A salute to the fallen...

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Outamyhead

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jan 3, 2008
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My Antec smart power 500 died last night in an odd way, powered the system on and for the first (and hopefully last time) the backup BIOS had a checksum error, it then displayed a menu I have never needed to use but it was locked up anyway. Restarted the system and nothing, just the CD drives reading as they normally do on boot up, turned the system off completely then back on again, same thing.

Took the tower out, took out the CPU, re-seated it and the RAM as well, it would then power on and off every second by itself. Went out to Micro Center and picked up a non-modular Tt 500 Watt PSU, and brought the system back to life, hopefully this PSU will last more than two years even though I will soon upgrade to a totally new tower.

Surprisingly the cables look a little bit more tidy as well (was able to cram all the extra length up between the front of the PSU and the CD drives) I'll take a pic at some point.
 
it served you well...









you should've shown some respect and got an antec...oh he's gonna hunt you now...
 
I had a Thermaltake True Blue from 2003 prior to moving to the states in 2005, found out when I got here that the power supply was european only (had some small print on the side stating that it cannot be used in other countries), that's when I stuffed the Antec smart power 500 into the system, the next system is planned out to have an Antec 850, so I'll be going back to them when the new system is being ordered.
 
Antec is very good on RMA's, hopefully your next 1 will last longer.
 
Your Antec lasts two years and you think that's good??? I'd expect a PSU to last for a decade at least!

Antec has shown me one thing - they don't make good PSUs. I had one fail in a few months and replaced it with a Corsair. Now I have the RMAed replacement Antec and I don't trust it to use it and don't feel like ripping someone off by selling it to the uninformed. If you think they're so great with their short life, do you want to buy my still-shrink-wrapped TP Trio 550?
 
Oh no I don't think two years is good at all, if my parents old system can run for almost ten years before the PSu was replaced due to a knackered fan, then I expect the same life span, likewise with my previous system which is soon to be eight years old and still running on the same power supply.

The Antec is my current choice as I haven't found anything else in the 800-900 range that has modular cables for $200 or under that I can trust besides the Thermaltake brand ($209 even though it has non modular cabling) or the Antec.

Cooler Master is out the window as I have seen bad reviews of them dying within months even hours of use. I'll have a look at the corsairs and see what I can find within my Wattage range or budget, but at the moment I'm sticking with the 850 as I haven't heard anything bad about that particular model, and I fitted one in a friends system and I haven't heard anything bad yet.
 
I'm looking ahead at the next build which should hopefully happen in the next month or so.
 
First, Antec does "make" good PSUs. Neo, True power, earth watts, basiq, are all fine models. The Smart power was supposed to be, but they were/are plagued by a capacitor problem. I hope my SP 450W doesn't die on me. If you get one of their current models, actually built by CWT or Seasonic, you should be fine.

Second, have you looked into your warranty? It should be under warranty for three years, perhaps you can use it to help you step up to your Antec 850.
 
Seasonic,Corsair,Fortron would be what I reccomend. I currently use a corsair on my main rig, might look at ewiz.com as they were having some good deals on PSU's the other day.
 
4745454b said:
First, Antec does "make" good PSUs. Neo, True power, earth watts, basiq, are all fine models.
Click to expand...

And True Power is precisely the model that I've seen fail quickly.

Do they make good PSUs? - Yes. Do they make enough of them to justify them being recommended? - No -- the failure rate is unacceptable and other brands are much better.
 
Then we disagree sir. I would much rather own a Neo or a EW, but I would run a TP in my computer. (partly because its a step up from my SP...) If someone said they were running an Aspire, I would point them to the article that Hardocp did where that brand PSU melted on the test bench. If someone said they were running a TP 500W PSU, I wouldn't think much of it.

Again, Antec doesn't even make them. CWT makes most, with Seasonic making the others. (I think) While not the best, CWT is a lot better then others out there.
 
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