EVGA Caught Sampling PSUs to Reviewers Not the Same as Retail

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
Staff member
Joined
May 18, 1997
Messages
55,532
In the dirty underworld of PSU fanboys it seems as though it is being pointed out that EVGA is sampling PSU review samples from one manufacturer, but when you go to the store and purchase the same "unit," it is made by a totally different company. At least that is what is being put forward in the Overclock.net forums.

EVGA's track record with HardOCP PSU reviews is not good overall. EVGA has refused to sample us PSUs for years for reviews, so most of the units we have done over the years have been purchased in retail by us. When we get luls in our schedule, we buy ones that are marketed for sale at that time.

HardOCP has asked for PSU samples for years to come from retail stock, the same as you would purchase. To date, Seasonic is the only company to step up and do this. Also, interestingly enough, we have to go back 5 years to find the ONLY Seasonic PSU that has not been an award winner with us (but it still passed ATX spec), and that was an obscure form factor low power PSU, not anything mainstream. That is a hell of a track record.

It looks like at the time at least one company is stepping up to meet the challenge, other companies are actually stepping down. That is a shame.


Well well well the plot thickens and i now have an answer for why the samples OklahomaWolf from Jonnyguru got seemed so much better then [sic] the ones Aris from Tomshardware got.
 
Last edited:
This is very disappointing. I personally have had good luck with EVGA products and found the company to be "very" responsive with regards to warranty claims. My opinion has been that EVGA is one of the good guys but this news casts some serious doubt on that opinion. Sad...
 
I've been keeping to a simple rule for a long time: Big budget: Seasonic or Superflower only. Small budget: FSP. So far the only times I got burnt was when I had to deviate from that rule. That doesn't mean all other psus died that I purchased, but the ones that did were from other manufacturers.

I haven't really come over any EVGA products so far. They don't have that much of a foothold in EU, and so far when they did get into the picture it turned out that their products offer less value for the money than comparable products of other companies.
 
+1 for Seasonic love. Picked up a 1200W Prime Platinum after [H] reviews. Standard size (as opposed to the extra long ones from EVGA/Corsair/Etc), consistent power output and tons of plugs made it worth every penny of the $230 I spent.

Never liked the look of the Supernovas
 
I think this rumor should be more broadly confirmed before you get out your pitchforks.

Evga makes some darn nice video cards regardless. I have bought 1080ti from 5 vendors. EVGA is by far my favorite with the ICX cooler. I still think of EVGA as a top tier brand until this is proven widely true.....and then I guess I'll steer clear of their PSUs.
 
So, what does this mean for other EVGA products, like GPUs?

Video cards based on reference designs aren't built by EVGA themselves, so those are safe. As far as it's motherboards go, and in my opinion, EVGA has always been guilty of cutting corners and producing mediocre products. PCB quality, construction quality, and firmware / BIOS quality have been sub-par on many models. While I have liked some of its motherboards, they've been quirky and never seemed as good as the competition's offerings. We reviewed a few motherboards back in the X58 days and found them somewhat lacking. After posting those articles, EVGA refused to sample boards to us and as far as I know, won't to this day.

I've only occasionally seen motherboards from EVGA on display at Fry's or Microcenter and as a result I've only handled them. They still don't impress me for whatever it's worth. It's midrange ASRock quality at best. They might work really well, but I wouldn't use my own money to buy one.
 
Lately I've bought EVGA graphics cards mostly for the non-reference coolers they use. While PSUs are not graphics cards I now have a lot less confidence in EVGA as a brand and will probably look elsewhere when I upgrade.
 
i had an EVGA graphics card, a 6600GT, and like pretty much all Nvidia's of that age, it died. But it was back when all card manufacturers were giving "lifetime warranties". So, I got an RMA from EVGA, and sent my card to them.

Weeks later, they returned the EXACT SAME broken card back to be as a replacement refurb, and yes, it was still broken. Sigh.... I don't buy EVGA stuff anymore. My attempts to have them do the "right thing" failed.
 
I'm running an EVGA powersupply in my current build. It was reviewed by [H] with good marks...

It's past the warranty period, but I think my next PSU will be seasonic.

Edit: It's actually Enermax... they both start with E and I've had it for 7 years :wacky:... It's been a very good PSU too. So I do not actually have any EVGA powersupply experience.
 
Last edited:
This is pretty disappointing from a brand like EVGA that pretty much was built up on quality... sad times indeed.

After early reviews I thought we had a little gem in the budget segment. I have even recommended the 450 és 550W units to quite a few of my fellow countrymen.

Oh well... putting them on the backbruner again.
 
And [H] reviews of PSUs are the reason Seasonic has made it into my last 3 builds.


Alright, enough brown nosing for me.


Brown nosing or not. It's the reason my upcoming PSU purchase is a Seasonic. I trust [H], they've built the reputation over the years. So, when they say Seasonic is great, I listen. My son just bought an EVGA power supply for his build, though... Working great, but disappointing about the review/retail switcharoo...
 
I only buy reference gfx cards from EVGA, just for their excellent warranty. I put water blocks on all of them. If it wasn't for that I'd look else where.
 
