Was superflower ever a bad OEM?

[Maximilian]

I remember seeing 600w PSU's with brightly colored LED's for £20-£25 around 2003-2004. Im pretty sure these were superflower. I remember being told to buy an antec truepower 430 instead.

Am I remembering this wrong? Did they used to make cheap PSU's? Their current leadex platform seems pretty awesome.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I bought a few of those 550W PSUs with the four multi-colored LED fans, when Directron.com was blowing them out. I think I still have one. Anyways, they actually were decent PSUs, had some heft to them. They weren't 12V-heavy like today's PSUs, so I wouldn't use them for anything more modern than an Athlon XP rig.

 

[_Rick_]

Yeah, I think Superflower did a bit of a turn around (and got a stronger market presence with OEM PSUs), with the appearance of the 80 plus labels.
I'm still somewhat doubtful whether the fans/fan controls they put in are the cream of the crop, but the transformers of their high end model are beyond reproach.

 

[Maximilian]

Think it was the now defunct komplett.co.uk I saw them on.

Something a bit like this:

 

[fleshconsumed]

Hm, I seem to recall SuperFlower PSUs from years past that had a poor reputation. However, my current PSU in the main rig is a rosewill rebadge of SuperFlower 500W fanless PSU and it got glowing review from JonyGuru and silentpcreview. So even if they were crap in the past, it looks like they cleaned up their act, at least for their top tier PSUs.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Hm, I seem to recall SuperFlower PSUs from years past that had a poor reputation. However, my current PSU in the main rig is a rosewill rebadge of SuperFlower 500W fanless PSU and it got glowing review from JonyGuru and silentpcreview. So even if they were crap in the past, it looks like they cleaned up their act, at least for their top tier PSUs.

I was a bit surprised by the same Rosewill line that you cite. But this sort of thing happens in competitive markets. I'd think it's just more difficult for a company or manufacturer to shed a long-defunct reputation.

As for the LEDs: I had an OCZ 550W Powerstream purchased in 2005 which was tricked out the same way. But at that time, those models got glowing reviews from Tech Report after a thorough evaluation in their test lab. Glitz and glam may be an effective marketing trick to obscure substandard product quality, but then again it just may be a fairly costless feature which has nothing to do with quality.