PSU that won't die after 3 months (IE, not antec?)

L

lopoetve

Extremely [H]
Joined
Oct 11, 2001
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Thinking PCP&C or a Sparkle. This Antec TruePower 480 died after 3 months, and I'm not sure if I want to do another one (this one left a BAD taste in my mouth, dying at a very inopportune time)...

So, given that I've got 2DVD drives, 3 hard drives, an Athlon64 3000+ (going to be overclocked), and a 6800GT, what's it going to take for me to get a good PSU, and what would you all recommend?
 
a UPS :p

I'll work up some numbers for you this evening ;)
just checking in on a break
 
I'm very happy with Sparkle, but if you can afford it, PCP&C are the top dogs when it comes to PSU's. Sparkle would be a company that's the next best thing you can buy, IMO.
 
EDIT > Damn I left a bunch of fans entered into those calculations, (from a previous config)
they are in the SCSI and Modem Fields, you have an additional 2 x 120mm and 2 x 90mm fans , now you can ride it to work like a hiovercraft
and no Im not redoing all that
they arent in the static load figures just the total theoretical maximum


http://www.xbitlabs.com/misc/picture/?src=/images/video/ati-vs-nv-power/6800gt_table-b.gif&1=1

http://takaman.jp/D/?M=PbQCQbd@hSAgPKiHRkG5@RDgH7oO5HEpO5HDZAZavHCMZ&english

awarded you a GB of PC3200, and 2 case fans (80's)

+3.3V @ 4.3
+5V @ 14
+12V @ 24.5

389 watts
(note that just the CPU\mobo\and GPU eat 10.7A on the +12V or 128.3 watts :eek: )

that Antec had 28A on the +12V rail, but when you deduct the 1\3rd off the rating for the difference in temperature that becomes 18.6A

of course we should figure a "realworld" worse case senerio darw for you
since the maximum additive draw above never actually happens

for starters at spinup all the fans and drives hit 100% but the CPU\GPU doesnt
after that they drop to 1\4 the spinup as a static draw

1.7A HDD + Fans Static Draw
10.7A CPU\GPU\mobo 100%
1.8 Spinup of an optical

14.2Amps on the +12V total

now if it was getting hotter than 40C the amps from that Antec would have dropped even further, but I find that unlikely in a senior members rig, expect youd keep an eye on any unusual case temps ;)

It shouldnt have died, wasnt exactly near its full load,
offhand Id guess it was on the high side of its efficiency sweet spot

as far as a new supply goes
Id certainly recommend an ATX12V v2.0 compliant one
guess the Neopower is out :p
(a pity its got great reviews)
there is the Enermax Noisetaker v2.0 Series, and the Cooler Giant Series
(like the specs on the EG565AX/P 18A+18A but I dont know where its available
OCZ just released an ATX12V v2.0 compliant PSU but turned right around and recalled it
the Fortron Blue Storm is an entry level ATX12V v2.0 think you want something more

thats about it for the ATX12V v2.0s

the PCP&C isnt ATX12V v2.0 compliant but then its doesnt really need to be either
has all the amps plus dictated by the spec, tight enough load regulation that the dual rail isolation isnt important, and good enough efficiency
not to mention AC Ripple \ Noise far lower than anything else available

your sure you dont have an infestation of power gremlins? :p
or where holding out on me? forget to mention a RAID array or half dozen PCI cards?
 
Ice Czar said:
your sure you dont have an infestation of power gremlins? :p
or where holding out on me? forget to mention a RAID array or half dozen PCI cards?
Click to expand...

I have to side with Ice on this one. My current rig was running off an Antec 300 Watt (non-true power, just plain old generic) for a while before I became paranoid about underwattage issues. I have 2 Raptors, 2 Pata drives, P4 2.4C OC'ed to 2.8, Radeon 9600 XT, 1/2 Gig of RAM, Kingwin watercooler, PCI wireless and 3 USB bus powered devices and haven't had a problem with my Antec Truepower 550 watt.

