thats a great PSU. I have the 550 w for 2 yrs now.

"Ant" <ANTant (AT) zimage (DOT) com> wrote

On 5/15/2007 12:09 PM PT, kony wrote:

Bummer. I have my stuff connected to an APC Back-UPS XS BX1500 and
multioutlet surge strip (even with telephone lines). Is APC Back-UPS XS
BX1500 considered a small consumer UPS? I'd assume yes.


Nope. I don't have those skills and I don't have those years old Enlight
PSUs. I remember having them for over five years.
--
"Don't step on ants... they're people too." --a quote from ANTZ movie.
/\___/\
/ /\ /\ \ Phillip (Ant) @ http://antfarm.ma.cx (Personal Web Site)
( ) or ANTant (AT) zimage (DOT) com
Ant is currently not listening to any songs on his home computer.

How do you rate it compared to Antec (had two died in recent years),
Enlight (had them die like five years ago), and SeaSonic (have a 600 watts).

My computer history at
http://alpha.zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/toys.html said for PSU incidents:

Don't remember before. Probably replaced PSUs due to weak powers and/or
noisy fans?

4/24/2005: Replaced dead Enlight 240 watts power supply unit (PSU) in
Debian/Athlon XP box with an old PSU (Enlight EN-8341934; Model:
HPC-340-101; 340 watts) I kept.

6/5/2005: Replaced ASUS A7V333 motherboard (lock ups and no more boot
ups) and Quantum Fireball Plus 30 GB HDD (circuit controller died) since
they were damaged by the recent PSU melt down. Got a refurbished MSI
KT4AV-L (Socket A/Socket 462; VIA KT400A ATX AMD) and an used Maxtor
DiamondMax Plus 40 (53073U6; 7200 RPM; 30 GB ATA/EIDE) HDD.

11/25/2005: In primary/gaming box: Removed ATI Radeon 9800 All-In-Wonder
card and old Antec model SL400 power supply (not dead, just not power
enough). Added Air2PC-ATSC-PCI HDTV card (r0.2) connected to a DB2
bowtie antenna (30 miles), a 500 watts Seasonic S12 PSU, an external
Kingwin HDD Enclosure (MS-350U-S) with a Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 250 GB
HDD (ST3250823A; 7200 RPM), XFX NVIDIA GeForce 6800 (128 MB; AGP; dual
DVI), and added 1 GB of RAM (Kingston PC3200; CL3).

6/30/2006: Replaced the old SeaSonic PSU with an used 600 watts model
due to possible damaged voltages (instability), the old XFX video card
that died (overheated? and sparked), and changed computer case (now, an
Antec P180).

7/21/2006: Replaced Linux/Debian box's dead Enlight PSU (died on
7/17/2006 at 12:30 AM PDT) with an almost new Heroichi (HEC) Orion
HP585D (585 watts) for temporary usage and replaced Leadtek video card
(leaked, buldged, and unglued capacitors; had a video signal loss in the
past) with an used NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 AGP card (128 MB).

7/29/2006: Replaced Linux/Debian box's PSU [not dead/broken and it was
only for temporary] with an Antec SmartPower SP-350 PSU (350 watts).
Also, swapped IBM HDD to a Seagate ST380011A 80 GB HDD due to a write
delay error and SMART error (Reallocated Sector Count) in gaming box.

5/14/2007: Replaced the dead Antec PSU in Linux/Debian box with a
Fortron FSP650-80GLC PSU (650 watts).

I am a PSU killer!


On 5/15/2007 6:41 PM PT, Christopher Syn wrote:

"A centipede is an ant made to Canadian/government specs." --unknown
/\___/\
/ /\ /\ \ Phillip (Ant) @ http://antfarm.ma.cx (Personal Web Site)
( ) or ANTant (AT) zimage (DOT) com
Ant is currently not listening to any songs on his home computer.

So? It was fixed by replacing the broken PSU.


On 5/15/2007 5:28 PM PT, Christopher Syn wrote:

"Every ruler sleeps on an anthill." --Afghani
/\___/\
/ /\ /\ \ Phillip (Ant) @ http://antfarm.ma.cx (Personal Web Site)
( ) or ANTant (AT) zimage (DOT) com
Ant is currently not listening to any songs on his home computer.

On Tue, 15 May 2007 15:04:29 -0400, kony wrote:

I'm only going to write this once, so everyone pay attention. The
components in the PSU are no where near the major cost of building and
marketing a PSU. When the raw materials, design, assembly, and even
packaging are done in a country where the average worker makes a nickel an
hour, you can build a lot of PSU's of excellent quality very very cheap.
Why do you think you can buy a MB here for $50? Do you know what it cost
to manufacture PC boards? I do. The last time I checked on building a MB
here, back during the 286/386 days, it was going to cost about $200 per
board to have it done here. And that was before any parts or assembly. At
the time you could buy the same board already assembled with all
components for half that.. Well, a PSU transformer that would cost you $5
or more here in the US can be bought in china for 25cents or less. And if
you think they can't build a quality PSU, how do they build quality MB's
so cheap. A PSu is nothing but generic parts. I'd guess the total cost of
the raw materials in China to be a couple of bucks tops. It's at least 10
times that here. You've got a lot to learn if you think it can't be done
for $12. Where these PSU's are made I could hire a person for a month for
$12.

