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Can anyone recommend an affordable, decent microATX power supply?

PingSpike

PingSpike

Lifer
Newegg's selection seems to include a lot of entries that either lack 24pin or have a disproportionate number of reviews that state it caught on fire or shot sparks out of the back. Even my beloved fortron source entries had enough of these reviews to give me pause.

It would be for an AM2 motherboard system, probably just used as a general media center kind of PC. I was even going to drop a cheap ass single core in it.

I don't really want to spend a ton but I don't want an entertainment system fire either.
 
What case are you using?

The thing about Newegg reviews are that they can be disproportionately skewed towards low scores because someone is more likely to leave a bad review because they're pissed that something doesn't work than to leave a good review because something just works. The other thing is that certain types of hardware (CPUs, graphics cards, RAM) tend to attract more fanboys, thus they get a lot of good reviews while other products fall into the disproportionately bad review category.

If your FSP power supply is this one then yes, it seems to have a bunch of bad reviews. However, you have one and it works fine. I have one and it works fine. Heck, Silverstone chose it as the power supply for their first mini ITX case. BTW this size PSU is called "SFX."

Your other options for quality SFX power supplies are from Seasonic or Enermax. Enermax has some nice quality units but they are older designs that aren't very efficient and they've pretty much dried up from the market. Seasonic has a 300W and 350W that are good quality and efficient, but they aren't as cheap as the FSP. The 300W is a lot more expensive, but comes with manufacturer 5 year warranty because it is a retail product. The cheaper 350W only comes with a 1 year warranty through Newegg (AFAIK). I have the 350W and it works fine.
 
I'm using an old IBM case...it was originally a s370 celeron system. It takes a standard microATX motherboard and uses a smaller PSU (the one that it came with still works...but its only 145w and has anemic 12v output...and of course its only 20 pin and has no 4pin connector. I assumed microATX was the style I was looking for, I'm unfamiliar with SFX units.

Edit: Sorry, I think you just meant SFX was another option in addition to mATX?
 
I just bought a cheap Athena PSU from newegg, none of the reviews mentioned fires and one reviewer mentioned that it didn't fit his case because of the mounting holes and size. Fortunately, his description included measurements and a description of the mounting side size which matched the current unit I have.

I didn't know there wasn't such a thing as a microATX power supply. Newegg lists it as a category, but I will admit that the items that fall under it vary greatly in size and shape.
 
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