IMHO, you had a defective power supply from the get-go or something else caused it to fail. I don't know about others but I have heard VERY few complaints about Antecs.
 
The_Mage18 said:
I have to side with Ice on this one. My current rig was running off an Antec 300 Watt (non-true power, just plain old generic) for a while before I became paranoid about underwattage issues. I have 2 Raptors, 2 Pata drives, P4 2.4C OC'ed to 2.8, Radeon 9600 XT, 1/2 Gig of RAM, Kingwin watercooler, PCI wireless and 3 USB bus powered devices and haven't had a problem with my Antec Truepower 550 watt.

IMHO, you had a defective power supply from the get-go or something else caused it to fail. I don't know about others but I have heard VERY few complaints about Antecs.
Click to expand...

I had to laugh at your post, your old PSU was most certainly on the wrong side of bleeding edge ;)

I too have had no problems with Antec PSU’s and it’s not unusual for me to find I have overloaded them very badly. I am however a very strong believer that half the computer problems in the world (perhaps more then half) start at the wall socket.

About the only thing in my house not running through some sort of power regulation and or cleaning process are the light bulbs in lamps.

The AC at your wall socket just can’t suck enough, fact of life.
 
Ice Czar said:
that Antec had 28A on the +12V rail, but when you deduct the 1\3rd off the rating for the difference in temperature that becomes 18.6A

of course we should figure a "realworld" worse case senerio darw for you
since the maximum additive draw above never actually happens

for starters at spinup all the fans and drives hit 100% but the CPU\GPU doesnt
after that they drop to 1\4 the spinup as a static draw

1.7A HDD + Fans Static Draw
10.7A CPU\GPU\mobo 100%
1.8 Spinup of an optical

14.2Amps on the +12V total

now if it was getting hotter than 40C the amps from that Antec would have dropped even further, but I find that unlikely in a senior members rig, expect youd keep an eye on any unusual case temps ;)
Click to expand...

So, I have to ask. the only place I have seen the 1/3 number in print is the PC P&C brochure. And, I imagine that they are comparing to a generic 550 watt PSU (RaidMax, ExplosioMax, etc), While we know that Antec measures at 25C, wouldn't it be more accurate to assume that the Antec's power-to-temp cuurve would be closer to the PC P&C than the generic (I know it's roughly a straight line on the graph, but that doesn't mean it's not a curve)?
 
I wish

no its more the industry standard, same goes for MTBF or MTTF figures
problem is that with the exception of the Rolls Royce of the industry
(PCP&C, explaining why they want you to pay twice as much)
everyone else is "playing" the game, failure to do that puts them at a serious disadvantage, we compromise a very very small percentage of the consumer base
the "informed" consumer :p

think these two excerpts would give you a range of the shades of grey involved


POWER SHMOWER by Mike Chin

or How PSU Power Ratings Mean Almost Nothing

A frustrating fact about PSUs is that there does not appear to be a stringent or regulated standard for reporting, advertising and labeling rated power. This is despite the existence of standards like ATX2.03 or Intel ATX12V.

There are well-established standards for measuring and rating HDD capacity, an engine's horsepower, or the heat generated by a furnace... but not one for how much power a PSU can deliver. There are so many cases of people with "450W" PSUs having power stability issues running a system that can't possoibly draw more than 150W. And "300W" units that keep running where the "450W" units are faltering.

It's not just about bad PSUs vs better ones. It's a dumb situation caused by uncontrolled marketing competition. Real regulation would bring PSUs out of snake oil territory and into a more sensible consumer-friendly terrain.

There are many ways PSU makers fudge to make their units seem more powerful.

1) Out and out lying. You add up the power on all the lines in many PSUs and they fall short of the rated power by 10, 20 30W or even more.

There are more sophisticated ways:

2) Limit the AC input voltage to a very narrow tolerance. The best PSUs are able to deliver their rated power given a decent range of AC input power, say 90~130V for a 120V unit. It's much more demanding to produce 300W w/90VAC input than with 120VAC, so what some PSU makers will detail in their tech specs (usually not in their consumer brochures) is to specify 115-120VAC for input power. A PSU specified this way will not deliver full power if the AC voltage sags, if there is a brown-out. Surely it causes instability more often than a PSU rated to deliver full power with 90-130VAC.

