[mythtv-users] Re: Quiet Power Supplies/Quiet PC's

hayward at slothmud.org hayward at slothmud.org
Thu Jul 10 13:20:57 EDT 2003


>As you say, "[M]MMV". That's very different from "Cheap power supplies 
>ALWAYS die after about a year or two". I don't doubt your personal 
>experience, only the generalization you make from it.

I used to think: use cheap power supplies, they are only 12$, I can get 6 
for the price of one name brand power supply.  That opinion is long gone.

I have one cheap power supply left.  It was one out of a pair that I 
purchased 3 weeks ago.  The other one died and took out a nice biostar 
motherboard the same day I installed it in my system..  Every single other 
cheap power supply I've bought in the last 18 months is dead.  (2 of 
them on the same day I placed them in my computer).

When I say "cheap power supply" - I'm not talking about the cheap ones you 
bought over 2 years ago for $30 (before the under $15 power supplies were 
even on the market).  Even the cheap ones were decent quality back then.  

I'm not exaggerating  when I say I've lost 6 power supplies in the last 
year - and three in the last 3 months.  There were five different brands 
(well , at least different sticker names on the outside box).

You can seperate the bad ones from the good ones by picking up the power 
supply.  If it has nice heatsinks in it (and thus decent weight to it) 
you've probably got a good one.

Also, see this tomshardware article:
http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20021021/index.html

They tested even the name brand ones and found that they often didn't 
perform near their rated power limits!  So you're right to worry about 
power supply limits being hit.


--
Brian



More information about the mythtv-users mailing list