Godlike wrote:

Of course is more difficult to get NEW older high quality unit than getting newer PSU.

Your definition of newer needs some clarification. Are you meaning newer as in currently on retail shelves?

Godlike wrote:

People don't want to damage thier high quality builds and rare stuff in it with older but used PSU so that's why this tread has opened

Actually many people prefer using older PSUs even in their better builds.
It's a constant source of debate here.
Many people have learned how to rebuild used older PSUs so they can get what they want.
There is no shortage of used PSUs to rework.

Godlike wrote:

so that's why this tread has opened, to find compromise solutions or eventually modify new psu's to work with golden era standards.

Modifying a newer PSU to an older standard would require the same skills as rebuilding an old standard PSU, but modifying the newer would probably be more costly and custom mods are always more risky than using proven technology.
.

As you know PSU is the most important part in PC. Of course is more difficult to get NEW older high quality unit than getting newer PSU. People don't want to damage thier high quality builds and rare stuff in it with older but used PSU so that's why this tread has opened, to find compromise solutions or eventually modify new psu's to work with golden era standards. I think PSU threads is right on the place. Distributing right electricity to components could be really important for stability. PC's withot power are nothing really...like a car without gasoline. Apart from that what brand you recommend ?

You can still find new old stock power supplies on eBay for peanuts sometimes if you take the time to look, landed a boxed Enermax just last week for $20 shipped.

You are jumping the gun by at least 5 years maybe more when there is still the option of just going with older units and modding modern power supplies is going a bit far.

nforce4max wrote:

You can still find new old stock power supplies on eBay for peanuts sometimes if you take the time to look, landed a boxed Enermax just last week for $20 shipped.

Yes.
Not too long ago I picked up 2 cases (20 PSUs total) of NOS Sparkle AT PSUs for a good price.
They are still in the factory 10pc boxes plain packed for OEM.
.

nforce4max wrote:

As you know PSU is the most important part in PC. Of course is more difficult to get NEW older high quality unit than getting newer PSU. People don't want to damage thier high quality builds and rare stuff in it with older but used PSU so that's why this tread has opened, to find compromise solutions or eventually modify new psu's to work with golden era standards. I think PSU threads is right on the place. Distributing right electricity to components could be really important for stability. PC's withot power are nothing really...like a car without gasoline. Apart from that what brand you recommend ?

You can still find new old stock power supplies on eBay for peanuts sometimes if you take the time to look, landed a boxed Enermax just last week for $20 shipped.

You are jumping the gun by at least 5 years maybe more when there is still the option of just going with older units and modding modern power supplies is going a bit far.

Good to talk about advantages and disadvantages of this subject. Some people don't know where to look for new old stock. What brand/model do you suggest for CUSL2-C as best choice? I need powerful unit 350-400W

Sparkle? We used to have a joke about them around the workplace - they call them Sparkle for a reason.

In reality, they were hit or miss, some of the heavier units were actually quite good and the ones which did die never took anything but the fuse with them.

386SX wrote:

With an ATX2.3 600W good quality and heavy psu on an XP 3200+ and a Radeon 9000 in fact I had really really low 5V measured and I would say instability here and there (and shutdowns...). I don't know if it was using 5V from the 12V rail but I doubt it.

Yeah, what brand was this PSU?

Godlike wrote:

nforce4max wrote:

As you know PSU is the most important part in PC. Of course is more difficult to get NEW older high quality unit than getting newer PSU. People don't want to damage thier high quality builds and rare stuff in it with older but used PSU so that's why this tread has opened, to find compromise solutions or eventually modify new psu's to work with golden era standards. I think PSU threads is right on the place. Distributing right electricity to components could be really important for stability. PC's withot power are nothing really...like a car without gasoline. Apart from that what brand you recommend ?

You can still find new old stock power supplies on eBay for peanuts sometimes if you take the time to look, landed a boxed Enermax just last week for $20 shipped.

You are jumping the gun by at least 5 years maybe more when there is still the option of just going with older units and modding modern power supplies is going a bit far.

Good to talk about advantages and disadvantages of this subject. Some people don't know where to look for new old stock. What brand/model do you suggest for CUSL2-C as best choice? I need powerful unit 350-400W

Avoid some of the early Antec units unless you are willing to re-cap just in case, Enermax is the brand that I like atm and they hold up well.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Enermax-EG465P-VE-ATX … 2IAAOSwKIpWDsQO

HighTreason wrote:

Sparkle? We used to have a joke about them around the workplace - they call them Sparkle for a reason.

In reality, they were hit or miss, some of the heavier units were actually quite good and the ones which did die never took anything but the fuse with them.

Given that these are AT era they were pretty much all hit and miss back then. Some exceptions (like Delta.)
After I got past their funny name I thought pretty highly of Sparkle.
Much better than Deer or Deer based as most of the PSUs available retail back then were.
Sparkle were rare as retail, at least were I was. I think they were mostly sold OEM so few people knew about them.
Later on and before they merged with FSP they primarily made Server PSUs so out of the public eye again.
They have been around forever but few know of them.
.

