When you pick it up expecting it to be heavy, and it rivals the weight of a helium balloon...

Well, yeah...

Some were designed that way, like infamous Thermaltake XP-480 PSUs, which had small heatsinks, but two fans to compensate it. Although they were just decent 250W PSUs and not 400W, like Thermaltake claimed them to be.

A friend of mine gave this to me, and I've only ever used it for testing stuff I don't care much about. Here's an excerpt from a review of a "450 watt" one from the same company:

"The Apevia Turbolink ATX-TL450W-BK is sold as a 450 W unit, but it can only deliver 240 W. Having a fake wattage is the smallest of its problems: it is a piece of junk that can damage your computer, since it provides noise/ripple levels above the maximum allowed, as it doesn’t have the required filtering coils in its secondary. Efficiency was between 65% and 74%, which will make your computer to spend more electricity than necessary (higher electricity bill). And the cable configuration is a joke, with only one SATA power connector and no video card power connector (if it had, users would fry the power supply as soon as they run a game).

This is an excellent review to understand that trying to save by buying a USD 20 power supply makes no sense."
https://hardwaresecrets.com/apevia-turbolink- … upply-review/9/

I should probably just put it in my ewaste pile.

Someone has one of these for sale on Ebay for $25.00! Caveat emptor!

Perhaps I should dig out my old (but bought new because at the time I didn't know any better) Premier PSU 😂

I can see the point of not pairing a cheapo p/s with an otherwise exciting build. But take for instance the box housing my Rexus unit: Foxconn socket A mobo, bought nob, 20$, cpu's were free though I did buy one from Hrvastka Croatia for 8$, and blew it and several others up, not rexus' fault, 512k Corsair ram, nos 8$, some old 80gb ide h/d, okay bought with a Netvista for 10$, rosewill case 20$. I did buy an agp card, nothing to write home about, presently not even installed, about 20$. So does it stand to reason to spend big money on a p/s? The rexus was 20$ shipped 🤣.

O yeah I threw in a pretty new Hp dvd burner,.bought it ages ago.

And the innapropriate (for athlon xp 2800+) aluminum masscool heatsink, 8$.

Personally I'd much rather use one of my old 5v heavy FSP PSUs.

Oh... Those PSU's are prone to sudden death. It may be the capacitors or sometimes the mosfets, in my experience, I've seen a couple blow up right as you plug in the powercord into the computer. And as was stated before, bad filtering with no protections means that unless the hardware you have is absolutely sacrificial... I would avoid them like the plague. I have a few but I am ashamed to say that I have not melted them yet, let alone post a picture. I'll post a picture once I get on the melty melty side of things (warms flamethrower) 😁

I've trashed all my crappy PSUs a few years ago. Even cut off the power cord, so nobody steals it out of the recycling yard. I suggest you do the same when you trash your fishy PSUs.
The "worst" I have are some FSP PSUs. Also have a pre 80plus Seasonic from the late 90s as well as four Enermax PSUs from the early 2000s (heavy as a brick). All my other ATX PSUs (around 20 pieces) are 80plus.
I also have three AT PSUs. FSP, King Year and a somewhat fishy looking one.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-03-25, 19:15:

"The Apevia Turbolink ATX-TL450W-BK is sold as a 450 W unit, but it can only deliver 240 W. [...] And the cable configuration is a joke, with only one SATA power connector and no video card power connector (if it had, users would fry the power supply as soon as they run a game).

And then some noobs thinks:
"Hey, it's 450W. Lets use an adapter cable!"

Donovan V. wrote on 2022-03-25, 21:42:

I have a few but I am ashamed to say that I have not melted them yet, let alone post a picture. I'll post a picture once I get on the melty melty side of things (warms flamethrower) 😁

You indiscriminately torch a fully assembled p/s? Something tells me you're at least partially joking ...

chris2021 wrote on 2022-03-25, 22:11:

Donovan V. wrote on 2022-03-25, 21:42:

I have a few but I am ashamed to say that I have not melted them yet, let alone post a picture. I'll post a picture once I get on the melty melty side of things (warms flamethrower) 😁

You indiscriminately torch a fully assembled p/s? Something tells me you're at least partially joking ...

No, I like to torture them a bit before I torch them. I'ts the small things, like plugging the 12V output to a Light bulb 20 amp load whilst the fan cannot rotate. Or setting them 110V whilst upping the voltage on the variac slowly approaching 220.

(Nah, I am of course kidding) But yeah. Those no brand, no name power supplies are only worth when you have a load that cannot be damaged easily from a PS sudden death. I used one to run a drill when the battery gave up the ghost. Wired the motor directly to it. (It was 18V but down to 12, but with lots more juice) Worked fine for small projects until, it did give out the ghost.

Btw. Sorry if my english is kind of weird. (I just realized - Im not a native english speaker - )

You can torch what you like. I just think it a better idea to extract the copper, aluminum, zinc/pot metal, etc. before you go crazy. I have, I think, 2-300lbs. of cat food cans I need to melt down. Sooner better then later. Some copper too.

chris2021 wrote:

I just think it a better idea to extract the copper, aluminum, zinc/pot metal, etc. before you go crazy.

That's pretty metal!

Pick your poison...

(dont mind the bended PC case, it was alot more bended, the guy said that wardrobe fell on the computer 😳 jesus...)
Good that damn wardrobe did not trash the computer, as inside was Gigabyte BX2000, Working without bad sectors Quantum Fireball 10GB and Pentium II 450MHz.

I never use any of these garbage PSUs, as they are good only to stuff them with some explosive firecrackers and blow them up...

I plan to keep the PSUs that have certain characteristic's like huge +5v rails (30+ amps) or really good +12v rails or even older PSUs that have a single large +12v rail, bog standard ones get thrown into the spares pile. Mind you I also tend to be picky about which ones I do keep for use, some chineseium ones are simply not worth the risk no matter how good their specs might be.

Seems to can join the team here 😀
I've got this one unit that weighs about minus-30 grams, has a big sticker "350W PSU" (no brand or characteristics), another sticker "CE" (China export?), a third sticker "quality ok". And inside it has no filters and a tiny razor-like thin heat sink. It seems to provide ok voltages with 100W load though... Buy i wouldn't connect anything valuable to it.

waterbeesje wrote on 2022-03-29, 14:45:

Seems to can join the team here 😀
I've got this one unit that weighs about minus-30 grams, has a big sticker "350W PSU" (no brand or characteristics), another sticker "CE" (China export?), a third sticker "quality ok". And inside it has no filters and a tiny razor-like thin heat sink. It seems to provide ok voltages with 100W load though... Buy i wouldn't connect anything valuable to it.

Sounds like a PSU you throw on a load tester and find out just how good it is ....just turn it up to 11 itll be fine.

Remember back in the day when 90% of PSUs in the Cream and Beige boxes were 250 watts NO MATTER WHAT?

Everything from the gov liquidation 486dx2->PPRO180 I pick up had some sort of 250watt supply, ATX or AT didn’t matter, always 250 watts.

Some of those supplies I used with Duron systems and only once did I have a fireball come out the back (when the system was shut off just sitting there)

Those were the days.

imo unless your building an athlon system needs a crazy high 3.3/5v rail or doing something that is isa that actually needs a -5v there is just no reason to us old psus or even more so ones that were awful back in the day when they were new. why take chance that the thing will blow up an ruin perfectly good retro hardware.