With a PSU the first priority is obviously reliability, after all you don't want to fry £1000 of hardware when you could have spent £20 on a better PSU. Therefore how would you rank the major manufactures from best to worst.
PSU Reliability
- Thread starter Aracnid
- Start date
You aren't going to get much accuracy from anecdotal evidence, and I doubt a proper survey/study has been made. Everyone here pushes Corsair (rebranded Seasonics), and jokes about Q-Tec/Hiper PSUs blowing up...and everyone will vouch for whatever they've bought that hasn't failed catastrophically.
that should be good for many years
Man of Honour
- Joined
- 27 Sep 2004
- Posts
- 25,821
- Location
- Glasgow
There was a link posted a while back to the results of RMAs to a large French retailer, however it was very general and didn't give any breakdown of units returned per 100 or anything to actually validate the figures for statistical significence from what I recall.
In some ways it isn't about reliability per se since anything electrical can fail, it is about what it does when it fails. A good PSU will (almost) gracefully take itself out but leave everything else in working condition, a bad PSU will probably shaft your whole system.
In some ways it isn't about reliability per se since anything electrical can fail, it is about what it does when it fails. A good PSU will (almost) gracefully take itself out but leave everything else in working condition, a bad PSU will probably shaft your whole system.
As already said above it is unlikely anyone here has enough experience / info to do a decent reliability ranking but one thing you can judge is the component / build quality and Seasonic / Corsair are usually pretty good in that area (though some of the cheaper OEM Seasonic PSUs leave something to be desired).
Jonny Guru is a good site to visit for reviews and there are a few other hardware sites that do decent PSU reviews from time to time.
Jonny Guru is a good site to visit for reviews and there are a few other hardware sites that do decent PSU reviews from time to time.
Agree with all the above
Also, if reliability is important, stick with a major brand name, and in my view also buy one rated considerably higher than you actually need. If the PSU is un-stressed, it will run cooler, quieter and be less prone to failure - as well as providing room for future upgrade. Look for a 3 yr or 5 yr warranty too, and how RMA is handled
Also, if reliability is important, stick with a major brand name, and in my view also buy one rated considerably higher than you actually need. If the PSU is un-stressed, it will run cooler, quieter and be less prone to failure - as well as providing room for future upgrade. Look for a 3 yr or 5 yr warranty too, and how RMA is handled