PSU Brands to Avoid!

[Guest finz]

you are dead on with aspire, i bought a psu because the advertised such a good 12 volt rail, the 12 volt rail ended up being 11.45 volts!!!!! LOL,wtf. I was so confused. After that happened i got rid of the aspire case that i had haha. i hate aspire now just because of that experience.

 

This whole thing interests me actually. A buddy of mine went against my wishes when I was helping him buy his PC and bought an Aspire Chameleon 550w power supply with 36A on the 12 volt rail...he was trying to save money.

 

So after giving him a bunch of guff about it the PSU it's actually holding up rather nicely. Has around 12.15v on the 12v rail...and it doesn't flucuate. None of the rails do for that matter. Right now it's running his Opteron 144 overclocked at 2.475 GHZ and the system is rock solid on Prime...14 hours. We'll see how it holds up in the long run...right now it's surprisingly (better yet...deceivingly) impressive.

[Agent_24]

I am very happy with my Coolermaster 550W SLI.

 

LC Power and Enermax Liberty i would never buy again.

 

Enermax??? How!!!??

 

They are one of the best

 

BTW, you can add hyena to your list of junk psu's - they are basically deer with a different sticker.

[Squid1]

Enermax seems to have suddenly dropped all QA. There are huge numbers of reports of broken PSUs and other parts from them.

[Sorrento]

Enermax was a great psu, but new system requirements like huge CPU's or SLI and XFire killed Enermax... actually OCZ's old psu's are having problems too under these conditions.

 

I am sure they will correct what ever problems they have, same with OCZ which aparently are letting FSP Group start making their new psu's.

 

But in NO WAY Enermax is like Thermaltake... now THATS a brand you need to avoid!!! I think a Rosewill is better than TT

[jawatrader]

I used Enermax in the past and they worked very well. Sorry to hear that they are going down hill in quality.

[karot]

Wait, so by Eagletech do you also include Skyhawk?

[jawatrader]

Enermax was a great psu, but new system requirements like huge CPU's or SLI and XFire killed Enermax... actually OCZ's old psu's are having problems too under these conditions.

 

I am sure they will correct what ever problems they have, same with OCZ which aparently are letting FSP Group start making their new psu's.

 

But in NO WAY Enermax is like Thermaltake... now THATS a brand you need to avoid!!! I think a Rosewill is better than TT

 

 

Hey Sorrento...any chance you could tell us about your Thermaltake PSU experience? I have heard of some people having problems with the earlier models,but had the impretion that the newer ones are being made by a different company and are top notch. Just wanted to see which one you had used so I can avoid it or if its the one I use...so I can know what to expect.I use the newer Purepower 680w and it seems to work great. Thanks

[Sorrento]

You seem to enjoy knocking brands you have no experience with or actual facts on. If you insist bashing brands at least back them up with something. I have seen many people on this board have problems with enermax. How many posts have you seen about the Thermaltake Purepower 680w having problems. I dont mean to start a war or anything, but it gets a little annoying when you keep bashing all products made by one company. How do you feel about the Thermaltake Armor case? Its one of the most popular cases going and for good reason...it rules. Im sure you think its a piece of crap. Anyway...I just needed to vent. I have no ill will towards you, but after reading your last few posts on this forum...I just got a little ticked about some of your comments and misinformation. I hope you understand and if I upset you or offended you in any way I apologize for that.

No actually you got it all wrong. I used Thermaltake products since 2000 when I bought the Volcano 7+, and continued to use their products which included the Silent Purepower 420w and then the 480w psu's... which of course were not as good as I thought, with a max 17amp 12v output, but back then those did their job for my system needs.

 

I of course changed psu brands when I had to and choose the best one back then: Enermax EG651P-VE 550w with 35 amp on the 12v output. But it was a 20 pin PSU and after a while I knew I would need a 24 pin ATX one. Thats when I MADE THE BIGGEST MISTAKE EVER AND BOUGHT THE THERMALTAKE 680W PURE POWER P/N: W0049, thinking it was a good choice because it had a ton of amps distributed in the three 12v rails. It looked good on paper, but of course that was the only place it looked good.

 

This is the psu I am talking about, just took the picture... its a nice paper weight:

 

 

The power supply doesn't work, it has been sent to RMA two times... meaning this is the third W0049 PurePower 680w I have. At first it was a faulty short protection circuit that shut down as soon as SLI kicked in, and believe me I tried loading all the 12v rails unsuccsefully. Then the second one I received from TT RMA I sold to a good friend with a simple P4 system socket 478... after just a weekend the system could not turn on, as simple as that: the psu refused to power up sometimes, and sometimes it did. I gave my friend his money back and sent the PSU to TT RMA for the second time, then when I got it in return gave it to another friend with a yet smaller P4 socket 478 system (2.0A PIV) for free, and guess what... the same thing happened: PSU wouldn't turn on because of the PSU. I ended up giving my Enermax 600w Noisetaker, again for free, and he is quite happy with it.