PCBONEZ wrote:

Your definition of newer needs some clarification. Are you meaning newer as in currently on retail shelves?

Newer refers to ATX power supply revisions, especially ATX12V 2.0 standard.

PCBONEZ wrote:

Actually many people prefer using older PSUs even in their better builds.
It's a constant source of debate here.

That's safer way to use psu from the same timeframe, however getting rarer to get new boxed psu from '90. None of preserve/refurbish your old psu threads too...

PCBONEZ wrote:

Many people have learned how to rebuild used older PSUs so they can get what they want.

"Many people" please open thread and share your knowledge about keeping most important part in retro personnal computer in great shape. please

nforce4max wrote:

You can still find new old stock power supplies on eBay for peanuts sometimes if you take the time to look, landed a boxed Enermax just last week for $20 shipped.

You are jumping the gun by at least 5 years maybe more when there is still the option of just going with older units and modding modern power supplies is going a bit far.

That's reasonable post. The thing is that looking for new high end boxed retro psu is not an easy thing. Humble not for me

PCBONEZ wrote:

Yes. Not too long ago I picked up 2 cases (20 PSUs total) of NOS Sparkle AT PSUs for a good price. They are still in the factory […]
Show full quote

nforce4max wrote:

You can still find new old stock power supplies on eBay for peanuts sometimes if you take the time to look, landed a boxed Enermax just last week for $20 shipped.

Yes.
Not too long ago I picked up 2 cases (20 PSUs total) of NOS Sparkle AT PSUs for a good price.
They are still in the factory 10pc boxes plain packed for OEM.
.

You are from America I presume. In Europe will be not that so easily. International shipping costs too, especially from USA/Canada

"Many people" please open thread and share your knowledge about keeping most important part in retro personnal computer in great shape. please

I believe PCBONEZ is referring to the "Tale of two PSU's" thread that remains fairly active with people sharing and asking advice on PSU recaps. Found here: A tale of two PSUs

ODwilly wrote:

I believe PCBONEZ is referring to the "Tale of two PSU's" thread that remains fairly active with people sharing and asking advice on PSU recaps. Found here: A tale of two PSUs

I think his intent was to ask me to open a thread about rebuilding PSUs.
I have some links that will help him better than I but I have appointment to get to so that and other responses will have to be later.

PCBONEZ, you are typing about this brand?

PCBONEZ wrote:

ODwilly wrote:

I believe PCBONEZ is referring to the "Tale of two PSU's" thread that remains fairly active with people sharing and asking advice on PSU recaps. Found here: A tale of two PSUs

I think his intent was to ask me to open a thread about rebuilding PSUs.
I have some links that will help him better than I but I have appointment to get to so that and other responses will have to be later.

Thread about rebuilding PSUs is and good idea, plase link threads and links for others if you know any.
Modifications/enhancments/recapping/repair and other maintenance

This thread prompted me to open an old Antec SmartPower 2.0 I had in storage. Every single Fuhjyyu cap was bulging and leaking. Though this PSU worked well enoguh back when I used it, I would stay away of these things for retro builds. I also had an Antec TruePower 450W and a TruePower Trio 650W, but I gave those away a while ago. I wonder if they suffered the same fate as the SmartPower.

It's funny, I remember back in those days everyone on forums and tech reviews was like "You've got to buy an Antec, they're the best thing around". And then the whole Fuhjyyu fiasco happened. 😵

I had an Aztec unit in my pentium 3 rig. It blew up and killed half my system back in the day. It's been nothing but top-shelf power supplies for me until recently. I bought a Silverstone unit for a friend 6 months agof to save money. He came to me last month crying the computer smelled of smoke and didn't work. You guessed it, blown power supply. Only just a few days ago got the rma. Hopefully it's going to be ok, but I will never trust it.

RacoonRider wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

I'm not sure if all sA boards that actually have this connector, really use the 12v instead of the 5v

You're correct, for my Socket A machine a 18A 5V rail was not enough despite the 4-pin 12V connector (Ga-7n400s mobo).

The symptoms I experienced with PSU not being enough for the systems were random hangs and reboots, even at idle state. Changing the videocard might give you a clue, when I swapped the hungry 9800Pro to an effecient 9600Pro, it cured the issue.

Thanks for confirming 😀 ...though the news you bring is kinda a letdown.
The thing is that I know little more about sA P4 motherboard connectors except that I knew they existed. In such a case I really won't assume that particular sA board can provide the CPU with power from the 12v line, though I had hoped these boards would.

I think there was a thread roughly a month ago about the power draw of old graphics cards, specifically how much the drew from the 5v and how much from the 12v ones (with these days obviously the 12v ones being the preferred ones, if one can choose).
I'd still like to find more info on this, but I'll get to that later 😀

Back when I did one of my earlier upgrades to my (then still fairly new) Barton 3200+, one of the things was to replace the 300W FSP with a Tagan 380W PSU, mostly because it had better 12v rails while still having plenty on the 5v rail.
The FSP PSU was something like 30A 5v and 15A 12v, the Tagan I can't remember, but the graphics card was upgraded from a R9600 (the 256MB Sapphire one) to a 7600GS and later finally to the HD 4670 and power was stable with the Tagan.

