Nice editing...
Unless you're doing it for your personal enjoyment, generic power supplies have been proven to suck before.
The biggest difference between a quality and generic PSU is their weight. My Corsair VX550 is as heavy as a Fatman from Fallout 3. A generic PSU pulled from an HP computer that I have lying around is about as light as the cloth bag Corsair packages their PSUs with.
/OT
Don't get nasty mate. I changed so it was more clear, to address your objection.
My personal enjoyment, and also to show some idiots at OCN. Plus a few other reasons.
but don't post stuff with "presumably", unless you expect to get responses like mine- or much worse.
Like I said, I don't doubt it's a **** PSU, but base it on numbers or empirical evidence. Find the actual draw on the unit or/and blow the mother-****er up, or find out the actual rating on the components (the former being, obviously, preferable to the latter), but don't post stuff with "presumably", unless you expect to get responses like mine- or much worse.
Anyway, IBM, I don't know about "Advance Technologies". However, it probably uses a high-end fan; Delta, Sanyo Denki, NMB, etc. That would explain the higher airflow. I don't know what PSUs they use in Thinkcenters either, but it may be done that way by design.
What do you think I'm doing? I ID'd the 115V diode, looked up its data sheet, found the amperage rating, did the math.
And testing power supplies isn't simple. A full testing suite costs a minimum of ~$4000, if I go cheap and improvise. JG's lab costs ~$8k, and [H]'s cost around ~$10k.
Want more hard info? Here's the secondary silicon
SBL2045CT = 20A @ +5V = 100W
F12C20C = 12A @ +12V = 144W
S10C40C = 10A @ +3.3V = 33W
Leading to a total secondary wattage of 277W. Which matches up with what I found for the primary as well (though I have yet to analyze the primary switchers; shall I do it now?).
Really, I don't mean to be too agro- more pointing out that posting numbers before you can back them up is just going to lead to people getting all up up your back. Assuming is always a bad way to start- what does it do to your numbers if those diodes happen to have 2, 4 or 10 times higher ratings? Can you be sure you can tell the difference by eye?
I'm perplexed. Just wait until the tests on the PSUs can be done instead of making it trivial. Obviously the information will be corrected as the test progresses, phaedrus was just proposing an hypothesis based on the current information gathered.
I think lavender text is kinda gay.
An interesting thing is the delta ones in my intellistations don't automatically turn the computer on when plugged in; whereas, in the thinkcentres, soon as you plug the stupid things in, it causes the computer to boot. I'm assuming it's a PSU issue, but it could be the computer itself.
Anyone happen to know what's up with the newer Thermaltake TR2 430W units? All I can find is info on older versions of the same model that claim different specifications from each other.
I know it's a discount unit but I'd kind of like to know what to expect from it.
I have a simple Power Supply test.
If it is PC Power & Cooling - buy it.
If it is NOT PC Power & Cooling - don't buy it.
Bought a high end OCZ LED blinkomatic once and it fried itself in 2 years. Ironically enough OCZ bought PC Power & Cooling so I made sure I stocked up with an extra before Quality goes downhill.
It's an HEC 350W. They keep changing the casing and load tables, but as long as the model # is "W0069**" or "W0070**" the internals are the same HEC garbage.
Though it might as well be a SeaSonic compared to this Linkworld.
Corsair:
...
- Has an outstanding warranty
...
I hate when people say "Corsair don't make the PSUs man so don't support them!"
Well, very few do. I mean, doesn't PC P&C subcontract their production out to Seasonic as well?
Typo, I meant Bestec.
Besides, cheap power supplies don't have to explode. They can do other subtler things like kill your hardware (a motherboard and a stick of RAM were the victims of a 250W Bestec HP PSU).
I've heard of Bestec (Friend's HP) but I haven't heard of Bestect.
I buy Corsair in my new PCS (SeaSonic rebrands, if I recall correctly). I scored both for pretty cheap on sales (relatively. You don't skimp on a PSU).
I also have a ThermalTake that is probably a cheap rebrand but has been doing well, and an Antec TruePower that's a few years old that's also been chugging along.
I need a break after being victim of the capacitor plague that destroyed everything in one of my PCs. Then again, saying "everything is working fine" ALWAYS seems to bring on trouble.
*knocks on wood*
So cheap PSUs can spike the voltage and send incorrect amounts of power; thus destroying the hardware?
It's only worked because you haven't run anything intensive on it.
When I built my current system I had a PSU fail. When I got a replacement I ended up with a half aluminum, half clear acrylic LED infused PSU that has a knob on the back to adjust the fan, I liked that feature but the flo-green switch and neon blue were things I just accepted. I'm not a gamer and typically try to stick to server-class hardware built for stability and longevity but in this case I went with the bling-bling neon disco-of-the-future affair.
