Do not purchase an Antec power supply, you will regret it!

[BBowermaster]

you can polish a turd but it is still a turd.

Yes, but I think what the original poster is saying, is that you can take a piece of gold (original seasonic model) and turn it into a turd (Antec product).

 

[mucker]

I like my $65 Trio 650 turd alot. It's un-polished but has rock solid rails, is quiet, and the caps inside are more than adequate for the job. I feel pretty good about knowing Seasonic had a hand in making these.....

 

[[Spectre]]

Yes, but I think what the original poster is saying, is that you can take a piece of gold (original seasonic model) and turn it into a turd (Antec product).

That still doesn't make good business or common sense...you don't go from a cheaper OEM like CWT to a more expensive one like Seasonic...take a Seasonic design...screw it up and pay more for it than you were the cheaper solution.

 

[yevaud]

Yes, but I think what the original poster is saying, is that you can take a piece of gold (original seasonic model) and turn it into a turd (Antec product).

This is the antimidas effect.

And to Manny Calavera, all I can say is that had one of the PSU failures taken out your motherboard, I doubt you would consider the efficiency of Antec's RMA process worthy of note- unless they also issue RMA numbers for hardware their failing PSU's take with them.

 

[MrWizard6600]

ok i got it right now:

the antec true power ships with two panisonic caps.

Thing is, I saw a comp a little while back that had a psu that looked like the neo he 550w, i just asumed they were one and the same. apparently they werent.

ironically enough I opened the PSU in question to see if it had blown. Power outtage + dead comp = possible psu problem. In traditional me fasion, I opened it and then realized I'd voided the warentee. Turned out to be the mobo that was the problem. the Trios been humming along happily now since july (which is when the power went out).

I havnt had a chance to open my Neo HE 550W, but from what i can see from the rear and side deals, the Neo HE uses a single big cap (hitachi?)

 

[[Spectre]]

The neo HE 550W ships with a pair of seasonic caps.

how do i know?

take off the psu case, see for yourself.

Seasonic doesn't make caps that I know of

 

[Bbq]

That would be rhe Primary. Those aren't a problem. It's the Fuhjyyu's in the secondary that are a cause of concern.

 

[MrWizard6600]

That would be rhe Primary. Those aren't a problem. It's the Fuhjyyu's in the secondary that are a cause of concern.

yeah, but even on the caps it states "105C" they cant be thaattt bad can they?

 

[Oklahoma Wolf]

yeah, but even on the caps it states "105C" they cant be thaattt bad can they?

You'd be surprised how variable the quality can be. The difference between 105 degree Fuhjyyus and 105 degree caps from Panasonic, Rubycon, Sanyo, Nichicon, or Chemi-Con is significant.

It's like the Visonik 800W car amp I just got off eBay... it might say 800W on it, but I guarantee I won't get that much out of it. In fact, I bought it to power a 300W subwoofer, and even that might be tough to get from it

 

[Michael Daly]

My example was accurate and factual.

Please tell us exactly how you know that Seasonic is not responsible for quality control as you claimed. The fact is, you have no clue as to who is doing QC. It could be the maker, an independent or Antec when they receive them.

Just because Seasonic is making Antec PSU`s means little.

Having worked for a major computer manufacturer on one of their manufacturing sites, I know that who makes the assembly is just as important as what parts are used. That's why the maker is important. And that's why some companies will change subcontractors.

 

[OCC_Yoda]

Please tell us exactly how you know that Seasonic is not responsible for quality control as you claimed. The fact is, you have no clue as to who is doing QC. It could be the maker, an independent or Antec when they receive them.



Having worked for a major computer manufacturer on one of their manufacturing sites, I know that who makes the assembly is just as important as what parts are used. That's why the maker is important. And that's why some companies will change subcontractors.

Nobody said that who is doing the assembly is NOT inportant!!

In the case of Antec PSU`s....no matter who makes there PSU`s something always goes wrong.
It could be any number of reasons to and including there quality control....

I never said Seasonic was NOT responsible for quality control....show me where I used those words??

But common sense says that if Seasonic was responsible for quality control perhaps therer would not be so many bad units......