 

This Enermax Noisetaker 600w was the one I got to replace the faulty Thermaltake, and for a time it did its job very well: back then my system had a tinny 3200+ Venice, two 6800GT at stock speeds and I didn't had watercooling yet. It was when I got the 3700+ San Diego and the watercooling, meaning I was overclocking it at 2.9 ghz 24/7 and 3.02 ghz for benchmarks, and the two 6800GT at 440/1180 mhz when things got a bit problematic for the Enermax, actually one day it wouldn't work: the day I got the Opteron 175. FYI I was already using a secondary Coolmax 400w psu to power the fans, floppy, cd/dvd-rw and watercooling... but it wasn't enough.

 

The TT Purepower 680w W0049 psu is just a paper weight, I am tired of sending it back to TT for RMA warranty. They have a new model with a more robust 12v output and lower 5v one, but they didn't offer me that one instead they gave me the same type of malfunctioning power supply.

 

I don't hate Thermaltake, on the contrary I like some of their products a lot. Its just that I know THEY ARE A LOUSY POWER SUPPLY MANUFACTURER, plain and simple. FYI I own several thermaltake products right now, including a Xaser III V2000A computer case, a TT Hardcano 12 fan controller, several (more than 10) TT Smart Blue Fans of all sizes, still have the Volcano 7+ on my nephew's computer and a Volcano 12 Xaser edition unused, and also have this very nice Tide Water thing cooling a very hot Radeon 9800XT on one my computers, quite better than any Arctic Silencer or other air cooling heatsinks. Actually I am sure I have owned and used more Thermaltake products than you. I don't hate Enermax either, IMO it is one of the best power supplies manufacturer in the world... they just got bad luck with the new hardware but I am sure they will be up and running like they used to in no time.

 

I don't bash products jawatrader, you are the one who likes bashing people and I think this has gone far enough. I speak from personal experience about the hardware I own or have owned and not a single one of my posts say anything wrong about a brand of hardware, if you read closely you will see that I said Enermax had problems with some models when the power usage increased. I also said how Thermaltake is just a bad power supply manufacturer, as simple as that and everybody knows it... but they are very good making cooling hardware and of course copying computer cases from Coolermaster and making them better... lol.

 

Next time you accuse me of something I will do the same jawatrader and accuse you.

 

See ya

 

 

 

 

 

/Edit:

 

To late you edited your post Jawatrader:

 

Hey Sorrento...any chance you could tell us about your Thermaltake PSU experience? I have heard of some people having problems with the earlier models,but had the impretion that the newer ones are being made by a different company and are top notch. Just wanted to see which one you had used so I can avoid it or if its the one I use...so I can know what to expect.I use the newer Purepower 680w and it seems to work great. Thanks

I think I answered this new one, plus wrote a lot more which I am not editing... sorry.

 

I think there was a misunderstanding and I am going to leave it like that and not continue to fight over what brand of hardware is bad and which one is worse. You already shared very good information regarding the new Big Water watercooling system and I still wait to hear about its performance.

 

Just remember that for you some hardware equipment will work great while for others with other hardware the same thing won't work. Good luck

[Squid1]

Thermaltake resells PSUs from a whole range of actual manufacturers. You can't really draw conclusions from one of their PSUs to the whole line.

[jawatrader]

No actually you got it all wrong. I used Thermaltake products since 2000 when I bought the Volcano 7+, and continued to use their products which included the Silent Purepower 420w and then the 480w psu's... which of course were not as good as I thought, with a max 17amp 12v output, but back then those did their job for my system needs.

 

I of course changed psu brands when I had to and choose the best one back then: Enermax EG651P-VE 550w with 35 amp on the 12v output. But it was a 20 pin PSU and after a while I knew I would need a 24 pin ATX one. Thats when I MADE THE BIGGEST MISTAKE EVER AND BOUGHT THE THERMALTAKE 680W PURE POWER P/N: W0049, thinking it was a good choice because it had a ton of amps distributed in the three 12v rails. It looked good on paper, but of course that was the only place it looked good.

 

This is the psu I am talking about, just took the picture... its a nice paper weight:

 

 

The power supply doesn't work, it has been sent to RMA two times... meaning this is the third W0049 PurePower 680w I have. At first it was a faulty short protection circuit that shut down as soon as SLI kicked in, and believe me I tried loading all the 12v rails unsuccsefully. Then the second one I received from TT RMA I sold to a good friend with a simple P4 system socket 478... after just a weekend the system could not turn on, as simple as that: the psu refused to power up sometimes, and sometimes it did. I gave my friend his money back and sent the PSU to TT RMA for the second time, then when I got it in return gave it to another friend with a yet smaller P4 socket 478 system (2.0A PIV) for free, and guess what... the same thing happened: PSU wouldn't turn on because of the PSU. I ended up giving my Enermax 600w Noisetaker, again for free, and he is quite happy with it.

