Link: So at $80 free shipping, this might be worth a gamble on a no-name in PSUs.
Thoughts?
I bought one when I saw it was a shell shocker, then came over here to see if it had been posted. I've been looking for a lower wattage 80+ gold supply, since my wife's PSU started to have issues coming out of hibernate (Older Seasonic unit, I don't remember exactly when we picked it up, it's at least 5 years old... it lived it's life.)
My electricity is billed by "tier" and we are usually in the 35 cents per kWh tier every month (previous tier is 12 cents / kWh, they really ream you when you go over what you're "supposed" to use) At that electricity cost, even if it only saves 5W 24/7 vs. 80+ bronze, that's nearly $20 a year and it will easily pay for itself over the time I expect to have this supply in service (until it dies). You don't find too many 80+ gold under $100, and that makes this a pretty hot deal to me.
I don't think it's a big gamble for 2 reasons:
- There are no "bad" 80+ gold designs. The basic design required to get that efficiency dictates that they will all be able to provide 99% of their power as 12v. They will all handle transients very well as a function of the design they all use. They can have high ripple, but I've never seen a review of an 80+ gold supply that actually did. The basic design for 80+ gold costs money enough that MFRs can justify the small premium for good parts to ensure things are well within spec.
- Based on the 850W review of this supply at JG, it's almost certainly a Super Flower supply, and there's no problem with the 80+ gold Super Flowers. There's another Super Flower 850 design reviewed at JG in the guise of a Kingwin Laser Gold 850:
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=206 9.5 and 10 on the ratings that matter (performance and functionality)
Decent caps, decent ripple, typical 80+ gold high efficiency and solid transient performance. Nothing to be ashamed of. Doesn't have like the 'best ripple ever', but who really cares? It's definitely good enough. I think there's every indication that the 650W version should be quite solid, even though there's no raw data available. Super Flower's 80+ gold units are decent.
We're talking 80+ gold at $80. You don't see that often, and this is definitely hot. Depending on energy costs and typical computer power consumption, this will work out as the cheapest PSU in the long run for some, simply because nothing else has this level of efficiency at the shell shocker price. Unless you wait for a different Super Flower 80+ gold based PSU to go on sale later. I don't think you're going to find a Seasonic or Corsair 80+ gold at this price anytime soon... if looking in the 450-650W range, I think this deal makes a lot of sense, which is why I bought one.
I passed up the PSU hot deals last week because their efficiency was not there. This a better deal at my power usage / power cost.