Now I ask you to tell us how you know that Seasonic IS responsible for Antec`s quality control??

 

[Michael Daly]

I never said Seasonic was NOT responsible for quality control....show me where I used those words??

Here:

To make matters worse Seasonic is NOT responsible for qualirt conreol of said Antec Units.

Now I ask you to tell us how you know that Seasonic IS responsible for Antec`s quality control??

I don't and I'm not the one making outlandish claims - you are. If you are offering your opinion, don't claim that they are facts.

 

[brasherman]

That makes little difference who is making the Antec PSU`s.
I seriously doubt that anyvbody who knows of Antec`s dismal track record, would all of a sudden purchase an Antec PSU on sole basis that Seasonic was contracted to manufacture them...
Even though Seasonic is a solid company with a fantastic reputation they still have to make Antec PSU`s using whatever CAP{`s and other internal parts that were agreed to in writing ahead of time. To make matters worse Seasonic is NOT responsible for qualirt conreol of said Antec Units.
What is sad is no matter how hard Antec tries they just cannot seem to get it correct.
Even a batch or 2 of the NeoHE`s had issues........go figure!

I would disagree also. You have contradicted yourself, and I for one can't believe I got a Seasonic with coil whine (it would seem), but I like the SU series because of the Seasonic name behind them. I wasn't going to use the power supply in the NSK-2400 I had until I saw SPCR doing a power supply evaluation separate from the case and saw it was a Seasonic. Made my budget HTPC project so much easier then. Also, most contractors agree to a set of "rules", for instance in a renovation they can say "category 5e cable to all classrooms" as a general rule for the contractor. In the same sense, if the contractor sees a name associated with it (Company XYZ cable) and they KNOW the XYZ cable is an inferior product to the cable they use, they can either rewrite that part of the bid, drop the bid, or stipulate the manner in which the XYZ cable WILL perform (Cable MUST be run in conduit no longer than 200 feet!). So if Seasonic builds the supplies for Antec, and they decide to put their reputation on the line, I would say we will do power supplies of ### watts for you, not to exceed ## dbA, for $## per power supply with less than 0.##% failure rate. Then you as the contractor choose the components for the power supply to make it work. CWT was using the Fujiyuu (or however it's spelled) caps; Antec probably switched after seeing the power supplies failing to work but had to fulfill a contract or face penalties (usually a consequence of not fulfilling a contract, at least). Now we see the new ones built by Seasonic. I seriously doubt Antec would say, "Yeah, by the way, can you use those crappy caps we have been having to RMA this whole time to save $0.10 on the build cost of the new power supplies?" In fact, if they were smart, the contract would explicitly FORBID any capacitors they don't approve of or that have a statistically meaningful failure rate for them. In fact, for them to switch is a big deal, and you would want to choose a company you trust for the new power supplies, so why not go with a great name in quiet power and long life? Otherwise, we go backwards to Deer again.

Now I have no proof of that, nor have I seen the contract so this is my guess, but to me that seems way more logical than your guess. But that's what opinions are about.

I got my power supply mailed out on Friday and it should be there no later than next Friday, so I will let you guys know more about my RMA as it happens if you want.

 

[BillParrish]

Can you feel the love ? WoW !!

I can not talk to the PC power supply business but I can tell you FACTs about manufacturing outsourcing in the telecom business. When we shut down in-house manufacturing and farmed it out to Solectron, C-mac etc. etc. Everything electrical and mechanical, was required to be built to our speficiations and tested to our specs. Circuit schematics, assembly drawings, and to the point, approved vendor list for every part, nut bolt and screw, testing standards etc. etc etc. They could build it any way they wanted, but to our workmanship standards, our documentation, our list of parts, our testing procedure, etc. etc. etc.

Now, you bet you butt it matters if a solder joint is done by hand by cheap labor (no matter how well trained) or a $100,000 dollar robot with $300,000 of computer AI electrical and visual test and quality control. I will take the robot, please. Typically the sub-contractor is most definatly responsible for QA and they care, as units defective in final test must be fixed or junked in-house at their expense. Purchase orders from the contracting company are for finished working, tested units.

