WARNING: Before you buy an Antec PSU, read these links!

[pkme2]

Antec prices coming down?

Maybe this PM must be having an effect.......

 

[rise]

Originally posted by: pkme2

Antec prices coming down?

Maybe this PM must be having an effect.......

wtf you talkling about? what PM?

i got a tpII for $80 months ago.

and that link is for the original true line.

 

[galbicake]

Can anyone help diagnose if my problem relates with the Antec 350W PSU that I have?

My thread regarding my computer crashing...

Thanks, posting in my thread would help me tremendously!

 

[techwanabe]

Interesting thread...

About 2 1/2 years ago I bought a new Antec Lanboy case to build an all new computer. It came with an Antec 350W Smart Blue power supply. I bought a new Athlon Barton 2500+ CPU and Epox 8RDA+ motherboard, and a referb ASUS Geforce 4-ti4200 video card.

Everything was good but the video card started showing artifacts and eventually failed after 3-4 months. I RMA'd it (3 yr warranty) and the replacement lasted abou the same amount of time. I RMA'd that one too, and the 3rd card failed finally about a year after the computer was built. This time ASUS sent a different model card and I RMA'd the motherboard for a same model replacement Epox. BTW, my BUffalo original memory stick also failed.

So the recent state of the computer was replaced motherboard, memory, and on the 4th video card. What is left? The power supply! It still works but I can't think of what is at the root of all these issues.

Yesterday I put in a new Fortron 450W power supply and yanked the Antec Smart Blue 350W. I'll see if I can get it replaced, along with the Asus video card that is artifacting and freezing up in 3D games.

Conclusion, another Antec power supply with issues. Process of elimination.

 

[JEDIYoda]

Originally posted by: GamerExpress
I am sure that there are many more people using Antec PSU's then PCP&C. You have to look at the percentage of Antec PSU's that are failing vs. the percentage of all others. I have long used Antec products and not had a single problem, I am sure that some of them fail, but so do all other brands. PCP&C are awesome!!!! but Antec isn't a junk brand and overall have a pretty high track record.

Originally posted by: LED
I think John stated this in a previous post here...We must keep in mind that if a Company sells millions of an item and there's a few gone by...it surely surpasses even one that is of higher quality, but sell a frac tion of them and has lesser returns (RMA. In this scenerio % is more important...

Example
2,000,000 sold 10,000 =5%

2,000 sold 160 bad=8%

On these figures who would get more acknowledgement of problems?... but in reality the smaller figures would look better with less complaints from users ...
The percentages mean nothing!! That is a completely Bogus argument!!

You are comapting apples to watermelons...

The consumer PC market is NOT where the PC Power & Cooling peeps make there $$$$$.
They make there money from industrial applications...such as supplying hosptals....mission critical apps.....undustrial uses....

But say they did make there money off PC users,,,the argument is still not valid.

Becuase if we follow the logic you are trying to use then what you are saying is that Antec PSU`s are just as good as PC Power & Cooling or Zippy,,etc PSU`s.

Which we all know just is not the case...thus John is wrong on this one and so is GamerExpress!

 

[thecoolnessrune]

That link to the PC P&C actually boosted the company IMO. The way that RMA was handled even after a rail mod? Thats pretty cool. And also, just why does it make sense to produce a link of a PSU frying AFTER a rail mod was done to it?

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: JEDIYoda

Example
2,000,000 sold 10,000 =5%

2,000 sold 160 bad=8%

On these figures who would get more acknowledgement of problems?... but in reality the smaller figures would look better with less complaints from users ...

The percentages mean nothing!! That is a completely Bogus argument!!

Um, no, it's not. If a particular product is very popular, it will seem to have more problems than a less popular product even if it is equally reliable in terms of the percentage of units that have failures (or MTBF, or whatever). I'm fairly certain that Antec sells a lot more PC PSUs than PCP&C, so I would expect to hear about more failures of Antecs even if they were more reliable than PCP&C. Volume of reported problems is not particularly meaningful by itself; at the very least, you need some idea of how many of these things are out there.

Becuase if we follow the logic you are trying to use then what you are saying is that Antec PSU`s are just as good as PC Power & Cooling or Zippy,,etc PSU`s.

