I thought OcUK only really stocked good quality products.........

Not sure what all the fuss is about. It's a cheap psu for a home PC. My understanding of a home PC was for catching up with friends and family on facebook or keeping your photos in one place. Don't like, don't buy. :P

People may indeed buy them for their gaming rigs, but that's not really ocuk's problem. They're there to supply, not educate.

Nice to see ocuk selling lower end stuff. Would like to see some low end cpus like the celeron dual cores. Some other retailers sell them, but sourcing everything from one place would be ideal.
 
Strange how these have a 'Professional ' tag.
Normally one would associate this with Quality best of breed kit.

However clearly this means for use by cheap system building spivs.
The same ones that sell 9.6GHZ quads :()

What does the Law say about ratings on electrical items ?
If these units had honest ratings then no one would be complaining here.
 
Bit odd that. The "OCUK Value" range is considerably more than the "OCUK Professional" range. New name needed methinks.

Lets see what we can find from supermarket own brand tags.

Hmm.

"OCUK Basics" ;)
 
Higadeb said:
Dear angry flamers,
Please take the time to read and research the product you are flaming before going all out attack.
For example the OcUK Swift 550W is made by WinPower. So lets think. Why not have a search and see if WinPower make descent PSU's?
A quick look on google returns these reviews:
http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&articID=403
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1818
Reviews which commend the PSU's on price and reliabillity.
Now I grant you, the OcUK 550W PSU may not be the same PSU. But come on guys. Don't just jump out and start flaming just for the sake of it!
Yours
Higadeb
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well, from those revies im seeing 73% efficiency? only rated at 25c operating temperature? 1 year warranty? no active PFC?

are you beginning to see why that corsair 400w is a better choice yet? let's hope they dont turn out like those old q-tecs ;)
 
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I did a quick 'first impressions' of the Cosair CX 400W, suffice to say, I'd much rather put one of those in my system, and at less than £40 you're not saving a lot of cash on a full system anyway, plus the Corsair could handle a sustained 400W at 40 deg C, more than enough for any office or family system in my eyes.

Unfortunately my unit was faulty on arrival, my cheap PSU worked fine. Just to highlight the fact that branded units aren't perfect, but if they go wrong, it's usually very quickly or a long time in the future, rather than in 6 months to 2 years, and they won't take your system with it. Efficiency is also a lot better, the Corsair manages around 84%, well above ATX spec and in the 80+ range.
 
well, from those revies im seeing 73% efficiency? only rated at 25c operating temperature? 1 year warranty? no active PFC?
Click to expand...

Eeek

With top PSU builders aiming for 85%+ efficiency (and some, such as Seasonic getting 90%+) that's pretty shocking.

I can understand the argument for cheap PSUs for office PCs and web-browsers but these PCs don't need 600+ watts.

Have cheap PSUs but get them in the 250 to 400 W range.
 
Look at the PSU from a commerical point of view!

How many PC's are currently being used in the UK? What is the percentage would you estimate are "medium" or even "high end"? 10% at most? Maybe even less.

Now from a reliability point of view - how many people with Tiny PC's? or other budget build vendors use Corsair or Seasonic or Tagan? None! And lots of these PC's have worked flawlessly for a good few years.

The problem with the haters here is you are looking at it from a personal point of view.

Commerically these are good - low fault rate and good value for the intended market. I could have sourced even cheaper PSU's but the failure rate higher.

All in all, for the target audience these are the best of the bunch. These will appeal people who just web browse, print photo's from their point & click camers, and write the odd letter. This market is far bigger than the gaming sector.
 
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/HEC-WinPower-480-W-Power-Supply/396/1
This power supply is far from being a low-end unit. Its internal design and the components used make it more like a mid-range power supply targeted to users that want a good power supply but are not willing to buy a very expensive model.

The components used internally are really good – the transient filtering stage, for instance, has more components than the necessary. The only thing we missed to say that everything is perfect in this power supply is the fact that its electrolytic capacitors aren’t Japanese. But that would be too much for its price range.

Its price is REALLY impressive: costing only USD 50 in the US, this is the power supply with the best cost/benefit ratio we’ve seen to date.

If you don’t mind missing four features found only on high-end models – active PFC, 85% efficiency (this power supply is labeled as having 75% efficiency), Japanese capacitors and modular cabling system – this is the power supply you should buy. Period.