But unless you did know the terms of the contract, and were willing to loose your job or get sued for disclosing it, its all speculation as to if company A is building to company B's specs or something more casual concerning design transfer is going on.

Also keep in mind these companys monitor failure rates closely, too much money is at stake not to. However sales of boxed PS's to end users is peanuts compared to the OEM market so again, without being privy to internal information, we have no way of knowing if a company even cares if we like or dont like their product or even if there is enough of us avoiding their product to cause a blip on their marketing radar. Oh the little QA or marketing manager might see stuff like this post and be concerned, but at Corporate Headquarters its all about the money.

But I dont know wtf you all are in a twist over anyway. Its moot, if its junk, its junk, and the name on the box on the store shelf is what we need to know. The rest in just interesting (or not) trivia.

edit: Oh and the dumb ass engineer that thought it was a good idea to vent some/a lot of the hot internal case air thru the power supply for "cooling" should be shot, several times. If ATX case, flip that sucker over,cut a blow hole, use round foam weather strip as a gasket and use the fan normally on the bottom (if equipped) to suck nice cold ambient air thru the supply. Make PS more happy.

 

[OhMyGod]

Update #1: True Power Trio 650 fan stopped working.

Update #2: Your moma.

Update #3: Anyone want to buy a new Antec Trio 650 once I get it RMA'ed?

 

[mucker]

Update #1: True Power Trio 650 fan stopped working.

Update #2: Your moma.

Update #3: Anyone want to buy a new Antec Trio 650 once I get it RMA'ed?

that's a pretty crappy psu, I'll give you $50 for it....LMK ....

 

[brasherman]

Update #2: Your moma.

Where's the ROFL smilies when you need em?

Thank you to BillParish for his insider view. He's right, junk is junk. Looking for a Corsair PS on sale now maybe.....

 

[botw]

The Neo HE 430 that came bundled with my p150 case decided to start abruptly cutting out before emitting wonderful burnt metal smells after about 8 months. While Antec was very easy to deal with on an RMA, I am actually getting steadier voltages out of a $20 Rosewill. As this particular system is not a power hog, I have no intention of putting the Antec back in.

 

[_Korruption_]

I am actually getting steadier voltages out of a $20 Rosewill.

Says what?

 

[brasherman]

Rosewill REAL review

I can't believe I am posting this for a computer company I called complete trash not long ago, but I trust this site's testing methods and they have broken a few power supplies (including a Trio 650). Check their other reviews for other makes.

EDIT: Trio review here.

 

[MrWizard6600]

hmm

 

[botw]

I know. It sounds crazy. My NeoHe was obviously defective, so that may explain it. I bought the Rosewill because it was cheap and I wanted something to run this system while I waited for my RMA. I don't put any serious demands on this system, which is a secondary system built largely from spare parts. Maybe I got lucky, but the Rosewill is performing fine.

 

[minimum]

Yeah i think that some of you guys got of quite lightly! my Antec Smartpower set fire to my harddrive and motherboard last night ! I have email the antec customer support, anyone want to bet that i will only get a new power supply ?

 

[sparks]

well its great to buy a P180...pos case...and get a neo ps from the same company and
it won't fit their case...WTF
yes you remove the hold down bracket for the ps and it will screw to the back of the case.
wow WHAT A DESIGN ....can't even get their own cases and ps to work together.

BUT they are all about the same everyone is making junk....throw in some blue fans and a window....WHOOOOOOOOOO

 

[venm11]

In case nobody posted this...

http://www.behardware.com/news/lire/17-01-2007/

Power Supply Failure Rate
....

Fortron: 0.7%
Hiper: 1.2%
Seasonic: 1.4%
Thermaltake: 1.6%
Tagan: 2.8%
Enermax: 3.0%
Antec: 9.5%

Fortron comes first in the list followed by Hiper and Seasonic. Thermaltake is next and is the last manufacturer to have acceptable failure rates. Tagan, Enermax and most of all Antec are above the limit. For Antec, the SmartPower 2.0 range including the 500, 350 and 400 Watts versions has very high failure rates: respectively 21.6%, 18.1% and 17.3%. Not a single product has a rate below 2% and the best one is the Neo HE 430 watts at 2.6%.
.............

