How quiet is this? I love my Antec TRUE480W because it is almost completely inaudible. How does this rack up?
Wow, have you seen the building they are in now. I'm glad they are doing so well. I remember when I did a will call a couple of years back they were just in a little hole in the wall office in a mini mini rundown shopping mall.
seems like a good deal... but i am having a hard time trusting soemthing that can blow up my comp being refurb
I've bought a total of 4 refurb'ed Sparkle Power PSU's from svc.com and they've all been flawless so far. I have 2 300-60GU's, one 350-60BN, and my main computer has a 400-60GU. If the 250 is truly better than some of the FSP's higher up 300 and 350 line... well damn I should of bought the 250!
Just got my three yesterday. Won't be up and running for a while. One thing I found kind of odd is that the PSUs were loose in the box mixed up with the peanuts and fans I ordered; nothing was in a box or well packed, and there was even a peanut that had gotten forced inside one of the PSUs through the fan grill.
It is even quieter, as there is only one fan in the PSU. I believe it is ball-bearing, but it may be sleeve-bearing. The Antec will be a little louder due to the additional cooling.
In terms of performance, Antec TruePower 480 smokes it by a wide margin, at least 10A on every rail. The Antec's 12v rail is over twice that of the Sparkle, 28A compared to 13A. So the extra cooling is probably necessary for the Antec.
The TruePower 330 also beats it marginally in terms of amperage, although the 5v rails are almost identical. Maximum output is also higher on the Antec 330, but the Fortron-Source units ARE often significantly underrated. The Sparkle units are more realistically on par with Antec's SmartPower line, probably falling somewhere between their SL250 and SL300 models. If you are lucky, you may get a Sparkle/Fortron 250 that exceeds the Antec SL300. At worst, it will be fairly close in comparison. The Antec SL350 model outperforms it clearly. I currently have the SL350 installed in my rig, and can safely say that rails are more stable in this PSU than they were with the Fortron FSP300-60BTV that it replaced, which is a step up from either of the 250W models listed. Before anyone replies calling me an "Antec fanboy" or the like, this is the first Antec PSU that I have actually liked well enough to use in my main rig. I have owned two Antecs, two Fortrons, and one Fortron "HiQ" model, and usually the Fortrons own all other PSU's not made by OCZ or PCP&C.
Most realistically, these 250w Sparkles are pretty much on par with the Fortron HiQ 300w and Fortron ATX-300GT and ATX-300GU models. The Sparkles have 3A less on the 5v line, all else is identical, including 175w combined 3.3v + 5v rails.
At any rate, this is a great deal, and I would recommend any of the Fortron/Sparkle PSU units at SVC (or elsewhere) for builds not requiring massive amounts of power.
Ordered 4 on Monday, had them by Wednesday (I am in CA). So far I have used them to build two AMD Athlon XP boxes (a 1700+ & an 1800+) using spare parts I had lying around. Nothing fancy or over powering.
Both have been running Prime95 for 24 hours and no issues so far. Both systems are basic systems, no OCing or stuffed with peripherals. So far so good.
For the price these are a great deal. They look new and are fairly quiet. The packing of them leaves much to be desired, but for $4.99 what can you expect. Thanks OP!
:thumbsup:
I was wondering much power are using on the +12v rail? From your specs, it seems like it should be more than 13a.
Sweet deal! I got four of the Sparkle FSP250-60ATV PSU's and all four work great!
They look new. No dust inside them and no dust on the fans. The wiring is all bundled up nicely and they look like they have never been used. They have very quiet fans and a power switch on the back.
However, when they ship them they simply put them in a box and dump the styrofoam peanuts in. Meaning that I had to pick small bits of peanut out of all four PSU's. No biggie... but they could at least put them in bags first...
I'm now in the process of re-pinning the ATX and Aux12v connectors on one of them so I can use it in an old Dell that only had a 145watt PSU... wish me luck!
They look new. No dust inside them and no dust on the fans. The wiring is all bundled up nicely and they look like they have never been used. They have very quiet fans and a power switch on the back.
However, when they ship them they simply put them in a box and dump the styrofoam peanuts in. Meaning that I had to pick small bits of peanut out of all four PSU's. No biggie... but they could at least put them in bags first...
I'm now in the process of re-pinning the ATX and Aux12v connectors on one of them so I can use it in an old Dell that only had a 145watt PSU... wish me luck!
Same and I heartily agree about the peanuts. I missed one apparently when it started. I got a nasty grinding sound as it chopped up the piece left inside. It is not something you want to hear out of your computer.
This seems to be quite an improvement over my old no-name 300w power supply. It is keeping the voltages much closer to the target voltage and they seem to have room to go on them. I was running into all sorts of trouble with the old power supply but now things are working well.
They are far quieter than my old PSU too. All in all, I am highly pleased with this deal.
Well, I got the FSP250-60ATV and it works great...BUT as I was working on it on my test bench (I rewired it to use it in a Dell Dimension), I noticed that it makes a faint squeeling noise whenever the power switch is on, even with nothing connected to it!
Try this...take just the power supply (with nothing connected to it) and plug in the power cord. Now, turn the switch on and you'll hear the noise. It sounds like bacon frying or maybe an old dial-up modem sound...now, shut it off and the noise continues for a few seconds and then stops. All four of the PSUs I bought do this same thing.
When it is installed in the computer I can't hear it over the case fans, but it really shouldn't make that kind of noise.
Anyway, I completed the rewire operation sucessfully and this Dell has never worked better! I don't know why, but my 3DMark2001 scores went from 490 up to 580 (that's using the Intel 810E Onboard video). All I changed was the PSU, so that is kind of mysterious... This box should be ready for the 5700LE PCI video card when it arrives on Monday. That should really inprove the 3DMark score!
BTW, the FSP250-60ATV just went up to $7.99 from $4.99... the Anandtech Effect in action!
Try this...take just the power supply (with nothing connected to it) and plug in the power cord. Now, turn the switch on and you'll hear the noise. It sounds like bacon frying or maybe an old dial-up modem sound...now, shut it off and the noise continues for a few seconds and then stops. All four of the PSUs I bought do this same thing.
When it is installed in the computer I can't hear it over the case fans, but it really shouldn't make that kind of noise.
Anyway, I completed the rewire operation sucessfully and this Dell has never worked better! I don't know why, but my 3DMark2001 scores went from 490 up to 580 (that's using the Intel 810E Onboard video). All I changed was the PSU, so that is kind of mysterious... This box should be ready for the 5700LE PCI video card when it arrives on Monday. That should really inprove the 3DMark score!
BTW, the FSP250-60ATV just went up to $7.99 from $4.99... the Anandtech Effect in action!
I bought the 350 watt refurb version, it works great but it has the noisiest fan ever. Luckily it's for my 4th system which is only in use for 4 man Halo LAN.
So I just tried one of the PSUs in a known working system:
Chewed up and spit out a peanut
Looks like one of the set of wires going to two of the Molexes and a floppy connector is dead
System that was working fine is now freezing up
Grrrrr
Chewed up and spit out a peanut
Looks like one of the set of wires going to two of the Molexes and a floppy connector is dead
System that was working fine is now freezing up
Grrrrr
This deal is still hot http://store.yahoo.com/svcompucycle/fsp250-60gtv.html
The p4 connector is also used by some amd mobo's, very useful. do not get the gta version as its a downgrade
The p4 connector is also used by some amd mobo's, very useful. do not get the gta version as its a downgrade
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