Found the model, it's made by Apevia. I don't know how good this PSU is, but it's worked well for over 2 years and I run a lot of drives and devices off of my system and I like the wrapped cables.Show Image(http://images.highspeedbackbone.net/SkuImages/gallery/large/a107-2000-A.jpg)
Yeah, that's REALLY bargain bin stuff right there. I remember because my friend had to replace his PSU after he put real load on it (6800GS when he previously used integrated).
So cheap PSUs can spike the voltage and send incorrect amounts of power; thus destroying the hardware?
I thought if a computer gets a broken capacitor, it just gives a silly message in the BIOS, rather than destroying the whole computer.
I use Solidworks which is pretty intensive. It's actually the reason I finally upgraded my 1999 440BX PII system in 2007 because there is no way on earth it would run Solidworks. But I mostly surf the internet, and use it as a file server.
I hope to get 8 years longevity out of my current system too. Excluding PSU, fans and drives of course. Movable parts all fail eventually.
So cheap PSUs can spike the voltage and send incorrect amounts of power; thus destroying the hardware?
So cheap PSUs can spike the voltage and send incorrect amounts of power; thus destroying the hardware?
I thought if a computer gets a broken capacitor, it just gives a silly message in the BIOS, rather than destroying the whole computer.
It's a piece of garbage. HardwareSecrets tested one straight from the OEM and it tested out at 150W before going kaboom. Apevia might have paid more for upgraded parts, but it's still a crappy design.
If you have the thing on 24/7 you probably will need to replace the fans in 8 years; but I have some computers with some pretty ancient fans... you'd want fans with bearings instead of sleeves if you want longevity.
Depends on what the capacitor is for.
Cap in my Gateway from 2003 (last prebuilt desktop I ever bought) blew in 2006. It took out everything in the PC. I assume that it was for voltage regulation.
Still, it explains a lot. It blue screened and experienced random corruption for months before the caps blew. Once they did I finally opened the case, those caps that did not explode were either bulging and leaking or bulging.
EDIT: RAM, Processor, optical drives, and hard drive were all nonfunctional with a new PC. So when I say everything blew, I mean everything.
You can replace capacitors right? So if you caught them while the computer was having problems and re-soldered some on, it would have been fine?
The old computer I salvaged from my school has some capacitors that look a little bulgy, but nothing is wrong with it.
Fortunately most computer parts either the caps don't hold enough charge to kill you, or they have a bleed resistor. However, you can't count on that. For instance, any decent PSU will have a bleed resistor for the primary caps, but cheap-os often don't, and so can hold obscene amounts of power for hours or even days. But good ones are usually safe within a minute or two.
Yeah, you can do it yourself if you're skilled or pay someone to do it for you (http://badcaps.net/)
The stuff usually isn't worth repairing though. Not at this point, anyways.
when successful, Badcaps.net will offer a FULL polymer kit for these little jewels. Long live the Mac users!<-- pfff, if the macs were so great, such kits shouldn't even exist.
Especially that big capacitor in the middle of a CRT.
Thanks for the website!
Well, I don't want to get rid of my computers, and usually capacitors are the first thing to go. Plus I'm paranoid of bad capacitors in my old intellistation, it's my favourite computer; a few rubycons would ease my worrying.
Yeah... those that retain a charge in them still. Although, I've been electrocuted by outdoor christmas lights and electrical wires in a light switch, I'm sure the current isn't THAT strong in little tiny dinky capacitors.
Famous last words...
Right up there with "Hey y'all- lookit this!"
Famous last words...
Can anyone with any sort of proper education in electrical engineering elaborate on what you have to do to make a PSU safe when you open it?
Here (http://tinyurl.com/37tsdyr) ya go...
Well, consider that the PSUs in those machines lasted a good 8-15 years before becoming unusable. Why replace it with something that will fail inside of 2 years?
I recommend two units for old systems. One is the Zippy Emacs 300W:
https://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10001&productId=2077482&catalogId=10001&langId=-1&ddkey=https:CookieLogon
Highest reliability ATX 1.3 PSU on the market, I highly recommend it. Only problem is the fan sounds like a jet engine, so if you don't like the noise or feel uncomfortable with undervolting the fan then I'd grudgingly recommend this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182006&cm_re=Rosewill_350W-_-17-182-006-_-Product
Yup. Only complaints about the Zippy are the fan, and I'd prefer to see the +12V at ~12-15A, and with a bit tighter regulation. But that's not a huge concern for P2/P3 systems. The +5V regulation, which is important, is amazing. 4.98V idle, 4.95V under maximum load. Steady as a rock.
Yup, SeaSonic S12. Same as the Corsair TX650 and HX620 (only those two). They're nothing great performance wise these days, just average, but they're still very reliable, usually the only part that wears out during normal use is the fan. Of course, I think most of them are still under warranty; we'll have to see how these units do a few years from now.
Well, very few do. I mean, doesn't PC P&C subcontract their production out to Seasonic as well?