3) Specify a low operating temperature for rated output. This is quite common, but again not often seen in consumer brochures, but rather tech spec sheets provided usually only on demand by engineers or corp buyers. A typical PSU operating temp statement is somthing like this:

0ºC ~25ºC for full rating of load, decrease to zero Watts O/P at 70ºC

Examine what that says. Full power (let's say 400W) is available when the unit is at 0ºC ~25ºC. Hmmm. Think about this.

Have you ever felt air blown out of a PSU in a PC running absolutely full tilt (which it would have to do to get anywhere near 400W output) that felt cool to the fingers? 25ºC airflow would feel exactly that: Cool, given that normal body temperature is 37 °C.

So this PSU cannot deliver full rated power when its temperature goes over 25ºC. OK, what happens to the max power output capacity above that temp? It decreases gradually so that by the time the PSU temp reaches 70ºC, the PSU cannot deliver any power at all. So if you assume that this power drop as temp rises is linear, then max power capacity will drop by ~9W for every degree over 25ºC.

Now having examined as many PSUs as I have over the last 2~3 years, I have to say there's not a single PSU in ANY PC I have ever used or examined that would not measure at least 30~35ºC almost anywhere inside the PSU under almost any kind of load. And if/when it is pushed, 45ºC is nothing at all, especially for or near hot running components like voltage regulators.

So let's say 40ºC is a fairly typical temp inside a PSU. This 400W rated unit would actually be able to deliver a max of just 220W at that temp. Hmmm. Interesting, isn't it? At 50ºC, the available power would drop to just 130W. No wonder some PSUs have 3 fans each capable of 50 cfm!!

Here's a simple fact: Really high quality PSUs are actually rated for full power output at as high as 40ºC. The trick is get a hold of the spec sheets that tell such information so you can compare apples to apples. Or ask.
Click to expand...

or

from dansdata
Unethical PSU Marketing 101.

Here's how to make overly optimistic power supply specifications. It's really simple.

First, power the thing up. You can make an ATX power supply that isn't connected to a motherboard turn on by grounding pin number 14 on the big motherboard power connector. It's easy to spot that pin, because it's the only one with a green wire going to it.

Use any handy bit of wire - like the paper clip in this picture - to connect pin 14 to any ground contact. The ground contacts are the ones with the black wires going to them. Presto, the PSU will turn on.

Now, break out your brick-sized power resistors and load the heck out of one of the output rails - the +5V rail, for instance. Measure the current as you increase the load, until the voltage sags unacceptably far below the rated voltage.

How do you tell what an unacceptable voltage sag is? Well, you could choose a nice conservative small permitted sag - say, 0.1 volts - so that your results are genuinely useful to your customers. Or you could just ignore the voltage and say that when a fuse (or some other component...) blows, that must have been the limit, right there.

OK. Now you've made a big fat amperage number for the +5V rail. If you blew up the PSU in the process, get another one, and repeat the process for +12V and +3.3V, and for the low current rails as well.

On no account, though, should you test more than one rail at a time. This is the key to the whole scam.

A big beefy PSU may be able to deliver 50 amps (say) on the 5V rail when nothing else is under load, and 25 amps (say) on the 12V rail when it's similarly all alone. But the 12V and 5V rails together may only be able to deliver, say, 350 watts between them, when they're both under load. Watts equals amps times volts.

In a real PC, all of the power rails will always be under load together.

But you're not testing what the PSU can really do - you're making pretty numbers for the sales brochure!

