Luckyboy1,
Your post is way off topic. And, I'd hate to say it at risk of sounding rude or pretentious, you're completley off base on how the PSU market works.
GY said nothing about OCZ other than they're no longer using Topower, they're now using FSP. That's factual information. There's NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT!
How the fsck did that provoke your post? We're talking about Mushkin power supplies here!
OCZ does not have power supply engineers. They did not engineer a power supply. THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT! OCZ used a Topower P6 for their Powerstream. THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT! OCZ now uses an FSP Epsilon. THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT!
I can buy the same thing as a Power Stream but with no LED fans and no VR pots that doesn't say Topower. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT!
There is "wiggle room" in the UL. Most companies use the UL of the actual factory (Topower, FSP, etc.) because it costs $20K to submit a product to UL! Other companies will foot the bill (Antec, PCP&C) because they have a lot riding on their brand, but what makes their brand their brand may simply be the housing, cables, etc. There's nothing wrong with that.
Some companies will use the UL logo, but no UL number. Sometimes this is done for anonymotiy (Cooler Master not wanting people to know their 600W is a relabeled 500W, for example.) Sometimes this is done because the finished product uses UL parts, but the power supply itself isn't UL listed. There
is something wrong with that.
Sometimes the same engineer may take his design to another factory and use the UL of the previous factory he worked with for a nominal fee because he doesn't want to pay the $20,000 to UL and/or there may be someone else's patent involved in the product (like Topower's 20+40-pin ATX connector that they're charging 5 cents a PSU for) and he doesn't want to have to increase his re-start-up costs. Personally, I think there's kind of something wrong with that, but I have a friend that did that so I'll digress.
I'm not saying that OCZ, Mushkin or whoever is totally ignorant when it comes to power supplies. I searched all night for that Mushkin in a Topower part number. Couldn't find it. It has some very unique characteristics. It has quad rails like the P9, but the combined wattage on the Mushkin is lower than the P9... even the P7! The 3.3V and 5V combined as well! 44A. I can get a TOP-650-P5 dual rail with 45A. Not that there's anything wrong with 44A on the combined 12's.
My guess is at this year's CES (timing of this release seem to coincide with that date plus the amount of time it takes to do R&D, test pre-production samples, work on label, box, etc.) Mushkin approached Topower and said, "So, you make power supplies. Can you make us a 650W quad-rail that can put out 44A total on the 12's?" and Topower said yes. There's NOTHING wrong with that.
My only complaint with the Mushkin is the price. $149 is what that should sell for. Not $200. $99 would be killer, but I'm guessing that their FOB Taiwan price on that in the quantities that Mushkin may be buying in is probably about $75. So after landing the product in the US and then getting it into the channel... they might be selling this to distro for $125 or so. Any more than that and they're making a mistake. If they go direct, they'll need a higher price because logistics can be a nightmare, but if they go through distribution, that's going to tack on another $20 or so. And that might be where the $200 is coming from. Which is too bad. If they can't do a large enough quantity to get a better price, they need to sell it direct and keep all of the margin for themselves. At least until demand is great enough to where they can secure their own line at Topower for a whole week and have about 20K units cranked out.
Of course, this could all be speculation. They could be getting COMPLETLEY raped by Topower, or they might think they can actually make that much margin on computer parts. Who really knows.
And as for "caps." That subject is all over the place. The biggest reason I see caps fail is from poor thermodynamics. One PSU with Teapos may blow up and another won't because one has good cooling and another doesn't. Or perhaps the caps are too close to the VR's or their heatsinks. I see good power supplies blow good caps all of the time because they use 120MM fans that spin at 1200RPM, for example. I'll pass. Is a PC Power and Cooling loud? Yes. But are the components getting proper cooling? Yes. Is it going to last longer and put out better power because of it? Yes. I'll take the latter.
If you're addressing GY's comment on not liking rebrands... leave him alone. There's a lot of really good PSU's out there that have a finished product that is meant to be what the designer meant to be. Zippy, Seasonic... those are engineered from beginning to end and the end product is superior. You can't argue that. There's not "debate" there. If Antec takes a Seasonic open frame, tells them to add a 12V rail, slaps on inadequate cooling and a modular interface.... yes, it's Seasonic that made that power supply, but I'm going to blame Antec when it blows up.
Some companies actually have an office overseas with their own engineers that have offices at the factories. But unless you know guys on the inside, you're not going to know who those factories are (and you can't ask because every re-brander is going to say, "this power supply is completely custom made for us") so if you want to "play it safe," I'm with GY... Stick to an OEM... or make friends in the industry.
