Most of my computers work just fine for years and years and years, but I blow out power supplies almost ever 6 months. WTF? I'd understand if I were running 10 hard drives and a ton of other add ons, but most of these are simple computers without many bells and whistles.

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I have an FSP-400w and it is totally rock solid.

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“I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.”

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”

I suspect it might be a problem with the AC you're feeding into the computers? Do you use an APC? Some of them run square waves rather than sine waves, and that can cause problems in long term usage. Otherwise, it might be a noisy signal or power spikes from your wall.

Or of course, it could be cheap power supplies, but if it's a recurring problem with many brands, you may want to examine the situation more thoroughly.

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I took a peek at tom's guide and bought one he recommended at new egg on sale for $37.00

quote:

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Originally posted by Acid:
I've always been told that Antec PSUs were the best, but they're a bit overpriced.

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Actually, the best are PC Power and Cooling. Bar none. You mention overpriced...how about you get what you pay for.

PC Power and Cooling, are the best around.

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“I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.”

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”

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[ 03-03-2005: Message edited by: AcidWarp ]

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“I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.”

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”

On the other hand, I've seen a staggering number of generic PSU's with blown out caps in them, on the low voltage side (I've yet to see the high-voltage side blow). Not really a good thing for the hardware in the case. I've even had one with literally exploded capacitors (bits of caps everywhere). I even had one spit fire when I connect the power cord to the mains, without even turning the machine on. That one fried the hard drive, and luckily, ONLY the hard drive, although I wouldn't trust the rest of the system very far.

None of those has ever happened to my personal machines, I see all that stuff at work. I think that in part, it's faulty wiring at the location, or poor surge supression between the PSU and the mains. It's also a fault of the PSU manufacturers rating for wattages at like 20c, when the internal temp of many PSU's is much higher than that, and the output ability suffers, yet the machine draws the same regardless.

We always add ". . . in a freezer" when we're talking PSU ratings of generic supplies at work.

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“I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.”

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”

I have 5 computers that are in use now and another 5 that have been laid to rest. All but one have had at least one power supply fry.

I usually just used the PS that came with the case until it died.

Cheap cases, expensive cases. It did not seem to make a difference.

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“I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.”

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”

You can still get all the parts you need/want for them from HPaq too.

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“I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.”

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”

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quote:

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Originally posted by AcidWarp:
We had a client bring one in to work (a proliant 800) cause he didn't know what to do with it. Still in perfect working order, running SCO OpenServer 5. Only a single P2-350 and 2 4.3GB scsi-2 striped or RAID5 maybe, didn't dig to deep into it.

You can still get all the parts you need/want for them from HPaq too.

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if there were only 2 drives, it was not RAID5.

Back to powersupplies though, anyone who is satisfied with a cheap psu must not mind the consequences it brings. The inability to provide clean, constant power both at idle and under load is imperative to stable operation and the longevity of your hardware. I wonder how many of you guys running on a POS psu have had a blue screen or just complete hang and then in turn blamed it on Windows, an application, a driver etc... Or perhaps you got a piece of dead hardware, and just wrote it off as "it was its time I suppose".

I have never had a cheap power supply take out a whole machine. Tot tell the truth I don't think I have ever had a cheap PS do anything other than die prematurly.

IMO, cheap stuff is not all that bad if it last you two or three years because by that time it's obsolete anyway.