Actually we all probably need much LESS powerful of a PSU than we
have been led to believe check these out:
http://www.overclockers.com/articles1452/
http://www.extreme.outervision.../psucalculatorlite.jsp
Looks like you can pretty much have a fully loaded fairly high end computer
and still PRACTICALLY use less than 500W/550W, though you could certainly use
more if you had more than a few disk drives (like 6+), and maybe true
dual processors in a pair of SMP Opterons / Xeons or whatever.
I've been using Antec PSUs for years, ever since the Athlon 64 and 754 was the
'best new thing', so I've built two major systems with them and am working
on a third.
I believe I've had one Antec die on me, probably a TP II-480, though I didn't
take time to diagnose it after it apparently failed since I was on the verge
of rebuilding that PC with a Trio-650 at the time due to an GPU upgrade and
finding a seemingly good deal on the 650. So after rebuilding it I no longer
had ability to test it and I certainly didn't want to risk my new dual core
computer and 8800GTX on a "possibly bad" PSU test.
A friend of mine had his Antec die on him too, it was whatever the stock one
is with an Antec Sonata II case, something in the SP-450 or TP-450 range I think.
I'm a little shocked actually that both my experience, my friends experience, and
the way the reviewer above (JohnnyGuru on the Trio-650) experienced failure
with the Antec PSUs was abrubt and unrecoverable DEADNESS associated with
worrisome bang/pops and either blown fuses or blown up power components.
WTF? These things are SUPPOSED to be relatively high end well reputed PSUs.
Of COURSE you have a fuse in there just to protect from the case where
lightning hits or you spill soda into the PSU or whatever. But that to me isn't
an acceptable definition and implementation of OCP/Over Current Protection.
IMHO my expectation was that any relatively decent PSU should SENSE the
over-current or any over-temperature condition and SOFT-POWER-OFF
WITHOUT blowing a fuse (i.e. faster than the fuse would blow, AND at a lower
over-current or over-temperature level than would blow the fuse).
That way when you try to turn the PC back on, it'll either WORK, or you'll be able
to start unplugging peripherals to find out what shorted out and needs
replacing!
The way it seems is that the FIRST peripheral thing that fails shorted on your system
even a lowly 40mm fan or an old CD-ROM drive or hard disc or LED or anything
is not only going to be dead itself, BUT it'll take the Antec PSU out with it, BOOM,
needs warranty (if you're lucky!) or non-warranty repair because there truly
ARE no user servicable parts without voiding the warranty, not even an externally
changable FUSE like most things have. Where the hell did user-changable fuses
go??? If that's your main means of protection and it's going to pop (supposedly)
the first little fan that shorts out on your motherboard, shouldn't you be able to
replace the fuse??? [or have a design so that it'll soft-off BEFORE the fuse
pops so only MAJOR surges or whatever can blow the fuse itself!].
Also JohnnyGuru's test indicated that they bare-face LIED about the Trio-650 being
a three rail product. There seems to be only ONE 12V, rail, period, and that seems
to blow up BEFORE the rated current capacity of the PSU.
As for hot-testing -- Look at the temperatures in his 'hot box' tests, they're NOT
that hot! I often get interior CASE temperatures of around 39C according to my
thermal monitors, not great, but not horrible, probably with a far better than
average case, and ambient room temperatures that are cooler than many have.
So if the thing CAN'T put out full rated 650W without BLOWING UP even at
interior case air temperatures of like 40C, it's really got a serious problem and isn't
living up to the advertised capacity in the real world. And it might be more forgivable
that it puts out SOMEWHAT less than rated capacity if it failed GRACEFULLY without
BLOWING UP needing repair!
Even under warranty you pay shipping to send the PSU in for repair, and then you
have to live without it for weeks before you get it back fixed if you're lucky enough
to be under warranty when it blows (when the first HDD that fails shorted on you!).
So to me it's pretty unacceptable.
Now the QUATRO-850 review seemed decent enough, and at least JG's review seemed
to indicate that there might be some actually "different" real rails (truth in
advertising this time!), AND that it seemed to be capable of OCPing and surviving
the experience without blowing up or needing factory service. So that's nice,
but the Trio-650 should've been the same.
Antec's lost reputation in my eyes for this; I just learned about the lies wrt. the
rails missing and not meeting specs on the Trio-650 tonight, so not much I can
do about returning / replacing the two I already have. The one in use has worked
OK for me, but now I don't expect it'll survive the first system short-circuit which
is a pity since it was supposed to be protected in those cases and to me protected
doesn't mean "won't work anymore without repair!".
I'll use the Trio650s and Quatro850 and I expect those will last a while, but
who knows if I'd invest in another Antec unless I saw a review that literally
verified every claim about its performance and quality of construction as well as
confirmed its fault tolerance.