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html Usenet alt.video.ptv.mythtv
My server http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php
HD Tivo S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm

On Mon, 14 May 2007 01:13:33 -0700, Ant <ANTant (AT) zimage (DOT) com> wrote:

If the fan is not spinning in the power supply, you probably have a
dead power supply. Do you happen to have another PS that you can try?
You really dont need to install it in the case if you can make the
cables reach to the motherboard. It might be a good idea to touch the
PS case to a metal part of your computer for grounding. (probably not
neecessary, but I'd do it).

On 5/15/2007 10:36 PM PT, george41407 (AT) neomail (DOT) com wrote:

Yeah, it was a dead/broken PSU. See my last post at 5/14/2007 11:40 PM PDT.
--
"Where there is sugar, there are bound to be ants." --Malay Proverb
/\___/\
/ /\ /\ \ Phillip (Ant) @ http://antfarm.ma.cx (Personal Web Site)
( ) or ANTant (AT) zimage (DOT) com
Ant is currently not listening to any songs on his home computer.

On Tue, 15 May 2007 15:13:48 -0400, kony wrote:


Hmmm, I was running an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ hammer core cpu, 512MB of
PC3200 ram, 1-120GB 7200rpm and 2-300GB 7200rpm drives on seperate
controller, a DVD burner, floppy, and 4 Air2PC ATSC tuner cards that take
a lot of power and produce a lot of heat filling all 5 PCI slots on the
MB, and of course a video card. This system would draw more than twice as
much as most modern systems and it runs 24/7. It ran for about 3 years
til one of the PSU fans failed and I didn't notice it for weeks. And
while it was weakened to much to continue to run this system reliably,
It's still running what you would call a normal modern system to this
day. So what does that make of your comment? Simple. It's just more BS.
I don't know where you come up with your info, but you are certainly
mis-informed. Now I'm sure you can find some really bad cheap PSU's. I
did, but that doesn't mean they all are.

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html Usenet alt.video.ptv.mythtv
My server http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php
HD Tivo S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm

On Tue, 15 May 2007 21:15:56 -0700, Ant <ANTant (AT) zimage (DOT) com>
wrote:

I don't know... I could check their website then repeat part
of what I read but you will have more information to go
there yourself and check. If it is online with power
conditioning, they will make some mention of that as it is a
distinguishing feature signifying a more valuable (and
justifying higher price) product.

On Wed, 16 May 2007 06:00:36 GMT, Wes Newell
<w.newell (AT) TAKEOUTverizon (DOT) net> wrote:


There is no reason to believe it will use twice as much
power. Probably significantly less than a typical gaming
system with more memory, a larger processing load, and a
higher end video card. Filling PCI slots doesn't mean a
lot, PCI cards are already power limited by the slot but if
you are talking about an Air2PC card like this,
http://www.bbti.us/products_air2pc_atsc_pci.htm
it's not much of a power consumer at all.

I have no idea why you add the floppy drive/etc to your
list, unless you feel it is a great feat to add that to a
generic PSU and keep it from failing.




Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that, oh how do I put it?
Exactly the kind of failure one wants to avoid and a great
example of how the cost-cutting was a problem? Now consider
someone else doesn't want to spend an hour
diagnosing/pulling_PSU/ordering_replacement/receiving_&_installing_replacement/checking_stability,
nor do they want the risk of a failing generic PSU damaging
their system, nor to add to landfills unnecessarily, nor to
then have to buy another PSU anyway so the total cost is
approaching what might have been paid for a better quality
PSU capable of the same sustained wattage.

Even if you insist on gambling with these junk PSU, I hope
you have realized at least this failure point and will
consider replacing the fans preemptively. On the other
hand, there was no assurance the PSU would have ran
indefinitely had the fan not failed, it was merely the first
failure point among several possible (and likely, frequently
seen) failure points.



If it still works after not having any fan running for
weeks, you have to have an incredibly loud system to have
enough aux airflow to force enough through the PSU to keep
it working somewhat. I would have to call it greedy to the
extreme though to take a PSU which not only had a failure,
but afterwards had then demonstrated it wasn't working
properly as it formerly had, and try to reuse it on a lesser
system.


I would say you are trying to kill your systems for some odd
reason and it is crazy to put the $ into all those tuner
cards then cheap out so much on the power supply.

But you did it once, for awhile. Lucky you. Now contrast
that will tons of people who don't just arbitrarily think
that these $12 PSU are bad because of the price, rather
they've had them by trying you route, or getting it included
with a case, and now need a replacement because it's dead.



Link to a review of one of these 500W, $12 PSU. If you
found some magical sweatshop in China that is giving away
good PSU at a loss, I'm sure we'd all like to know about it,
and what has prompted such grand altruism on their part.

It's almost ironic though, that in the same post about how
you know it's ok you also describe it failing. What in the
world are you thinking? Wasn't failure the very thing we
wish to avoid? Oh but it's limping along in some
malfunctional mode right now, which makes it a good idea to
risk hundreds or more dollars to save $20. Sorry but if the
rest of the industry operated like you do, nothing would
work. Your gambling will get you eventually and it already
has most people who would just love to save a buck but find
there is a certain quality level necessary that is not had
in a $12 PSU.