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Antecs blowing up

F

Fetti

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 24, 2004
Messages
131
Looks like even so called good PSUs are not always that good.

I was reading reviews of the Antec Truepower PSUs over at Newegg and LOTS of people are having those things blow up on them. Especially the True480s and such. Blowing up left and right or just going bad in a short time and some even catching on fire. Loud bangs and then death and fire.

Seems like you may be taking your chances with Antecs. They seem to provide extremely clean power but when they are blowing up a lot, that's not good for your system either.

That's just at NewEgg. Wonder how many other places are getting a lot of RMAs from exploding Antecs?
 
I think that if you took another power supply and made it very popular, a lot of people would have truoble with it, too.

Just because there are a lot of RMAs due to certain issues regarding any certain product, doesn't mean the product is more prone to failure than another product. You can only determine that when you've compared the bad ones vs. the good ones.

Are there lots of posts on NewEgg about how great the product is? :p

Depending on where you look, any popular product can turn out bad just because of the volume at which its sold.
 
Would you still prefer to use a $15 generic PSU, with the confidence that it won't blow up / die / deliver unreliable power / etc.? Antec PSUs are just so popular, you're bound to see more people with problems (many can be attributed to user error too).
 
got my True550 Sept 2002 ... had no problems with it ... could be a bad batch ... or normal failures ... since there's a lot of Antec PSU's right now ...
 
You can't judge product reliability from sites like newegg. If something gets a lot of good reviews, someone might be getting payed off, or it's a freak situation that the product is so good people can't wait to write about it.

Generally people only write if their experience is bad, because they get mad at/with the product/company and want to prevent others from buying it. Or they're just trying to help by posting they've had problems with it. People generally don't post if it works though, like i said, because then they forget about it.
 
hmm, mine didn't blow up... must have gotten one of the few good ones:rolleyes:

But yea, if you saw so many reviews on other companies' PSUs, I bet they'd look a lot worse then Antec.

And if you don't want to buy Antec... don't www.pcpowerandcooling.com
 
Seems most of the complaints are from the 480s and up and seems that the Low Noise technology Antec is using isn't working as good as it should. They did it to help reduce noise but, people are saying that even with high system temps, the PSU fans are still only running around 1600RPM and the power supplies are VERY VERY HOT. Least that's the way most explained it.

I have a older True430 that has Low Noise technology but, my PSU fans run full speed all the time it seems and the PSU is just warm to the touch (which is normal).

Just seems odd that most people are complaining about the exact same problem. Blowing up and catching fire sometimes. That's not a good thing. Dying yes but fire?

Maybe I should just go back to blindly buying what is said to be good and not read into these reports of things blowing up and catching fire.

Sometimes it seems less knowledge is better :) Least I didn't worry about my True430 and whether one day I am going to have mine explode on me.
 
Per ATX 2.03 specifications, power supplies cannot catch fire, burn PCB, take out other components, etc under failure conditions. If they do this, they really aren't meeting the specs. On the other hand though, it's been mentioned that with a large group of units in circulation, some will go out and they will be the only ones you hear about. YMMV, but i've never experienced any problems with antecs.
 
It has been excellent however I must concur about low rpm and high heat.Voltage remains rock sold but my system runs a little warmer than when i had the enermax with variable speed fan adjustment on back.
 
Just like with anything else, there are bound to be bad batches of PSUs.

The people who receive these are much more likely to write a review giving the product a bad rap, than say someone who gets one and has no problems at all.
 
Originally posted by rally9x
Either way theres a three year warrenty so I'm not so worried.
Click to expand...

The warranty doesn't cover the parts in your system though that get taken out from one blowing up :)

I know things go bad, that's just the nature of things. I know they have bad batches or things don't work quite like they expected, etc. I know all about that. It's not that. It's the blowing up and catching fire part :)

When you have already had one house go up in smoke from something shorting out, you tend to be a little nervous about things like this :(
 
I remember reading the PSU roundup on Anand . Enermax supplied their power supplies to a third party who replaced the fan(s) with low speed ones, rebranded them and sold them as low noise PSUs.
Those rebranded Enermax units did not fare well at all with the reduced cooling. I believe it blew up. I am wary of any "low noise" unit called that simply because it has a low CFM fan on it. Maybe Antec is trying something silimlar and running them on the edge.
 
I'm gonna have to buy like 7 or 8 of these things now just to see one go 'boom!'

I have a generic 480w psu. I can say, this thing has okay rails. But honestly, that is the motherboard. Every PSU I've tested on this board has had okay or bad rails, never excellent. I have a PSU I got free with a $22 case, and it has SOLID rails. Even this PSU has a few low rails on this motherboard. Although, that is to be expected when using a 250w PSU on in a system that has a 400+w draw. ;)

I have 5 systems currently running in this room. One has a Dell 250w, one has an HP 200w, one has a genric 300w, one the free 250w from my case, and the last one has the 480w. Of those PSU's, none of them have rails that are so horrible I'd consider replacing it. Seeing how these PSU's cost me a total of $40 (all of them were free except the 480w), I'd say that generic PSU's can handle the load most of the time. The only PSU I've ever seen blow up was an AT PSU that was connected to a HDD that I was frying with a lighter. :D I'm just lucky I didn't get shrapnel in my arm or face due to that one...
 
My SL350 crapped out recently. One fan failed and the other spinned at about 100rpm, not to mention the rails were sagging like a bitch. Currently in the RMA process :( .
 
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