Which PSU brands?

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OK, last time I bought a power supply was 2003-2004. It was an Antec with a 3-year warranty, it conked out 2 weeks before the warranty expired and they sent me a free replacement from the Netherlands which has been running happily in 3 different systems ever since. I've decided I'm tempting fate and need to get a new one, but I'm completely out of the loop about which brands are reputable and reliable.
Is Antec still a good horse to bet on? Corsair and Enermax were also considered decent back in the day, is this still the case? What about Akasa? The price on this one is hard to say no to. And I see on some threads people have been recommending brands I've not even heard of: who are these Superflower dorks, and do they make good PSUs?
 
Look at Superflower, Sesasonic, BeQuiet, Antec and Corsair.

What are the specs of your system?

Superflower are excellent psu, 8pack uses these when benchmarking.
 
i5-2500K, ASrock Z68 board, 2 hard drives (and about to add an SSD), a couple hubs' worth of USB peripherals, Radeon HD6870. The Coolermaster wattage calculator says my current 500W is more than plenty, but I want some space to potentially upgrade to an R9-based GPU some time in the future. I think I'll aim for something in the 600-650W range, and I'll stick to one of the brands you recommended.
 
Even with a R9 range gpu a 550w will be fine.
Yes, that's true: the wattage calculator came up with 535 even with a 290X, and if I stuck to a 270 I'd probably be fine even with my current 500W relic. But part of the reason my current one lasted so long was because I gave it a little bit of slack and never pushed it to its limits. PSUs tend to run hotter and less efficient when the system is pulling over 80ish% of their rated maximum wattage, which'll both reduce its lifespan and increase my bill (though probably by an infinitessimally few pennies a year:p). Don't worry, I'm not one of those who get duped into getting ridiculous 1300W monsters :)

Apologies for jumping in, but how noisey is the SuperFlower? How would it compare to a Be Quiet for example?

This Anandtech review was impressed with how quiet it was: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2643/8
 
I was between the SuperFlower Golden Green HX 650W from here and a Seasonic S12II-620 from a competitor. Ended up going for the latter partly cause it was cheaper and partly out of brand loyalty (my last 2 Antecs were Seasonic-built). Thanks for the advice all!

Gotta say, it's amazing how little the landscape has changed in the PSU world in the last 10 years! Superflower is the only new brand I'm seeing to get good reviews (and they've probably been around as an OEM for years before they started selling stuff under their own brand), and the only brand from back in the day that's no longer around is OCZ who went bust last year. I was surprised that I couldn't find any PC Power&Cooling stuff anywhere either, and then I found out that OCZ bought them in 2007. Bit of a shame, PCP&C were some of the best stuff around.
 
I believe superflower make some of the evga ones?
Particularly the 'supernova' ones or what ever they are/were called.

I'm not 100% though, I might be confused with something else
 
I have just got an EVGA SuperNOVA G2 750W - great PSU, cant fault it yet.

And yes Davido I do believe they are made my Superflower.
 
The EVGA Supernova G2's are indeed made by Superflower and have that industry leading 10 year warranty. For some reason though OCUK doesn't sell the 750w version any more. All of the older non G2 750w and below units are made by FSP or HEC and are lesser units that recieved mediocre reviews so if it's not a G2 unit i wouldn't bother.
 
I have just got an EVGA SuperNOVA G2 750W - great PSU, cant fault it yet.

And yes Davido I do believe they are made my Superflower.

Same, and they do indeed use Super Flower as their OEM for that model, it's why i purchased one when it was on special, else i'd have gone directly for SF(or Seasonic).

EDIT: addition to post..

The leadex units look awesome if you ask me, that one on special looks like a great deal.
 
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