******, jeantech , sweex power supplies ? ? ?

rxkevco

rxkevco

rxkevco

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Hi all, , bought a used OCZ psu last week off ebay and unfortunatly, its knackered when it arrived. Luckily i got my money back but am really ******* off cos its the last part i needed to start putting my new system together.

I am now looking around for a new one but only have roughly £50 to spend.

Have been looking around and to be honest, theres not a lot of quality for the price range i am stuck in.

It has to run , , ,

Asus P5Q PRO,
Q6600 Quad core cpu,
Asus V-60 cooler,
4gb of Geil black dragon pc2 8500 ram,
Ge force 8600 GTS,
A coolermaster wave case with 3 x 80mm fans,
Audigy 4 soundcard,
And a printer and scanner.

Will be running vista 64 bit.

What power will it take to keep a stable system ? ?
I know bigger is always better ( which is why the wife married me ! !) but i am restricted to the £50 area.

I think i have ruled out Sweex, , too many horror stories, ,
Jeantech i dont know a whole lot about, ,
Was looking at ******s and they have a range called the " xpower " and seem reasonably priced, , but again, i dont know a lot about them either.

I have been looking at the 500 watt -- 650 watt as a rough estimate of what i might need.

I have been given a 400 watt jeantech psu, but dont think its going to be enough, , but then again , ,i dont really know.

Help me PLEASE, , , i want to put this pc together in the next few days but obviously i am restricted by cashflow..

What is the bare minimum i will get away with ? ? ?

What is a cheap, , but reliable manufactuer to look at ? ? ?

I am in the uk.

Many thanks guys n gals.

No swearing
 
Hello,

I can highly recommend this one:

Corsair VX 450 Watt PSU

I used to have one that ran the following hardware without any problems:

Q6600 (overclocked to 3.6Ghz)
Various different motherboards
4 Hard Drives (500Gb x 4)
8800GT/GTS and even a 3870x2
Antec 900 Case with loads of Fans
4Gb Geil Ram
X-Fi Sound Card

If will handle your system with ease :)
 
yashiro said:
Jeantech is garbage but if it was free you might as well give it a try.
Click to expand...

No ... it's not worth trying ... probably only has 200W at 12V , the rating is only valid when it's in a cold room and if it's a couple of years old the caps could be starting to leak derating in further ....

Really now worth risking decent hardware with a cheap PSU which could fail and cause serious damage

As above .. Corsair is not a well rated unit ...

AD
 
Corsair VX 450 Watt PSU should be decent if you don't want to use the cheapy.

Really now worth risking decent hardware with a cheap PSU which could fail and cause serious damage
Click to expand...
There is that. But all PSU's carry this risk anyway. I have a crap 9 year old Acer PSU that's still going strong and has outlived a long line of top name PSU's.
Most modern parts seem to be manufactured to fail so you buy another one. :P
 
I would spend the extra £5 and get the Corsair PSU over the Antec Basic one. You get a longer warranty with Corsair and probably a lot more cables (sata & molex) :)
 
I have the 380W earthwatts, runs the system in sig no problem, has dual 12V rails rated at 17A each. Maybe stretch to the 500W earthwatts at £52.86 to cover any upgrades. Having said that, the corsair is also a superb PSU, either will do the job fine.
 
"What is the bare minimum i will get away with ? ? ?"

The free jeantech will almost certainly work fine. You really are not looking at a particularly high spec machine.
Cheap PSUs pushed hard do die and cause problems but that rig really will not be pulling the power that many will tell you it will.

£50 is a lot to spend on something you do not absolutely need at this moment.

Of course you run a small risk of the PSU dieing and taking out other components but it really is a very small risk.
 
Jeantech are absolute junk, you have some nice parts there, don't risk blowing them with a hopeless PSU. The Jeantech will not give out it's stated wattage., and crucially will be weak on the 12V rails. There's no chance it will run near to flat-out for long either.

All the options mentioned are much better than the Jeantech.

Personally Corsair 450W, it will give you some headroom if upgrade too.
 
Malazan said:
Jeantech are absolute junk, you have some nice parts there, don't risk blowing them with a hopeless PSU. The Jeantech will not give out it's stated wattage., and crucially will be weak on the 12V rails. There's no chance it will run near to flat-out for long either.

All the options mentioned are much better than the Jeantech.

Personally Corsair 450W, it will give you some headroom if upgrade too.
Click to expand...

I have to agree with you there. i had a jeantech 550w psu (i knw..lowers head in shame) which blew last week, it fried most of me pc with it - werent best pleased. All i can say is PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stay away from them! go for a brand whom has a good rep, even if it means u need 2 save another 30quid or so.

im currently doing a evalutation on how much 2 spend on me new rig which i will be ordering next week of OC. i dont want u to have to be doing the same in the next few weeks!
 
djcrowle said:
I have to agree with you there. i had a jeantech 550w psu (i knw..lowers head in shame) which blew last week, it fried most of me pc with it - werent best pleased. All i can say is PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stay away from them! go for a brand whom has a good rep, even if it means u need 2 save another 30quid or so.

im currently doing a evalutation on how much 2 spend on me new rig which i will be ordering next week of OC. i dont want u to have to be doing the same in the next few weeks!
Click to expand...