I too have a Seasonic unit (SSR-650PD Flagship Prime Series 650W Platinum) waiting for me to start my build. In the past I have considered eVGA units but after this, their name moves towards the bottom of my go-to list.
 
I actually bought my evga 1000W based on a Johnny guru review. Probably will be ok as I have only managed 560W at the wall.
 
Keep in mind, this is somewhat more common than you think. As Kyle pointed out, he's gone out of his way to make sure manufacturers give us retail product so that what we review is representational of what you guys can go out and buy. We look like jackasses when we've got pre-production samples that are vastly superior to what's on the shelves, tell you it's awesome and then end up looking like corporate shills for it. Companies take reviews seriously and there are a lot of things they do to ensure a good review. Some manufacturers pull tricks with the hardware itself to get good reviews. This is why RAM or base clock settings might run slightly over the standard values. It causes a given board to run faster "stock" than the other guys. They've employed tactics of running tighter timings than the SPD or JEDEC values suggest to win benchmarks. NVIDIA and ATI have even gone so far as to manipulate their drivers to sacrifice image quality for higher frame rates. They were caught doing it too.

Companies cherry pick what goes out the door all the time. They will also punish reviewers or review sites that give them negative reviews by denying them product. We are simply fortunate that Kyle doesn't care and will publish a negative review anyway. Like he said, HardOCP buys what it needs if a company won't sample products to us. There are many who won't. EVGA won't sample PSU's and they stopped sampling motherboards with it's standard EVGA X58 motherboard. I didn't even slam that board, I simply stated that it was quirky and therefore sub-par at the time. It was, so that's what I stated in the article.

The point is, I'm not totally surprised that EVGA might pull something like this. To some extent, all the manufacturers either cheat or stack the deck in their favor as much as possible. I'm just surprised by how obvious they'd make it by choosing to build hardware that's specific for reviews if true. I've seen cherry picked CPUs plenty of times but nothing bordering on specially built hardware to pass review testing.
 
I've been looking at these PSU's, and started to notice sales and rebates. Kind of seems like Newegg was dumping these units.
 
I have reached out to EVGA for the the last three years to review its video cards and PSUs. All I get is silence. Even the last PSU from EVGA that got an award was purchased.

Cooler Master as well will no longer sample HardOCP either. I think that is somewhat telling when it comes to its PSUs.
 
I have been using a SeaSonic X750 for the past 6 years without fail, cooling fan doesn't need to turn even under heavy loads because one of the metal covers is used as a heatsink ... BEST design, BEST reliability ... small wonder that SeaSonic is the only company to give [H] samples. Learned that when you send EVGA your brand new un-modded for thermal pads card they send back someone else's card that's been sent in for the mod but it can easily be a card the customer used for months or longer before sending it in for the mod (in other words, you get back a USED card for having bought a brand New one). Best to do the mod yourself (they will supply the thermal padding)
 
Last edited:
wonder if they just have multiple places making them on their behalf and slapping on an evga sticker, i mean all EVGA does is relabel things and add stickers outside of designing their own coolers for reference GPU cards and the FTW card lineup far as i am aware

i used to buy their stuff but exclusively but now i just buy whatever is the best bang for buck and has good reviews
 
Thanks Kyle for propagating this. I think all of the companies who are cought should be hung out to dry. Don't want your product reviewed? Don't supply samples.

People are going to review it anyways.
 
Thanks Kyle for propagating this. I think all of the companies who are cought should be hung out to dry. Don't want your product reviewed? Don't supply samples.

People are going to review it anyways.
I think we should have more evidence than a rumor. The johnny guru link is even taken down right now. Sounds like something may be amiss and if so - there is danger of libel from the parties reporting such.
 
I want to see pics of the inside of each unit, I didn’t see any on that thread.
 
Well that sucks, I bought my g2 750 based on OW's review on JG. It was supposed to be a high end Superflower made PSU but so was the b3 unit in question so who knows.

At this point I'll probably look at Seasonic for my next PSU since they not only have a good rep for making quality PSUs but have maintained it since before Antec went from great to shit and then back to decent.
 
I think we should have more evidence than a rumor. The johnny guru link is even taken down right now. Sounds like something may be amiss and if so - there is danger of libel from the parties reporting such.

The JG isn't taken down it just doesn't work right directly for some reason, if you go to the forums and look for the "EVGA 850 B3 review @ Tom's Hardware" thread it works(and matches the link).
 
I've had an EVGA Supernova G2 750watt gold for a few years now and it's been rock solid for 3 builds. The last time I had a seasonic, it didn't last too long for some reason.
 
I had a coworker who picked up one of the first gen evga motherboards, it was complete garbage, that model had memory probems that were a known issue that were never resolved by EVGA. I've never considered their mobos since.
 
Playing devil's advocate here,
What countries were these EVGA PSUs sourced from (Johnnyguru vs Tom's)? I thought Tom's was in Europe/Germany or something?
Could it be that the PSU is made by manufacturer A for the 120V market and made by manufacturer B for the 240V market and given the same model name/number in both countries?
Not saying this is a great thing having two different manufacturers if the model name/number is the same, but if the specs are up to what's stated on the sticker, it could be what's going on.
 
Still waiting for my dang rebate from buying that EVGA 450B a month ago.....
 
Back
Top