No... he's saying that when Antec is probably selling hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of power supplies, seeing even several hundred reports of them having problems is not necessarily meaningful. If, say, 1% of the units they sell have a problem within a year, and they sell 100K PSUs a year, they will have ~1,000 of them fail every year. If 500 of those people come and post online about it, you might erroneously conclude that their PSUs are crap, when in fact they are pretty reliable. I'm (obviously) making these numbers up, but the basic idea still applies.

Basically, you can't draw any meaningful conclusions from this information.

 

[MrUniq]

Antec is a reliable brand and problems occur with any manufacturer...no product line is 100% reliable and given how popular they are and still get good reviews that points to that fact.

 

[Apocalypse X]

the problem with comparing Antec to anybody else is not volume sold.

The problem is Antec is basically a cheaper PSU.
What that means is you would not even come close to finding the built in quality of say a Seasonic or an OCZ or for that matter even a PC PC PSU.

Antec are your basic budget el cheapo PSU`s.

You cannot even compare failure rates with the better quality PSU`s.
Such as Fortron,OCZ,Zippy,Seasonic or PC P&C PSU`s.

When was the last time you heard a Fortron or even any one of these PSU`s going belly up?

 

[SparkyJJO]

I'm on my 4th Antec PSU (recently bought it), the previous 3 (including a true430 like you mentioned) never had any issues at all, in fact that same 430W is running an AMD X2, several hard drives, X800, and who knows what else. No problems.

Apocalypse, I've seen some complaints about a few fortrons and OCZs that died, I think maybe Seasonic too I can't remember though, I don't usually look at them.

 

[Apocalypse X]

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO
I'm on my 4th Antec PSU (recently bought it), the previous 3 (including a true430 like you mentioned) never had any issues at all, in fact that same 430W is running an AMD X2, several hard drives, X800, and who knows what else. No problems.

Apocalypse, I've seen some complaints about a few fortrons and OCZs that died, I think maybe Seasonic too I can't remember though, I don't usually look at them.

a dead fortron....I seriously doubt it...links would help add credibility to what you just said.

 

[wetcat007]

I've been running a 430watt antec truepower for several years now, haven't had any problems hopefully it stays that way..

 

[rise]

Originally posted by: thecoolnessrune
That link to the PC P&C actually boosted the company IMO. The way that RMA was handled even after a rail mod? Thats pretty cool. And also, just why does it make sense to produce a link of a PSU frying AFTER a rail mod was done to it?

my point in linking that was quotes like these-

You probably got one from the bad batch with the faulty coil... the replacement should have no trouble with that system.

Their was a batch of these psu's with bad coils, they burn out, but the only drama is smoke and stink, it doesnt kill your whole pc. You go buy one of those ocz's if you wish. Just because a company has a problem with a batch of their items doesnt automatically make them bad, especially if they correct it swiftly.

i didn't realize i had to break it down, post by post for people.

contrary to some people's beliefs, pcp&c and fortron and seasonic et al can all have problems.

this thread is a joke.

 

[maluckey]

a dead fortron....I seriously doubt it...links would help add credibility to what you just said.

In fact I had an Aurora 400 watt (Fortron) die. The cap in the rear corner gets little airflow, and in a garage the temps are rather high (98 degrees ambient) in the summer. It blew the cap and took some hardware with it.

I have had only this one Fortron fail, but if you look back through the PSU posts, I have had several Antec Trupower fail. I haven't had ANY issues with the Sparkle server units that run in the same garage.

Just for those that are curious...Sparkle is made by FSP. FSP supplies some of the cores for PC Power and Coolng, as does Win-Tact and Zippy. PC Power and Cooling then mods these cores to their particular specs.

 

[SparkyJJO]

Originally posted by: Apocalypse
a dead fortron....I seriously doubt it...links would help add credibility to what you just said.

here is one
Not the PSU itself dying but that fan sure sounds bad
DOA a few times, died after 6 months on page 3
Another fails
And yet another
Dead quiet, because it IS dead

That enough?

 

[galbicake]

My Antec 350W PSU was the root of all my problems. My video card has been crashing hard and my PC is in shambles. I bought a new PSU and pulled out the piece of dung. I've had it for about 1 year.

www.badcaps.com

If you go there under forums and look for the antec thread, you'll see pictures similar to what mine looks like.

capacitor leakage everywhere, the fan was not blowing hard either.