Sorry to hear that, whenever i build a system for someone, PSU is a important as CPU, Mobo, or anything else. Skimping on the PSU in a gaming rig is asking for trouble, as you have found out.

I know this time you will buy a top quality PSU that will meet your needs and will leave you with some headroom, never a good idea to run any PSU flat-out for long periods of time.
 
Jeeezzzz , , This post has caused quite a lot of intrest !:D

Have been at my mams this weekend and havent had a chance to get back to this thread until i arrived home about ten minutes ago , , , , with , , erm ,,, cough, splutter, , a new " jeantech " psu.
My mum got sick of me wittering on about needing a psu for my new build, and very, very kindly went out and bought me a new one.

Its a " STORM 700 WATT " by jeantech.
I must admit, it didnt have the usual crapy jeantech plain box, , its quite a substantial package, , and well built compared to the older jeantech that was given to me ! !
SLI/Crossfire ready, , multicore compatable, , , triple 12 volt rails, , all the cables are very nicely braided and there is plenty of them as well. Dual 120mm fans and blue LEDs, , Loads of over/under voltage , current protection and short circuit / overload protection as well , , , , to be honest with you, , , it looks better quality than the bloody OCZ psu that i had to send back to the ebay guy.

If they are that crap, , , i will take it back, , but i can only return it to a pc world store (which is where my mum bought it from), , , meaning, , , i will have to get something else thats probably worse than what i have now.

She paid £80 for it, , , surely they cant be that bad ? ? ?

PS: I know my system doesnt look particulary power hungry, , but it will be getting used as a digital recording studio (DAW) and will be powering a firewire audio interface as well as cubase 4 (studio software) and quite a lot of software synthesizers and vsti effects at once. I have been advised by studio engineers and other people using cubase 4 that 600watt is a minimum for high end audio production, , , 700watt storm should be plenty.


Oh and just for the record, , , my last pc fried up because of a " corsair " psu ! ! ! I wont be touching them again:mad:
 
I've posted this before... but for the benefit of this thread!

There is a good reason why 'quality' PSU's cost more ..... take a look at this typical cheap 650W supply which can be purchased brand new for approx £25

ezcool650.jpg


Spot the issue ..... well a closer look shows just 216W at 12V ....

You've read around.... and 500W is plenty for your Core 2 and GTX260 / HD4870 ... with 650W .... you could probably even SLI ..... Not with this unit ..... FAIL

Now the above supply will no doubt run for years powering a low end core 2 and an 8600GTS but as soon as you ask it to deliver what you think the rating is ... it will fail

Yes there is a risk of failure with any PSU .... and a risk of hardware damage ... but when buying a cheap PSU that risk is far higher ... and you probably didn't get what you paid for anyway.

A good PSU is rated at it's stated output @ 50C continuous and should have an efficiency of around 85% .... so with a typical 300W load the PSU generates 45W of heat internally. That heat is removed with large heatsinks and a good quality fan or two.

A cheap PSU will achive it's rating as peak output and at 20C. How hot is that air being sucked through from your case.... how hot do you think the PSU is internally? Typically the efficiency will be 70% so that's 90W of internal heat at the same 300W output.... probably with a couple of minimum size heatsinks in there, cheap capactitors and usually 1 or 2 small noisy fans trying keep temperatures under control.

You don't need to spend a fortune on a PSU, and you probably don't need more than a 400W unit for most home PC's unless you're running multiple GPU's and a hard overclock.

You do need good quality PSU, it doesn't need to be a top brand but pay attention the the specificaiton and outputs. If you can't easily find the data with a quick web search then look elsewhere. With multi rail PSU's it's also important to look at the combined wattage figure for the 12V output. Often the sales leaflet with quote +12V1 (15A) and +12V2 (15A) so you think great .... 30A ... except on a cheap unit it probably isn't and it could be as low as 20A combined.

AD
 
The Jeantechs are not all bad. I have a 500w one that is 4 years old and still works perfectly. It is relegated to testing/backup now as the two 80mm fans are quite load as it gets loaded up.

The Storm's are quite good psu's but can also be quite noisy despite the silent tag on the box. You hardly ever hear of Jeantech psu's blowing up on here yet there are always Hiper's and lately a lot of Corsairs failing.

Here are some reviews for your Storm:-

http://www.xtremecomputing.co.uk/review.php?id=318

http://www.xsreviews.co.uk/reviews/power-supply-units/jeantech-storm-700w/1

Here are the specs http://www.jeantech.com/storm.htm
 
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