Bit-Tech tests various PSU's

skippy2421

skippy2421

skippy2421

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I apologise if this has already been posted (which wouldn't surprise me with the article being a couple of days old) but i thought i would bring this up with a lot of people generally enquiring into what PSU's to buy. This review by Bit-Tech reviews a lot of the PSU's between 600-700 watts but with (quite annoyingly) the exception of the corsair.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/psus/2010/02/22/600-700w-psu-review-round-up/1

A few results that surprised me was the poor scores the BeQuiet PSU got in comparison to it's competition. Now i've always rated BeQuiet but i may have to re think this stance after seeing this. There's no surprise that Seasonic and Seasonic made PSU's come out well but i was Really surprised by how highly rated the Antec PSU was. I've always liked antec PSU's as they have always provided solid PSU's for good money (hence why i have one, mine was a bargain too) but how it performed in the tests really surprised me especially if it matches seasonic's own PSU.

Anyways i hope this is of use to some of those people looking at buying new PSU's especially with the new wave of GPU's we have about at the moment. Feel free to add to this thread with any other interesting PSU related topics of your own. I feel PSU's probably don't get the discussion they deserve and as a result a lot of confusion surrounds them. Yes i know they're not as interesting as CPU's and Gpu's but with the PSU being often labelled the most important part of a system on these forums i'm surprised by the lack of discussion these get.

Edit: just spotted my link in the OcUK 650w PSU thread. I fail :(
 
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have no idea what you're on about *whistles* nice spot Ace, should check what i'm copying. anyways that 5770 is what i'm buying Friday so don't complain ;)

I understand what you are saying with regards to the BeQuiet PSU's but your range seems to start at 750w however not everybody needs this so when looking at the 750w BeQuiet at 126.99 against the Antec 650w that you also have in stock at 89 pounds then it seems a slight rip off to be fair.
 
skippy2421 said:
have no idea what you're on about *whistles* nice spot Ace, should check what i'm copying. anyways that 5770 is what i'm buying Friday so don't complain ;)

I understand what you are saying with regards to the BeQuiet PSU's but your range seems to start at 750w however not everybody needs this so when looking at the 750w BeQuiet at 126.99 against the Antec 650w that you also have in stock at 89 pounds then it seems a slight rip off to be fair.
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The BeQuiet Dark Power range does only start at 750W so fair comment, however they have some unique features including being able to switch between single or multiple rails and dedicated 3 pin fan connectors.
 
Ace Modder said:
The BeQuiet Dark Power range does only start at 750W so fair comment, however they have some unique features including being able to switch between single or multiple rails.
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Oh i don't deny BeQuiet's high end range are extremely good but the odds on many users needing to go above 650w are remote (with exception of sli etc.) but in general a user running a high end GPU (5870), heavily overclocked CPU with lots of extras such as HDDs and fans will quite happily get by with a good 650w PSU. Obviously we can have a separate discussion regarding high end PSU's and their pros and cons, which would probably be a good thing with this being an enthusiasts forum and the proportion of those needing a 750w+ PSU being higher than average here. I may go off for a browse of some benchmarks for this in my lunch break.

Back to the benchmarks and the said BeQuiet PSU i may not of worded my response too well, i didn't mean to imply that perhaps all BeQuiet PSU's are bad but perhaps we should question the mentality of "said PSU is made by X therefore must be good" I seem to see a lot of blanket statements about this forum such as "it's a corsair and therefore it is great" (example). However is this necessarrily true for all brands? Obviously OcUK don't sell the awful generic rubbish a lot of places do but it would seem we're so focused on the small details of every other bit of hardware but just don't care about the PSU as long as it's from a "reputable" brand and i'm not sure why this is. Surely it would make sense to get your moneys worth so to speak.


However on a side note that is an interesting feature you have mentioned there. How would this impact on the stability of a system and what benefits does this possess?
 
The problem with these types of reviews is that only the American big sites bother to say if they have bought the parts themselves (but get the 'free' advertising link to newegg etc). So you cant tell whether the parts were hand picked and sent from the manufacturer.

They also only review 1 psu each.
 
I used to rate Antec PSU's highly, but the problem is you dont ever really know what your getting.

ANTEC INC PSU's are built by HEC, CWT, Delta and Seasonic. Basiq line built by FSP.

Certainly there have been years where Antec have had a somewhat high failer record, and its very hard to find which OEM your getting. I try to stick with PSU's made by Seasonic, or CWT myself, so either Seasonic, or Corsair basically :)

If you get a good Antec your set... if you get a bad one its liable to suffer from bad rails.

I found this link, very interesting if your looking for anyone looking for a good PSU.

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDArticles&op=Story&ndar_id=24

Perhaps we should have a list like this on these forums :)
 
JTrickle said:
The problem with these types of reviews is that only the American big sites bother to say if they have bought the parts themselves (but get the 'free' advertising link to newegg etc). So you cant tell whether the parts were hand picked and sent from the manufacturer.

They also only review 1 psu each.
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Surely this a problem with many reviews not just with PSU's? I do understand what you are getting at however.

Corasik said:
I used to rate Antec PSU's highly, but the problem is you dont ever really know what your getting.

ANTEC INC PSU's are built by HEC, CWT, Delta and Seasonic. Basiq line built by FSP.

Certainly there have been years where Antec have had a somewhat high failer record, and its very hard to find which OEM your getting. I try to stick with PSU's made by Seasonic, or CWT myself, so either Seasonic, or Corsair basically :)

If you get a good Antec your set... if you get a bad one its liable to suffer from bad rails.

I found this link, very interesting if your looking for anyone looking for a good PSU.

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDArticles&op=Story&ndar_id=24

Perhaps we should have a list like this on these forums :)
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interesting point about Antec, this is what i'm trying to acheive with this thread an in depth discussion about the various things we should look at in PSU's because after reading that article it would seem you can't apply the mantra that "all PSU's made by X are good" (with an exception of seasonic who seem to be consistent) nor the one that the "more expensive it is the better it is" as often you will miss out on some hidden gems.

EDIT: good link also, very informative however it would be nice if it had a little more detail on it. Obviously if we had an OcUK list it would need a little more detail, how nice of yourself to volunteer to create a list :p
 
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Shame Be quite! changed there dark power series. If they used one of the old 650w dark powers it would have scored considerably better, well thats what id say :P
 
If you click the e number links from within the database, you can get the rails and specs on a large number of PSU's from each brand.

But yes, if we could make an OcUK PSU database, anyone who owned, or have owned one, could comment on how they found them, until we had a big overall picture :)
 
I'm not very impressed by this review. Specifically they have provided very little information about their testing methodology, if I go based on what they written then they tested at 100% and 50W of the rated current limits on each rail for half an hour and noted down the voltages. This just doesn't mean very much.

ATX (being cheap relative to an industrial one) power supplies struggle with cross loading, drawing a lot of current from one line but little from the others, and from the power draw varying through wide ranges and a variety of cross loading. Placing a balanced load across the psu for half an hour just doesn't mean anything, hence they all stayed well within atx limits of 11.4V to 12.6V.

They do not mention ambient temperatures, record the magnitude of the inevitable ripple on the lines. No mention of the internals is probably forgivable as few people, even on here, can make useful deductions about the quality of the supply by looking at the circuitboard.

For the sake of not being entirely negative, here is a year old review by Anandtech which is basically the same idea but better executed. Clicky.
 
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