This is the perfect choice for users assembling a PC and willing to buy a good power supply but don’t want to spend a lot of money. With the money you will save you can add more features to your PC (more RAM memory, for instance).
Click to expand...
 
I'm just concerned about noobs buying this thinking it's as good as a Corsair HX, or Antec TruePower. We know that's not the case, but the description would have you believe otherwise.

If you want to be all businessy about it, you're offering something that's gonna let noobs down - and they pay you less for it - and they never come back.
 
james.miller said:
well, from those revies im seeing 73% efficiency? only rated at 25c operating temperature? 1 year warranty? no active PFC?

are you beginning to see why that corsair 400w is a better choice yet? let's hope they dont turn out like those old q-tecs ;)
Click to expand...

Yes, all the things you have mentioned are true. So think why?
Maybe it's because they are designed for office machines and not for top spec. gaming rigs etc.
An office machine doesn't need to be 100%, the office will be regulated at a constant temp. via air con, the warranty is standard for any generic PSU and Active PFC is not needed for an office machine.
Furthermore, Active PFC adds greatly to the cost of a PSU so would in fact be a negative for the PSU in terms of its targeted market as it would have to raise the price of the unit.
 
Ace Modder said:
Look at the PSU from a commerical point of view!

How many PC's are currently being used in the UK? What is the percentage would you estimate are "medium" or even "high end"? 10% at most? Maybe even less.

Now from a reliability point of view - how many people with Tiny PC's? or other budget build vendors use Corsair or Seasonic or Tagan? None! And lots of these PC's have worked flawlessly for a good few years.

The problem with the haters here is you are looking at it from a personal point of view.

Commerically these are good - low fault rate and good value for the intended market. I could have sourced even cheaper PSU's but the failure rate higher.

All in all, for the target audience these are the best of the bunch. These will appeal people who just web browse, print photo's from their point & click camers, and write the odd letter. This market is far bigger than the gaming sector.
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YES! Thank you Ace Modder!
People need to look at the market these are aimed at.
The changes are if you build your own PC and know enough about it to share your info on a forum and show off your super high spec machines... this isn't the PSU for you :rolleyes:
 
billysielu said:
I'm just concerned about noobs buying this thinking it's as good as a Corsair HX, or Antec TruePower. We know that's not the case, but the description would have you believe otherwise.

If you want to be all businessy about it, you're offering something that's gonna let noobs down - and they pay you less for it - and they never come back.
Click to expand...

Then it's the noob's fault for not doing proper research. If you're going to spend a large amount of money, one would hope that you would do the proper research before placing your order.

If they choose not to, and buy a cheap power supply that doesn't meet their computer's needs, then it's their own fault and a lesson learned. Nothing for us to make a fuss about.
 
Loving these threads. OMG they're cheap they will blow up!!

All said without actually knowing anything about the product, without sampling the product, without researching the product pretty much noticing the price and then hating due to that single factor.

Let me ask you, You have an emachine computer and its power supply pops. You want a replacement, the spec is celeron, X800 GPU, 512mb Ram. You wanna go spend £50 on a Corsair PSU for it? Are you mad!

People with any brains can see where the OCUK Professional brands are aimed.
 
Hotwired said:
Bit odd that. The "OCUK Value" range is considerably more than the "OCUK Professional" range. New name needed methinks.

Lets see what we can find from supermarket own brand tags.

Hmm.

"OCUK Basics" ;)
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Good point. We'll get this looked at next week.
 
Well if they have a failure rate similar to high end psu's what exactly is the catch here, other than being less efficient and obviously that can't make much difference because everyone is going on about how they are good for someone on a budget, this surely wouldn't be the case if the efficiency levels made a drastic difference to your power bills?

I know for a fact OC aren't going to start using these in their high end pre built systems so would they kindly explain what is actually wrong with them because there clearly is something that makes them unsuitable for high systems but I haven't heard what. Surely something like high ripple is going to be bad for all systems high end or not and in fact home/office pc's are probably going to be using the same components for a longer time than someone with a high-end one who will probably upgrade quite a lot, so being damaged overtime by a cheap psu is going to cause more problems.

I'm not here to bash, I'm actually considering buying one for an office pc but I want to know what I'm actually getting into.
 
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