Power International, and have been well regarded. HEC/Compucase is a manufacturer.
 
> About all you can be sure of is that if it has no name at all, it is a
> piece of junk. :)

You can make various generalizations. Power supply brands have their quirks. The "gamer" themed brands not unexpectedly seem  more eratic and marked up. Enermax has long had a solid reputation, which was known to be partly undeserved(they outsourced to Channel Well sometimes too). Silverstone seems to have gone for being a high class brand. Antec is somewhat value oriented yet has been rather creative. Silenx, well, let's just rememeber that they've had their ... shenanigans. Server PSU manufacturers would likely be very reliable, perhaps noisy too; Zippy is one. Scythe seems to have certain standard for quality and noise from a considerable focus on the Japanese market. Brands that sell cases rarely are manufacturers, though Inwin has their Power Man like. Brands that are better known for selling RAM or video cards... are just strange newcomers.

Still, it's not exactly the same mess as when all CD/DVD distributers outsourced to Ritek and CMC magnetics. Which even was a bit of an special nuisance with linux not having had the same mini arsenal of disc testing tools as on windows.
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