I suspect that most of the failures are due to fuses blowing, and they just replace the fuses and toss them into an RMA pool.

 

[Zinn]

My Antec TPII-550 is crapping out on me. I had to pull my 8800 and downclock my CPU to make it into Windows

Hopefully the Silverstone 750 watt helps...

 

[[Spectre]]

In case nobody posted this...

http://www.behardware.com/news/lire/17-01-2007/



I suspect that most of the failures are due to fuses blowing, and they just replace the fuses and toss them into an RMA pool.

Or a joke of a sampling method

 

[venm11]

Or a joke of a sampling method

Do you mean, the article's sampling method or Antec's QA sampling method?

 

[MrWizard6600]

well its great to buy a P180...pos case...and get a neo ps from the same company and
it won't fit their case...WTF
yes you remove the hold down bracket for the ps and it will screw to the back of the case.
wow WHAT A DESIGN ....can't even get their own cases and ps to work together.

BUT they are all about the same everyone is making junk....throw in some blue fans and a window....WHOOOOOOOOOO

check out my bad ass sig



no problems so far with fitting hold down plate. screws also used.

 

[Bbq]

Try this: Remove the "frame" part first, slide it over your psu. Then put that into the case, screw it into the back. Then adjust the frame part, and screw it down.

problem solved. Antec p180 is a badass case.

 

[mustang_steve]

OK time to get some facts about how contract manufacturing works.

I work for a fab that makes network/telecom equipment.

When the contracts are worked out, we have an AVL (approved vendor list) and a BOM (bill of materials....some one set up us one!). The BOM tells us what we can use (nothing else, unless the customer either changes the BOM or writes a deviation), and the AVL tells us the only places we can get it from. In many cases the customer even defines how the units are to be tested (in the case of my workplace, the customer even writes the test code that we are to use).

That said, what a contract manufcaturer offers is not quality parts (that's specced by the customer)....they offer the expertise, efficiency, and flexibility to produce quality product and to ship out enough to meet customer expectations. Sometimes that means you have to pay more.

In the case of the plant I work at, we specialize in first-run production....we take a new product from our customers, and we work out all the kinks in production....then once that's done it goes to one of our lower-cost facilities, where the quality can be sustained at a lower cost and at a higher volume.

How is all this relevant? Just in that Antec more than likely does spec out what goes into each supply. If they were to just buy a generic design and slap their name on it would be pretty irresponsible, considering these are not components for a larger product, but their actual final products.

Either way this whole thing comes as a surprise to me, since I have had pretty good luck with my Antec PSUs, each lasting about 3-4 years, only swapping them out since I feel the need to go to a larger supply, and not from it going flakey on me.

 

[[Spectre]]

Yes you have stated as much before about how it works in the US but it is not exactly how it works with the very few PSU manufacturers in China. There is a great deal of simple rebadging that goes on among the many brands.......you might want to talk to STREETEST sometime about how it works out in this business

 

[mustang_steve]

I figure a few brands are that bad....but IMO if a PSU is over $100, then it had better have something to offer compared to everything else out on the market .....thus no re-badging.

Pretty sad if Antec really is just rebadging $150+ PSUs of a generic design.

 

[[Spectre]]

I figure a few brands are that bad....but IMO if a PSU is over $100, then it had better have something to offer compared to everything else out on the market .....thus no re-badging.

Pretty sad if Antec really is just rebadging $150+ PSUs of a generic design.

But is it really a generic design as opposed to a not really good design? I mean......OCZ uses FSP's that are rebadges.....Muskin uses Topower that are rebadges......on down the line. They aren't really generic other than the OEM's have no name recognition in the US only the brands they are sold under do. Is a reference ATI card made Sapphire and rebranded by say Asus or Gigabyte a generic design?

Not trying to bag on you personally....just pointing out that this is a very interesting outsourced manufacturing area with a lot of intertwined players.....and it is really incestuous in this field.