I am in the process of RMAing it. The Antec customer support guy said he never heard of Antec having issues with capacitors...either he is new or lying to me.

 

[Genx87]

You know in the last build I did in Aug of 04 I bought a brand name PSU from Antec. The Truepower 430 Watt PSU. I decided this is the closest machine to top end I had built, so I wanted to make sure it was fed a nice healthy stream of power.

In the past I usually went with mid end gear due to not having any money and thus stayed with the PSU's that came with the cases.

Funny thing is the machine i have is stable but can at times just reboot when playing games. I have determined that I dont think the PSU I bought is terribly reliable and this thread is interesting.

The next machine I purchase will have another name brand in it other than Antec, because I just dont have the confidence the product actually works as intended.

Coolmax PSU's I have been using on some other builds seem to do a pretty good job. Anybody have any opinion on those or enermax?

 

[rise]

the original true line had some batches with bad caps. thats been established. 95% of the issues you find people have with antecs are the original true 430's and 380's which are the bolk of the problem, or compatability issues with asus nf4 boards and the neohe.

coolermaster and enermax i think are both fine but i think my next psu will be one of the enhances from ewiz (thanks galv :beer: ) unfortunately, the one i want is oos.

edit- and i have an antec TPII 550 running 24/7 for the lat 15 months or so and crunching during that time for like 8 months. never a hiccup and unbelievably tight rails. some advocate changining out the fan but i case thats case air flow dependant.

x2 3800 @ 2700
dfi sli-dr
7800gtx
etc

 

[galbicake]

Yeah,

I bought an Enhance PSU from the same referrer.

One thing to becareful of. The specs said that it has a splitter on both the 24 pin connector & the 8 pin connector. ewiz seems to sell the older model. My 550W came in the mail yesterday with this problem. I called their tech support and they are sending me adapters for this.

 

[0roo0roo]

i'm happy with my seasonic so quiet..so cool

 

[Phenocain]

 

[erikistired]

why would you bump this?

 

[Phenocain]

Ok so am going to buy a new computer. It was suggested that I get an

Antec LifeStyle SONATA II Piano Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 450Watt SmartPower 2.0 ATX 12V V2.0 for AMD & Intel systems Power Supply $99.00

or

AntecAntec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550 ATX12V 550W Power Supply 115/230 V UL, TUV, CB, FCC CLASS B, CUL - Retail

* Model #: TPII-550
* Item #: N82E16817103931


These are not good PSU's to buy??

 

[Apocalypse X]

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO

Originally posted by: Apocalypse
a dead fortron....I seriously doubt it...links would help add credibility to what you just said.

here is one
Not the PSU itself dying but that fan sure sounds bad
DOA a few times, died after 6 months on page 3
Another fails
And yet another
Dead quiet, because it IS dead

That enough?

Gotta Love Sparky!! He actually believes the NewEgg customer comments. hehehe

 

[tropic]

Originally posted by: Phenocain
Ok so am going to buy a new computer. It was suggested that I get an

Antec 450Watt SmartPower 2.0 ATX 12V V2.0
or
AntecAntec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550 ATX12V 550W

These are not good PSU's to buy??

They're both sturdy power supplies, but a lot depends on what you're going to power with them and which rails the components are going to be sucking on.

Anyhoo, just to contribute to the mood of this thread, here's a partial list of PSU brands that have failed in less than a year in rigs I've built or serviced.

Antec
FSP
Enermax
PCP&C
Seasonic
Zippy
OCZ
ThermalTake

The most spectacular (from the lady's description--I wasn't in her daughter's room when it happened) was a murder-suicide perpetrated by a Seasonic that caught fire for a few seconds. When she brought it in, the case around the PSU was blackened, there were pieces of transistors loose in the PSU itself, electrolyte had dripped down along the case to the motherboard, and not a single significant component was still functioning but the memory and wireless nic. Looked like the system builder had done a proper job, though. And damn, it smelled bad.

Seasonic was nice enough to replace the PSU, and I built a new system around it. They really do make great power supplies. When God wants you to upgrade, mere mortals must obey.