Power supplies…

What's the word on the street WRT power supplies today? The PSU on a friend's box just went haywire, and it wasn't exactly bottom-of-the-barrel -- a 500W Antec Phantom, about two years old. I swapped it for a similarly rated Nexus, simply because that was the closest in price and spec that the local store carried.

I have a SeaSonic in my box, and have never had any trouble with it; same with the Enermax I have in my old box -- currently serving as a home server. What PSU's do you guys use? Any horror stories/recommendations?

I had a 410W chieftec that came with the case. It was a very high quality case but the PSU one day decided to stop working and… well.. let's just say that the room smelt of smoke for a couple of days.

I sent the PSU back. They sent me a new one. It was 400w chieftec that has now worked great for 1½ years.

Lesson learnt? I don't know….

Sorry.

Now running on for my AMD 64 3000+ and 7800GS is a 350W psu. I don't know what brand it is.

On the new pc, the psu comes with the case: Antec Sonata III 500W.

I had an Antec that fried the mobo, it came with the Antec Sonata II IIRC.

I've always had good luck with the Antec True Power series. Currently, I'm running a Zalman ZM600 HP and it has been very solid and it's nice and quiet.

Originally Posted by StackSmasher
Currently, I'm running a Zalman ZM600 HP and it has been very solid and it's nice and quiet.

Wanted that one, but my system became €100 more expensive. (the antec ninehundred case)

Yeah, it's definitely not a cheap part. Mine, also, resides in the wonderful Antec Nine Hundred case.

That looks like a pretty slick case. Rather embarrassing copy on the Antec website about it, though, even if they wrote "own" rather than "pwn."

Looks like Antec is in vogue here. I have a vanilla P180. My old box was a Sonata, and I built one for a friend in a Sonata II.

Incidentally, the PSU in the Sonata II died as well -- that one still under warranty. The shop swapped it for a different brand; I forget which one, and that's worked fine since.

I like Antec cases; they're cool, quiet, and really well designed and built without being unnecessarily frilly, and since I don't take them apart on a regular basis the slightly fussy assembly doesn't bother me.

But lots of people do seem to have had problems with their PSU's.

I have had a seasonic 430W for like 4-5 years now. I bought it because its silent. Even more so than the antec one I had previously.

Actually I sold the antec power to an ex-friend. The power died few months after that.

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
That looks like a pretty slick case. Rather embarrassing copy on the Antec website about it, though, even if they wrote "own" rather than "pwn."

It's a very nice case. In particular, I enjoy having the PSU on the bottom of the case where it doesn't impede expulsion of hot air from the top 200 mm fan.

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
Looks like Antec is in vogue here. I have a vanilla P180. My old box was a Sonata, and I built one for a friend in a Sonata II.

Incidentally, the PSU in the Sonata II died as well -- that one still under warranty. The shop swapped it for a different brand; I forget which one, and that's worked fine since.
…

But lots of people do seem to have had problems with their PSU's.

Yeah, I seem to be the 'odd man out' regarding Antec's power supply gear. Like I said earlier; I only use the True Power stuff and have had nothing but positive experience with them. The feedback from other folks regarding their stuff is what enticed me to give Zalman's ZM600-HP a try and, I must say, I'm truly impressed. I've definitely put this thing through it's paces with my overclocked Core2 Duo E4500, Radeon X1950 Pro, 3 SATA (1 Raptor), 2 x ATA DVD burner, yada yada… Here is a decent review.

With all of that blather out of the way, I always like to see folks discussing power supplies as, IMHO, it is the single most important piece of equipment in your rig.

I'm using Gigabyte Odin GT 550W; it didn't received overwhelming positive reviews out there but at least mostly positive, and the price is very competitive compared to other brand within similar range. However the PRO series isn't that cheap and the bundled software isn't reliable either. The GT serving my PC very well so far (with G92 8800GTS in the case, two hard disks, a DVD Writer, SB X-Fi), and very quiet.