Best Power Supply maker

[Raevyn]

Hey all!

So I was curious if anyone has good suggestions of what maker of power supplies would be good for like high performance AND really good reliability. I seem to ahve a hard time finding much on the web.. maybe my searches arent good.

[Michael]

SilverStone and OCZ are two great brands for PSUs.

[rbmorse]

Also...PC Power and Cooling (now owned by OCZ). I like the larger Seasonic units, too, if you can find them.

[Uchikoma]

Antec makes some pretty decent PSU's as well. I got myself one at the moment and it's served me well.

Seasonic from what I've read is also a good perfomer.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

I've had great experiences with fortron PSUs. I've had about 6 of them over the(recent) years Good lifetime, beyond their manufacturers' warranty.

I've also had fairly good luck with Antec, though their Earthwatts line(supplied by seasonic I think) didn't like my computer.

If you're looking for something as a gamer, something big, PC Power and Cooling is supposed to be top notch.

[Raevyn]

Thanks guys! I have heard some others mention OCZ and PC Power and Cooling as great power supplies, and I see on the latters site that they make a 1200 watt one, so I will go with that :)

[matt]

Personally, I've had Tagan and Antec and both are good. However I'd say Seasonic are also very good.

[durdy]

PC Power and Cooling, Corsair, Seasonic, Silverstone are all good.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

Thanks guys! I have heard some others mention OCZ and PC Power and Cooling as great power supplies, and I see on the latters site that they make a 1200 watt one, so I will go with that :)

Whoa, 1200 watts? How many computers are you planning on powering with that? *sarcasm*

Seriously though, do you really need that?

[cypherpunks]

So I was curious if anyone has good suggestions of what maker of power supplies would be good for like high performance AND really good reliability. I seem to ahve a hard time finding much on the web.. maybe my searches aren't good.

The site for PSU reviews is jonnyguru.com. They link to several others who also do good reviews, and there's lots of useful discussion in the forums. (Including some pretty unflattering comments about Anandtech's reviews (http://jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?&t=2746).) Here's a PSU recommendation list (http://jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=103), although it's not perfectly up to date.

The trick to decoding the confusion is that there are few companies who actually make power supplies, and they build them for many companies that sell them under their own brand names. So tracking down a PSU's real manufacturer (http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/370) can tell you a lot.

But! The "original design manufacturer" customises their basic power supply to the specs set by the name brand. Who can ask for various changes, cost savings, etc. Component quality, input filtering, cable length, case finish, fan type and connector numbers are all changed.

On the other hand, efficiency is mostly a property of the basic design and is not going to be changed that much. (You can choose higher vs. lower Ron switching FETs.)

Note that a lot of those companies (http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/page/drivers_power) don't sell PSUs under their own name at all. Seasonic is one of the rare exceptions. And there's only so much quality variation you can get out of a basic PSU design. A basically crap design can't be made great, and a basically good design is hard to ruin completely.

Thus, for example, even though Antech's Seasonic-made PSUs (EarthWatts) are made quite cheaply, they're still pretty decent.

Corsair have been making a big splash lately. They started with Seasonic PSUs and requested a high-quality build. They've since gone on to Channel Well Technology (CWT) for some of the higher-powered models, but they still seem to be very good. They're still in the "hungry for market share" phase rather than "cashing in on a reputation" phase, so they're not skimping on the quality and still selling for decent prices.

One conflict of interest: BGFtech actually hired Jonnyguru, and he specified their latest product, the ES-800 (http://www.bfgtech.com/bfgr800wespsu.aspx). So far, people seem to be liking it.