Brands to stay away from:

• Anything that weighs almost nothing.
• Allied
• Antec (depends on OEM and product line) - be prepared to, at the minimum, replace capacitors and also to mount capacitors in alternate locations as some of the caps in some models are not available in correct values in original sizes and were so crammed together that new caps will not fit in the original locations. This is due to the original caps being way overrated for the physical size. I stopped using Antec PSUs because of this issue across multiple models and I got tired of caps dying and me having to replace them.
• Deer

Reserved 2

I only had one old psu give me trouble since first getting in to computers in the late '80-early '90s. That was from an Acorn A4ooo which blow a cap. I had a spare and fitted that. No problem sense then.

As an example all these old dears have there original PSUs fitted and fire up every time they are turned on without any problems. Occasionally a few will be on 24/7 and will reboot/hiccup only if the power is cut by outages....or me fumbling about routing cables.

I've got about 10 other old systems about the place in storage that that applies to as well..

What brands / models are the PSUs in those systems? The one on the left with the CRT on top is an XT or 286? Those ancient PSUs were arguably made way better than standard AT / early ATX (before 80+ was a thing) PSUs.

I do have some old systems that still have the PSUs that were in them when I got them. Doesn't mean I trust them.

I've had way too many PSUs die on my over the years as well as having to replace PSUs on a huge number of computers that I worked on over the years.

There are some brands that are an automatic NOPE! if I run across them.

A lot of the brands don't even mfg their own PSUs and while the better brands usually have good/great PSUs sometimes they do have duds as well. A lot of it depends on the OEM that actually manufactured the specific models / product lines for them.

Just a quick correction, PFC doesn't prevent any fault, it stands for Power Factor Correction and it just minimizes the amount of reactive power drawn by the PSU (well, extreme over-simplification, here's a start for who wants to dig deeper). I'm not saying it's better not to have some form of PFC (active PFC has the added benefit of wide input voltage range), but it's quite irrelevant for a PC that sees a few hours of use per month.

And the same goes for efficiency. Most of my builds draw under 100W, it's not like +/-10W would make any difference.

I'm a big fan of vintage PSUs and use them exclusively, I have a few NOS (Enermax, HEC) but most of them are Deltas, which are abundant in the flea markets and I find them solid and reliable after a good cleaning and recap with high-quality caps.

quicknick wrote on 2021-08-14, 22:11:

Just a quick correction, PFC doesn't prevent any fault, it stands for Power Factor Correction and it just minimizes the amount of reactive power drawn by the PSU (well, extreme over-simplification, here's a start for who wants to dig deeper). I'm not saying it's better not to have some form of PFC (active PFC has the added benefit of wide input voltage range), but it's quite irrelevant for a PC that sees a few hours of use per month.

And the same goes for efficiency. Most of my builds draw under 100W, it's not like +/-10W would make any difference.

I'm a big fan of vintage PSUs and use them exclusively, I have a few NOS (Enermax, HEC) but most of them are Deltas, which are abundant in the flea markets and I find them solid and reliable after a good cleaning and recap with high-quality caps.

Fixed the PFC lines. Always get those two terms mixed up.

Enermax and Delta do tend to be good though I have seen Delta PSUs that are really bad as well. Delta is what Dell uses a lot and the PSUs were a decent number of what I had to replace when I was doing onsite warranty for Dell systems.
That was back in the Pentium IV days.

Also, there might not even be any power draw difference for low draw builds that need most of their draw on 5V and you end up getting 600W or so to get enough amps on 5v, the efficiency of even gold PSUs is horrible at either end of the load curve, so you might end up at same efficiency on new PSU as old PSU anyway.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-08-14, 22:19:

Also, there might not even be any power draw difference for low draw builds that need most of their draw on 5V and you end up getting 600W or so to get enough amps on 5v, the efficiency of even gold PSUs is horrible at either end of the load curve, so you might end up at same efficiency on new PSU as old PSU anyway.

I would love to see some real testing comparing new vs old PSUs on older, lower power draw systems.

I could hook up my power draw meter to do some testing but would much rather have a real PSU tester so I could also observe the power ripple at different loads.

Comparing the wattage rating on old vs new PSUs is really comparing apples and oranges because old PSUs were rated at max temporary wattage and not max continuous wattage.

So when looking for a new PSU, you don't necessarily need anything near the same rating as you would if using an old PSU.

There's more to it, I ran Athlon XP systems with Dx 8 GPUs on 250W "1st gen" ATX PSUs, then mid noughties, there were 450W PSUs that wouldn't run them, even though they hypothetically still had grunt on 5V.. so it seems to me there were eras of underrated and overrated flipping back and forth.

I really don't give a damn about heat or efficiency in a vintage PSU. I don't put nearly enough hours on any of my vintage systems for that to make a meaningful change in my electric bill.

As far as ripple goes, I check all my supplies with a scope. And all my vintage ones do great

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-08-14, 23:21:

There's more to it, I ran Athlon XP systems with Dx 8 GPUs on 250W "1st gen" ATX PSUs, then mid noughties, there were 450W PSUs that wouldn't run them, even though they hypothetically still had grunt on 5V.. so it seems to me there were eras of underrated and overrated flipping back and forth.

Yeah, this does not surprise me one bit. The cheapo PSUs were always like playing Russian Roulette in regards to them being able to supply the rated wattage.

Pretty much any of the PSUs that weigh almost nothing are complete garbage from my experience.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-08-14, 23:28:

I really don't give a damn about heat or efficiency in a vintage PSU. I don't put nearly enough hours on any of my vintage systems for that to make a meaningful change in my electric bill.

As far as ripple goes, I check all my supplies with a scope. And all my vintage ones do great

I would like to know the brand and model numbers you use and have tested.

Voltage accuracy and ripple statistics would help as well.

Theres a good case to be made for them for sure. Knock on wood though over the years I've only seen a couple sparkle power supplies go bad though which I've used exclusively in my builds and they just keep going and going. It's not even like they are really good power supplies they are very average OEM type things but for whatever reason they are strong.

Just a note regarding PFC: some older systems may not work correctly with it. I have a Dell Dimension which only works with non PFC; this can be a consideration if you decide to buy an aftermarket PSU and use a harness adapter for their proprietary connection.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-08-14, 23:36:

maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-08-14, 23:28:

I really don't give a damn about heat or efficiency in a vintage PSU. I don't put nearly enough hours on any of my vintage systems for that to make a meaningful change in my electric bill.

As far as ripple goes, I check all my supplies with a scope. And all my vintage ones do great

I would like to know the brand and model numbers you use and have tested.

Voltage accuracy and ripple statistics would help as well.

Sorry I didn't record any test results. It's more of a "check it when I assemble the system and forget about it if it passes" affair. Most of the supplies are random no name crap 🤣. Some of them I recapped, some didn't

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-08-14, 20:49:

SNIP!!

[*] Deer
[/list]

What has Bambie got to do with it?

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-08-15, 01:21:

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-08-14, 20:49:

SNIP!!

[*] Deer
[/list]

What has Bambie got to do with it?

Hah! Deer is pretty much the absolute bottom of the barrel PSU brand over here in the USA. Maybe the name comes from the look on the user's face when it blows and takes out multiple pieces of hardware..

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-08-14, 20:49:

Reserved 2

You haven't filled in this one yet. Why prey tell?

Curious minds want to know....