So test all of your rails alone, get an amperage figure for all of them, multiply that figure by the voltage of the rail it came from (the nominal voltage, not whatever the voltage had sagged to as the PSU pumped electrons through the dessert spoon you'd soldered to the circuit board), then take all of the resulting wattage figures and add 'em up. That's a wrap, folks. Ship it!
Click to expand...

being "truthful" to us (as we would see it) would substantially effect the bottom line with these companies, all of a sudden a generic might look on par with a main brand, or worse better
this has already infact happened, because there are oh so many ways to cheat
expect a main stream manufacturer to use a reasonable threshold for sag values
but also expect them to use 25C as a rating temperature, unless otherwise specifically stated ;)

as Mike Explains it is generally a linear dropoff, and without the actual engineering spec sheets.....
of course we have alot of options as "tenthusiasts" we arent afraid of the computer, and we are often inclined to mod a computer, so there are many many ways to regain some of that thermal loss, dont exhaust the CPU heatsink for starters, suppply the PSU with its own cool air supply is another

cut and paste
Ice Czar said:
Lee Garbutt did a push>pull fan mod on a Turbo Cool 425
http://www.leesspace.com/quiet_psu.htm
and this thread at spcr can give you lots of ideas about ducting ;)

but do to the design of the heatsinks and the density of the component package
as mentioned above, I wouldnt do the top fan mod on a Turbo Cool

boning up on Fans might be helpful as well
its not just the airflow that is important, but the static pressure
a supply with a greater resistance will benefit from a higher static pressure

a few links :p

Air Flow Vs. Pressure Characteristics
Parallel & Series Operation
Stall of Axial Flow Fans

Basic Fan Laws
How to measure Airflow vs Pressure
How to Achieve Low Noise
Accoustic Noise
EMI
Introduction: Forced Convection Cooling
How to select the right fan or blower
Step 1: The Total Cooling Requirements
Step 2: Total System Resistance / System Characteristic Curve
Step 3: System Operating Point
Click to expand...
 
would a tagan 480 psu be the best for 80 bucks? or can i get something better with 80? opinions?
 
You guessed right on the ram... only card I forgot was the Audigy2ZS, but I don't think that would make much of a difference ;)

And yes, no crazy temps (it's actually open on both sides, the 6800 blocks too much airflow, so I've got it open till I get my new case (2 weeks).

Might have been the PSU, but it makes no sense. Just died. I shut it down, tried to boot up, and nothing. Everything twitches for 1/2 sec at most, then it shuts off again. :(

I'll look hard at the PCP&C... any particular model you think would do me well?
 
well, it randomly started working again, so I'm going to keep using it for now. don't have much of a choice, I don't have any $$ right now.
 
My antec powersupply acted up for a year before i discovered that it was actually the psu causing my problems. Replaced it with a 400 watt sparkle and my problems cleared up. Im going to get the antec psu replaced, since they have a 3 year warranty.
 
the only place I have seen the 1/3 number in print is the PC P&C brochure. And, I imagine that they are comparing to a generic 550 watt PSU (RaidMax, ExplosioMax, etc)

The 550W in PC P&C's comparison is an Enermax -- the odd heatsinks with only vertical fins are the tip-off.
 
larrymoencurly said:
the only place I have seen the 1/3 number in print is the PC P&C brochure. And, I imagine that they are comparing to a generic 550 watt PSU (RaidMax, ExplosioMax, etc)

The 550W in PC P&C's comparison is an Enermax -- the odd heatsinks with only vertical fins are the tip-off.
Click to expand...

Good information, thanks a bunch.
 
larrymoencurly said:
the only place I have seen the 1/3 number in print is the PC P&C brochure. And, I imagine that they are comparing to a generic 550 watt PSU (RaidMax, ExplosioMax, etc)

The 550W in PC P&C's comparison is an Enermax -- the odd heatsinks with only vertical fins are the tip-off.
Click to expand...

well the progression is linear typically in an engineering spec sheet it will read something like
full power at 0 - 25C decreasing to 0% at 70C

so one third is a rough estimate

for instance here is an example of a PSU being rated at even a lower temperature than 25C
http://www.powmax.com/PDF/LP-6100C_pass.PDF
 
i've been running my forton 550 for over a year now with a pretty demanding load and it hasn't given me any problems.
 
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