 

[mustang_steve]

I understand it's not bagging, I think this is a good discussion to be had.

I can see how it can be a good design...but if everyone is re-badging the same PSU, but only with a few minor changes...then I just don't see the benefit of buying one name over the other....at that point it becomes a matter of who sells that fab's build for less.

that was where I was coming from....for a product to garner a premium price, it usually has to offer something above the rest....or just be so high-end that it can attract customers to begin with (like your true 1000w PSUs for the SLI fans out there). I just don't see that with re-badging, unless it's in the form of enhanced support, product tweaks like modular cabling (which would technically be a derivative product, and not just a re-label), or something similar.

 

[OCC_Yoda]

By rebadged we mean exactly the same as another brand with the exact same everything down to even the fan,,,,,

We are not refering to a PSU being manufactured by another company that also has PSU`s under its own name......

 

[[Spectre]]

I understand it's not bagging, I think this is a good discussion to be had.

I can see how it can be a good design...but if everyone is re-badging the same PSU, but only with a few minor changes...then I just don't see the benefit of buying one name over the other....at that point it becomes a matter of who sells that fab's build for less.

That quite often is the exact case and the regulars try and direct people towards the manufacturers own brand a number of times. For instance with the Enhance 5150 as opposed to a Silverstone or another Enahnce rebrand ....but there are times where in the US the manufacturers own label isn't available for whatever reason.

that was where I was coming from....for a product to garner a premium price, it usually has to offer something above the rest....or just be so high-end that it can attract customers to begin with (like your true 1000w PSUs for the SLI fans out there). I just don't see that with re-badging, unless it's in the form of enhanced support, product tweaks like modular cabling (which would technically be a derivative product, and not just a re-label), or something similar.

Sadly though it is rampant with SMPS because there are so few actual manufacturers and so many brands.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Three different types of PSU product:

1. The rebadge. The PSU manufacturer makes a PSU and another company slaps a label on it. Obviously, this is the cheapest route to take.

2. The most common method is to "rent" a line, buy a pallet of components from the local electronic component distributor and use the factory's PCB and design to assemble a PSU. This is when you see PSU's with the same layout, but different levels of quality based on the level of quality of the components used.

Trivia: the components to build 3000 units fits on one pallet and takes a line one week to produce.

3. The "design team." This is my favorite approach, but often times the brand gets the shaft in the end. Engineers from the brand goes to the OEM's factory, designs the PCB, chooses the components, does the testing, etc. to get the "perfect product." To save on start up costs, the brand will work out some deal like "we'll buy X units from you over a period of 6 months, but after 6 months, you can sell this product to whomever." Bad thing about this is once the finished product is done, samples are flown into the states for advertising, reviews, promotions, SLI and Crossfire certification, etc. and the containers get into the country (which takes 4 weeks on the water) and get sent out into distribution and then out to resellers from there, you've killed about two months time. Wait four months and the OEM is selling the product under their own brand. The alternative to this is to just pony up the $20 to $50K cost involved in start up and hope you can sell enough units to recoup.

Of course, this doesn't include "variants" as Steve put it. But variants fall under #2. They're buying the components, including whatever add ons make the unit different (LED fan, modular interface) and they have to spend the time/money training the people installing these add on's (like soldering special cables, modular interfaces, etc.)

 

[Lawdog]

Update: finished my Antec RMA process today. Took exactly two weeks from my faxed request to new PSU arriving. That's pretty good service in my book. Of course I would have preferred not to lose a perfectly good mobo to a PSU death, but that cannot be helped now.

In the end, Antec treated me well. Their RMA process was painless and quick. Alas, I'll not put one in my rig again anytime soon. I hope they get it turned around.

.02

 

[Lestang]

I do regret it. The Smartpower 2.0 450 killed 2 motherboards 1 was a replacement too. The only time mine made any noise was when I first turn the computer on. I always trusted Antec PSU had older models on older computer that were still working 350 w though.

not sure if mine is under warranty or not I bought it 06/08/05 I think it is I think when I bought it it was a 3 year warranty. I am covered.