Worth the premium for Seasonic?

[ElT]

I need a new PSU as old one might be struggling. I was looking at the Seasonic range as that's what I had before and I would guess the cables are therefore compatible plus it just seemed a good PSU. But they seem to be significantly more expensive. Example, there's a 1000W Titanium BeQuiet for £264

be quiet! Dark Power 13 1000W 80 PLUS Titanium Power Supply

Order be quiet! Dark Power 13 1000W 80 PLUS Titanium Power Supply now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

and the Seasonic 1000W Titanium BeQuiet for £339

Seasonic Prime TX-1000 1000W 80 Plus Titanium Modular Power Supply

Order Seasonic Prime TX-1000 1000W 80 Plus Titanium Modular Power Supply now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

That's a £75 premium.

Is there some particular reason for this? 1000W is what I'm looking for and I want it to be good quality. Just wondering if BeQuiet is a bargain brand (didn't think so) or if Seasonic have just that much better a rep?

 

[Tetras]

Just wondering if BeQuiet is a bargain brand (didn't think so) or if Seasonic have just that much better a rep?

They're not a bargain brand, both have decent PSUs and mediocre PSUs, but in this case, I wouldn't read too much into Seasonic prices on anything, because they seem to be all over the place and availability has been poor for awhile.

 

[Rroff]

From a quick Google the Be Quiet appears to use a FSP unit and reviews very well - I dunno much about FSP these days but back in the day they were very very good - OCZ became well known by using FSP for the OEM in their PSUs... then they swapped to using CWT and product reliability took a nosedive.

EDIT: Not sure I'd be quite so enthusiastic as to call them top end "including top end capacitors by Nippon Chemi-Con and Rubycon" but Rubycon are a solid capacitor brand often chosen by the old school engineering types for their workhorse reliability (and optimal performance/price crossover).

 

[ElT]

Thanks. Seasonic prices do seem to be all over the place. I'd probably go for the brand but stock issues seem to be a big problem right now. OC store is filled with "Pre-order" on the brand and I've no way of telling if that's going to be 1 day or 1 month. I also feel like I should get one with the PCI-Ev5 plug just for future proofing.

Quick question: is it a safe bet that cables are going to be compatible with my existing Seasonic PSU (an 850w from around five years ago) if I buy any of the new ones? I feel like they have to be but I don't want to fry something for the sake of not asking.

 

[Tetras]

I'd probably go for the brand but stock issues seem to be a big problem right now. OC store is filled with "Pre-order" on the brand and I've no way of telling if that's going to be 1 day or 1 month.

It might be because they're replacing the range with ATX 3.0 / PCIE5 PSUs so the switch in production has led to shortages, but other brands seem to have stock, so I'm not sure if that's relevant.

Quick question: is it a safe bet that cables are going to be compatible with my existing Seasonic PSU (an 850w from around five years ago) if I buy any of the new ones? I feel like they have to be but I don't want to fry something for the sake of not asking.

It's generally a bad idea to use existing cables even if the brand is the same, but my suggestion would be to ask Seasonic themselves.

 

[ElT]

It might be because they're replacing the range with ATX 3.0 / PCIE5 PSUs so the switch in production has led to shortages, but other brands seem to have stock, so I'm not sure if that's relevant.



It's generally a bad idea to use existing cables even if the brand is the same, but my suggestion would be to ask Seasonic themselves.

Thanks. I did a little digging and found they had a compatibility chat here: https://seasonic.com/cable-compatibility Looks like with one exception they're pretty much interchangeable. I still might swap the cables as well but it'd be nice not to have to. I went with this and it should be arriving tomorrow if OC are up to their usual high standards: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/seas...w-80-gold-modular-power-supply-ca-088-ss.html

I was on the fence between this and the Titanium BeQuiet one. Has one more PCI-E socket and there's just keeping with a brand I know. Thanks for the help, all.

 

[Tetras]

Thanks. I did a little digging and found they had a compatibility chat here: https://seasonic.com/cable-compatibility Looks like with one exception they're pretty much interchangeable. I still might swap the cables as well but it'd be nice not to have to. I went with this and it should be arriving tomorrow if OC are up to their usual high standards: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/seas...w-80-gold-modular-power-supply-ca-088-ss.html

I was on the fence between this and the Titanium BeQuiet one. Has one more PCI-E socket and there's just keeping with a brand I know. Thanks for the help, all.

Oh, cool, I didn't know they had one of those charts!

I would definitely swap them over to the new cables, I know it can be annoying.

 

[Dave2150]

Seasonic IMO are the best. They're constantly out of stock as well, due to their popularity.