However, when putting in the new PSU I did notice this Fujitsu Siemens VIA KT600 board (made by Gigabyte actually) had the same P4 connector on the motherboard, but I ended up plugging it in anyway but I really can't tell which rail it used as both 5v and 12v rail were powerful enough.

I think the 5v:12v power draw of old graphics cards is still somewhat unexplored territory and I'd like to learn more about this 😀

Godlike wrote:

nforce4max wrote:

As you know PSU is the most important part in PC. Of course is more difficult to get NEW older high quality unit than getting newer PSU. People don't want to damage thier high quality builds and rare stuff in it with older but used PSU so that's why this tread has opened, to find compromise solutions or eventually modify new psu's to work with golden era standards. I think PSU threads is right on the place. Distributing right electricity to components could be really important for stability. PC's withot power are nothing really...like a car without gasoline. Apart from that what brand you recommend ?

You can still find new old stock power supplies on eBay for peanuts sometimes if you take the time to look, landed a boxed Enermax just last week for $20 shipped.

You are jumping the gun by at least 5 years maybe more when there is still the option of just going with older units and modding modern power supplies is going a bit far.

Good to talk about advantages and disadvantages of this subject. Some people don't know where to look for new old stock. What brand/model do you suggest for CUSL2-C as best choice? I need powerful unit 350-400W

Why would you want a 350W/400W PSU for a Pentium 3 btw?
Athlon XP can do with 30A on the 5v rail, provided the graphics card doesn't draw a lot of power from the 5v as well.
In my opinion 30A should be plenty for s370, even 25A was no problem to me in any of my previous builds.
Personally I think 20A on a high-end s370 rig would be pushing it, I'd probably use such PSUs for either s7/ss7 or with an even older rig using one of those AT adapters

And I agree with what has been mentioned (either directly or more indirectly) in previous replies about always check the insides of your older PSU before you're going to be using it to attempt to power up retro hardware

luckybob wrote:

I had an Aztec unit in my pentium 3 rig. It blew up and killed half my system back in the day. It's been nothing but top-shelf power supplies for me until recently. I bought a Silverstone unit for a friend 6 months agof to save money. He came to me last month crying the computer smelled of smoke and didn't work. You guessed it, blown power supply. Only just a few days ago got the rma. Hopefully it's going to be ok, but I will never trust it.

Btw, what is Aztec for PSU manufacturer/brand?
At first I thought it was Antec, but I have noticed before that even one single letter may be a very important detail.
Couldn't really find a lot about them and had my doubts. They did come from 2 servers (though both servers were only running a single CPU when I got the 2 servers), so in that regard I had assumed these PSUs would be of higher quality.
But the insides of these PSUs didn't really look very high-end to me. Most server PSUs were really very heavy and these Aztecs seemed more like "lets throw some in-spec components in there!", they looked a bit cheaper than the typical FSPs I came across in systems from the same era so I don't really know what to make of these.

It's really strange to me when it comes to PSUs. Before I got into building retro rigs I never even heard of FSP, but since then I've seen lots of trashed and gifted systems in all kinds of different configurations and not only was FSP the single most common PSU brand I ever found, none of the hardware that came out of systems that had FSP PSUs in them turned out to be defective (except for rotting caps of course). One had even burned! I remember It had large black smoke stains at the back of the ATX case (the previous owner who saw me take his old rig even warned me about it) though this was over 10 years ago so can't remember the details anymore about how severe it was, but I took out the motherboard and this turned out to be a s370 LX with Celeron 400 and this became the basis for my very first rig ever to be completed, it ran perfectly fine for 3 or 4 years before I stopped using it. Really remarkable! 😁

Tetrium wrote:

I think the 5v:12v power draw of old graphics cards is still somewhat unexplored territory and I'd like to learn more about this 😀

By the fact that both my 9800Pros have yellowed plastic around 5V pin, I'd say they use 5V line a lot 😀 It's not hard to measure though, a few resistors and a voltmeter is all it takes when it comes to high-end videocards with Molex and Berg connectors.

RacoonRider wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

I think the 5v:12v power draw of old graphics cards is still somewhat unexplored territory and I'd like to learn more about this 😀

By the fact that both my 9800Pros have yellowed plastic around 5V pin, I'd say they use 5V line a lot 😀 It's not hard to measure though, a few resistors and a voltmeter is all it takes when it comes to high-end videocards with Molex and Berg connectors.

Wow, why didn't I think of that, cheers 😁
Would still be a lot of work though 🤣!

I like that Enermax was mentioned, since I just bought a nifty 350W Enermax PSU with 32A on the 5V rails. Should be fine for a Duron+AGP videocard without an auxiliary power conector. Did Enermax use good caps?