Explosive PSU? Now with pics!

[Rudy Toody]

I have had numerous Antec True Power 550Ws die over the years. The 650Ws have been no problem.

I think it has to do with the sweet spot, that part on the curve before the curve heads south. If you use a PSU with far more wattage than you need, you should not be taxing it enough to cause it to fail.

 

[Peter Trend]

I've never really had any problems with the PSUs in my sig, only with older unbranded 350w and 450 PSUs. My Dad did fry his motherboard, CPU and 450w PSU by putting it on a windowsill above a hot radiator, though! LOL :facepalm:

 

[Assimilator1]

Yea I've had 4 Antec PSUs fail on me between my main rig & my landlady's ancient Ath XP rig, I won't touch them again!

Gutted about the damage Petrus!

Btw when I lived in Guildford (~6 miles away) we had a sub-station blow out (transformer), funny thing was I was on the CB radio at the time (running a little extra power), the lights flickered for a fraction of a 2nd (which never normally happened there), so I warned the girl I was chatting to I might dissappear, sure enough ~1min latter there was a very loud gunshot sound from outside & a black mushroom cloud arose from behind the house opposite!
I looked over the fence at the transformer & a big cable coming out (the size of my arm) was blackened & partially burnt through!

I always joked afterwards that it was the extra power I was running that blew it , of course it wasn't, I wasn't anywhere close to even 4 figure wattage numbers just FYI.

 

[Rudy Toody]

I looked through my paperwork and found that I had RMA'd more Antec TP 550Ws than I had purchased. Even the refurbished PSUs were failing.

However, I must say that Antec support was terrific. And the 650Ws are rock solid for my rigs.

 

[Peter Trend]

Yea I've had 4 Antec PSUs fail on me between my main rig & my landlady's ancient Ath XP rig, I won't touch them again!

Gutted about the damage Petrus!

Btw when I lived in Guildford (~6 miles away) we had a sub-station blow out (transformer), funny thing was I was on the CB radio at the time (running a little extra power), the lights flickered for a fraction of a 2nd (which never normally happened there), so I warned the girl I was chatting to I might dissappear, sure enough ~1min latter there was a very loud gunshot sound from outside & a black mushroom cloud arose from behind the house opposite!
I looked over the fence at the transformer & a big cable coming out (the size of my arm) was blackened & partially burnt through!

I always joked afterwards that it was the extra power I was running that blew it , of course it wasn't, I wasn't anywhere close to even 4 figure wattage numbers just FYI.

Like this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCzdPFJ4tog

 

[somethingsketchy]

Whoa...that was cool *EDIT: I mean the YouTube video...that was cool*

 

[Assimilator1]

Like this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCzdPFJ4tog

Holy s**t!, that's mental!

No my one was nowhere near as bad as that, no fire either. It just went bang, puffed out a perfect black mushroom cloud & that was it. Quite pathetic compared to that one

More like a scaled down version of this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V3OZMW_45M&feature=related

 

[petrusbroder]

LoL and ROFL!

You won't probably believe it but ...
In my absence a second PSU blew up - virtually identical pics, identical make and the serial number was only a direct neighbor. I bought the PSU at the same time from the same supplier ... and I am going to return both of them tomorrow ...

This computer worked much better: everything works OK (now for more than 5 hours with 100% load - no collateral damage [Touch wood]).

 

[Assimilator1]

Glad to hear there's no extra damage . ....that's showing up now anyway!

Not sure I'd trust that PSU brand now! lol, although, how many have you bought & how many have failed?

 

[petrusbroder]

Glad to hear there's no extra damage . ....that's showing up now anyway!

Not sure I'd trust that PSU brand now! lol, although, how many have you bought & how many have failed?

I don't trust that brand anymore - I bought three, two are busted. I replaced the third earlier today and gave that one back with the two others. The supplier took all three of them back and issued me a partial refund (a 750 Corsair 80+ silver PSU)

I now have mostly Corsair and Seasonic - all of them with at least 80+ Bronze, most of them 80+ silver. Then I have one a server PSU from IBM (550W) - which has lasted for more than 9 years running 24/7 ...

 

[biodoc]

Just checked the dead parts area in my basement and found 4 Antec and 1 thermaltake PSU. I'm now running Seasonics (3 80+ Silver and 1 80+ Gold Seasonic). I also have a 750W Corsair I'm using as a backup.

No more Antec's for me. I'm pretty sure other Antecs I've had made it to the electronics recycling over the years. I used to "cheap out" on PSUs but no more.

 

[RaySun2Be]

I've had a number of Antec PSUs fail, the last one was the one that took out my whole system.

No more Antec PSUs for me, although I like their cases.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Wow, lots of hate towards Antec. The only Antec that I've had go bad on me so far, was a Basiq 500W model, and it didn't fail, only the sleeve-bearing fan got a tad noisy.

 

[petrusbroder]

No, not hate. Just bad experiences ...

 

[ZipSpeed]

I yanked out another crapped out EarthWatts from my co-worker's computer this weekend. That's 4 units I've personally witnessed that have failed. The only Antec units I would even consider buying today are their TruePower New line. EarthWatts is garbage.

 

[biodoc]

No more Antec PSUs for me, although I like their cases.

I like their cases too!

 

[Assimilator1]

No, not hate. Just bad experiences ...

Yea ditto, not based on hate but experiences.

I've bought 3 Antec PSUs TP 380, TP 430 & a TP II 550 (not sure on that number), the 380 failed in about 1yr., RMAed it, the replacement failed with the same problem (weak 5v line) also in about 1yr! I replaced that PSU with an el cheapo PSU (which I gave to my landlady,it's her PC), still going strong ~3yrs latter lol.

The TP 430 was in my main rig (24/7 cruncher) then an Ath XP too, lasted 1-2yrs then it died, RMA'ed it & got a TPII 430 in return (nice upgrade I thought), that did better, IIRC it lasted nearly 4yrs. When over a year ago it died in my current quad core rig & nearly caught fire! Luckily my landlady smelt it & switched it off, no other damage done fortunately. Btw the PSU was not overloaded with this setup, even with the graphics card loaded it was only drawing ~280w from the wall, mostly the GPU was not crunching then.

So far the TPII 550 is still going strong in my mates Ath64 rig (now Opteron X2) (built Q4 05), he doesn't do DC (aside from a brief period of DPAD for me), never ran it 24/7 & has barely used the PC in the past year or so.

 

[petrusbroder]

Just checked my "trashed computer stuff bin" before taking it for recycling:
5 PSU
5 HDD
1 motherboard
1 GPU
1 CPU (opteron ...)
The bin was emptied 14 months ago. Not too bad though considering that I have been running at least 20 computers 24/7 and at one point 26 computers ...