ATX 3.0 versions of the Prime Titanium units are soon available, worth waiting for those.

 

[ElT]

Seasonic IMO are the best. They're constantly out of stock as well, due to their popularity.

ATX 3.0 versions of the Prime Titanium units are soon available, worth waiting for those.

I went with the Seasonic GX-1000 which arrived yesterday. I'd have liked to have waited for the TX as you suggested but current PSU was dying and I have no way of knowing if "Pre-Order" means a couple of days or a month. It did come with an adapter cable for ATX 3.0 for what that's worth. It will be quite a long time before I need it though as I recently bought a 7900XT GPU.

On the plus side, it's almost confirmed that the system crashes I was having were down to the old PSU. Whilst it's only been one evening I've been hammering the card with some ML work and it didn't shutdown nor have I had the odd little hangs where the screen blacks out and then recovers. So fingers crossed that was it, which leaves me with one last question. Had my old PSU simply exceeded its capacity (Seasonic Titanium 850w, shouldn't have done) and will be fine in my upcoming NAS/Lab build which will barely scrape 400W need, or were the increasing system failures a sign that the old PSU is actually dying and I shouldn't rely on it? Do PSUs die bit by bit or all at once?

 

[Rroff]

PSUs can die bit by bit - once components start to degrade they'll increasingly cause random issues at any load though. It might be as simple as a single capacitor has leaked or a more fundamental failure.

 

[Simon42]

I've only used high end Corsair and Seasonic for years but not had a good run with Seasonic recently. A Prime TX-1000 failed after 12 months and while waiting for RMA I decided to get a Prime TX-1300 as I was planning on a new build soon so needed another PSU. Sadly the Prime TX-1300 has a strange fault where the PC would not sleep as the PSU just shut down on sleep instead of maintaining the low power rails. This was a pain to diagnose by testing on two PCs and with various boot environments.

The TX-1300 supply was returned and funded by the vendor as they reproduced the issue and I note the Prime TX-1300 is out of stock everywhere now.

Failures happen but two top of the range Prime TX units (and different sizes) faulty is a bit disappointing for me.

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

My last Seasonic PSU was a dud also. 550 Focus+ Gold, couldn't handle the spikes from my last RTX2070.
An ancient Superflower unit was fine with it, and a cheapish FSP 550 replacement unit was also OK.

I wouldn't bother paying the 75 quid premium between those 2 units.

 

[chrcoluk]

I think its the B word, I have noticed shortages or even completely unavailability in all sorts of PC stock since then in the UK, the new PSU spec might be something to do with it, but dont think its the entire cause.


But anyway from what I remember reading in the past be quiet is a very respectable PSU brand.

 

[Darujhistan]

I need a new PSU as old one might be struggling. I was looking at the Seasonic range as that's what I had before and I would guess the cables are therefore compatible plus it just seemed a good PSU. But they seem to be significantly more expensive. Example, there's a 1000W Titanium BeQuiet for £264

be quiet! Dark Power 13 1000W 80 PLUS Titanium Power Supply

Order be quiet! Dark Power 13 1000W 80 PLUS Titanium Power Supply now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

and the Seasonic 1000W Titanium BeQuiet for £339

Seasonic Prime TX-1000 1000W 80 Plus Titanium Modular Power Supply

Order Seasonic Prime TX-1000 1000W 80 Plus Titanium Modular Power Supply now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

That's a £75 premium.

Is there some particular reason for this? 1000W is what I'm looking for and I want it to be good quality. Just wondering if BeQuiet is a bargain brand (didn't think so) or if Seasonic have just that much better a rep?

The super duper Titanium God-Tier makes your ***** grow bigger units aren't worth the money over the slightly lower tier, more sensibly priced units. And that goes for all the top brands really, their most expensive units are just marketing and upselling.

 

[embalse]

I've had a couple of bad Seasonic PSUs over the years and switched to Corsair lately. I would not value the PSU on price alone.

 

[iron_monkey]

Google PSU tier list and pick one of the top recommended PSUs

 

[embalse]

Been a fan of Corsair for some time. Same price range

 

[MadMossy]

From a quick Google the Be Quiet appears to use a FSP unit and reviews very well - I dunno much about FSP these days but back in the day they were very very good - OCZ became well known by using FSP for the OEM in their PSUs... then they swapped to using CWT and product reliability took a nosedive.

EDIT: Not sure I'd be quite so enthusiastic as to call them top end "including top end capacitors by Nippon Chemi-Con and Rubycon" but Rubycon are a solid capacitor brand often chosen by the old school engineering types for their workhorse reliability (and optimal performance/price crossover).

I use Rubycon capacitors for much of my hobby tinkering they have always been rock solid