PowerMan 350W PSU- Is it any good? \ VOGONS

PowerMan 350W PSU- Is it any good?

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First post, by athlon-power

Posted on 2019-02-19, 19:23

athlon-power Offline

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For my 1999 gaming build (the first one in my signature), I am using a 200w MiTAC PSU from 2003. I've posted about it before, questioning its quality- I got a general consensus that it was a good quality PSU. However, I still find myself anxious about it- it is ca. 2003, and I don't like using older PSUs as much. I worry that they are more prone to failing, and I worry that if this MiTAC PSU does fail, it will take everything with it.

I have a 350w PowerMan PSU ca. 2009, and it seems to be of good quality. I have heard good things about PSUs with self-contained input filter modules, from the initial post I made about the MiTAC a while back. The PowerMan PSU I have has one of those in it. I have disassembled both PSUs, and they both seem to be in good shape. I cleaned them out the best I could, so they have nominal airflow going through them, and are close to being like new on the interiors. Should I switch out that MiTAC PSU for the PowerMan PSU? The PowerMan PSU supports 20-pin power connectors, and is a fair bit newer than the MiTAC unit. I am always a person to be time-accurate on computer parts, but I work the exact opposite way with power supplies. If I could, I'd buy a brand-new EVGA 450W BT PSU or a similar unit for it, but I can't at the moment, and this is what I have on-hand.

The PowerMan PSU:

Not my photo, as my MiTAC PSU is missing its label, but here is the MiTAC PSU:

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Both of them feel fairly heavy (and not artificial weight garbage either; I've taken them both apart and the weight is genuine to the parts), and seem to be of decent quality. The question here is whether or not the newer PowerMan PSU is a better idea than the MiTAC PSU (The MiTAC Actually has two self-contained input filter modules, and there is a fair bit more going on inside the MiTAC PSU than there is inside the PowerMan PSU.

Where am I?

Reply 1 of 3, by SW-SSG

Posted on 2019-02-19, 21:26

SW-SSG Offline

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Any good PSU will eventually go down due to expired capacitors; the Mitac being 15 years old now probably doesn't have much longer to go before it becomes unstable. Having seen the photos in the other thread about it, though, IMO it would be worth it to re-cap it and keep it running for old systems.

That said, older Power Man power supplies were actually rebadged FSP units of decent quality, but yours appears to be one of the newer ones designed in-house by In Win (which owns and uses the Power Man name). I had a similar 350w one a while ago that came with an In Win case and I had no problems with it; it powered a 3.2GHz s478 Prescott-based box for a few years without any problems. There was no temperature-based speed control for the fan, meaning the fan always ran at 100% speed, which might be ideal for old PC cases that lack spots for case fans; not sure if your unit is the same, though. Either way, your unit does appear to prioritize beefy +12V rails (relative to the +5V) for modern systems and it's not known how it would react to the +5V heavy crossloads that pre-P4/A64 machines will dish out on it. So, if you get stability issues while running your Slot 1 box on the Power Man instead of the Mitac, that might be a reason.
EDIT: reworded things a bit.

Last edited by SW-SSG on 2019-02-20, 21:17. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 2 of 3, by athlon-power

Posted on 2019-02-19, 22:02

athlon-power Offline

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The Mitac unit is able to support 21 amps over the 5v rail, and the PowerMan is able to support 16. I'm not sure how serious a 5 amp reduction would be to the system, but I only have 3 expansion cards in total (2 PCI, 1 AGP), and am using a single WD400 40GB HDD from ~2003 and a Samsung 48x CD-ROM drive. To be honest, this system is actually fairly bare. The two biggest power draws here are the TNT2 and the PIII.

As for re-capping, I have zero soldering equipment, and very little knowledge of it. It seems simple, but I'm going to assume that it's one of those things that look simple to do, but are fairly difficult when you actually start trying to do them. I will just have to keep it until I can solder- I have quite a large amount of hardware that I'm keeping until I can solder. Video cards, motherboards, sound cards- I'm going to have a huge task list once I can solder at this rate.

[EDIT]

Something to note is that the Mitac once pushed an Athlon XP 3000+ with little stability issues. I ran all sorts of games on that PC when I had it, and the Mitac held its own. I'm not sure about the PowerMan PSU- I know it's driven a Core2Duo E8500 for an extended amount of time (it was with the system I got, the prior user never changed out the PSU).

Where am I?