 

This Enermax Noisetaker 600w was the one I got to replace the faulty Thermaltake, and for a time it did its job very well: back then my system had a tinny 3200+ Venice, two 6800GT at stock speeds and I didn't had watercooling yet. It was when I got the 3700+ San Diego and the watercooling, meaning I was overclocking it at 2.9 ghz 24/7 and 3.02 ghz for benchmarks, and the two 6800GT at 440/1180 mhz when things got a bit problematic for the Enermax, actually one day it wouldn't work: the day I got the Opteron 175. FYI I was already using a secondary Coolmax 400w psu to power the fans, floppy, cd/dvd-rw and watercooling... but it wasn't enough.

 

The TT Purepower 680w W0049 psu is just a paper weight, I am tired of sending it back to TT for RMA warranty. They have a new model with a more robust 12v output and lower 5v one, but they didn't offer me that one instead they gave me the same type of malfunctioning power supply.

 

I don't hate Thermaltake, on the contrary I like some of their products a lot. Its just that I know THEY ARE A LOUSY POWER SUPPLY MANUFACTURER, plain and simple. FYI I own several thermaltake products right now, including a Xaser III V2000A computer case, a TT Hardcano 12 fan controller, several (more than 10) TT Smart Blue Fans of all sizes, still have the Volcano 7+ on my nephew's computer and a Volcano 12 Xaser edition unused, and also have this very nice Tide Water thing cooling a very hot Radeon 9800XT on one my computers, quite better than any Arctic Silencer or other air cooling heatsinks. Actually I am sure I have owned and used more Thermaltake products than you. I don't hate Enermax either, IMO it is one of the best power supplies manufacturer in the world... they just got bad luck with the new hardware but I am sure they will be up and running like they used to in no time.

 

I don't bash products jawatrader, you are the one who likes bashing people and I think this has gone far enough. I speak from personal experience about the hardware I own or have owned and not a single one of my posts say anything wrong about a brand of hardware, if you read closely you will see that I said Enermax had problems with some models when the power usage increased. I also said how Thermaltake is just a bad power supply manufacturer, as simple as that and everybody knows it... but they are very good making cooling hardware and of course copying computer cases from Coolermaster and making them better... lol.

 

Next time you accuse me of something I will do the same jawatrader and accuse you.

 

See ya

 

 

Hey Sorrento...if you noticed...I edited my post before you posted. I typed in anger and after reading what I typed I felt like an butt. Sorry that it ever hit the forum. I thank you for your reply here and on the watercooling issue. Please except my apology for my actions. Its tuff dealing with scum all day(Police Officer) and then trying to be civil with you guys in my off time. Sometimes it carries over and I endup typing crap I regret later. Again, sorry and thanks for your help.

[Sorrento]

Well there is no need to apologize, I also got a little frustrated and now I have this huge PP 680w over my desk and I need to put it away

 

I got a lot of frustration from this PSU to last me a life time, so I think you hit a nerve too... TT is really bad with their PSU's, I wish this change somehow because their 250w 5.25" bay one sounds like a very good idea for SLI and XFire.

 

Police Officer? Thats a very nice and honorable profession... policemen and firemen IMO are the last true heros today, and are the least recognized ones too. Think about this when ever you are out doing your job, and be careful out there.

[jawatrader]

Well there is no need to apologize, I also got a little frustrated and now I have this huge PP 680w over my desk and I need to put it away

 

I got a lot of frustration from this PSU to last me a life time, so I think you hit a nerve too... TT is really bad with their PSU's, I wish this change somehow because their 250w 5.25" bay one sounds like a very good idea for SLI and XFire.

 

Police Officer? Thats a very nice and honorable profession... policemen and firemen IMO are the last true heros today, and are the least recognized ones too. Think about this when ever you are out doing your job, and be careful out there.

 

 

Thanks and sorry about your PSU experience. I am actually using the same one and am now worried about going SLI. Do you know of any good modular power supplies that can handle the load? I know that most people on this forum dont recommend going modular, but after routing all those long pain in the arse cables on the purepower, I thought modular would be easier. I already checked the PSU sticky on this site, but it seems to be a little dated and doesnt have some of the newer PSU's listed. I had thought of going with the Enermax Liberty series, but after reading about there current quality issues, I think I should look elsewhere. Any thoughts?