I go with name brands because I don’t trust unknown companies with the one piece of hardware that’s capable of burning my house down.
For my my personal rig I go full modular, and with rigs I build for others I go with semi. The difference in operating costs between gold and bronze is marginal, so I don’t pay attention.
I’ve got a range of different PSU’s in my house, but I usually stick with Corsair, EVGA, Seasonic, from the list posted above. Mostly because in the states they are just the most available.
Also, they kind of all use the same OEMs (there’s only so many) so the brand is mostly for warranty and aesthetics. As long as the design and construction is good, then the overt brand doesn’t really matter too much.
I’ll go with any reputable brand based on ratings and reviews, though it has mostly been Corsair lately. EVGA and Seasonic are potential contenders as well.
I have to go overkill. I overclock, have multiple storage drives, use most of my USB ports, and play games that push my GPU to its limits. Rating efficiency somewhat matters to me, but gold usually falls within my budget.
I’ll go with full or semi-modular, though I haven’t dived into custom cabling to lean on full as much.
I used to pay attention to the warranty because of exploding transformers in my power grid, causing brownouts and unstable voltages, but now I have a UPS in place and don’t care as much.
issue currently facing PSUs is graphics card’s high transient power fluctuations. For example sometimes they can spike much higher than their TDP, nearly double, and that transient spike can cause it to trip PSU protections. So often it means getting an overrated PSU to compensate for those spikes.
I definitely learned that on day one when I installed a 3080TI. Everything I read on the web, even directly from Nvidia themselves, said that a 750W is fine, which I was already using.
PC turned on fine, and low to medium GPU-demanding games ran without issue, WoW included. I did all that while monitoring my PC wattage use with my UPS software.
Then I loaded up Snowrunner. My previous settings were fine…but then I jacked every graphic setting to the max. Barely got my truck up to max speed and the OC protection tripped. Had a nice quick run to BestBuy for a PSU upgrade.
Brand still matter because even if they come from the same factory, each company can have different instructions on how their products are made on the factory. Some might tell the factory to include certain specs or specify what materials etc. they want to use for their products.
I’m open to most established brands and OEMs but specs. Realize many Brands and OEMs can fib on specs.
I get as much wattage as I need to run my system as needed. I don’t overkill as often it’s a waste of money.
Wattage calculators often go on the high side, they are useful for people new to PSU
the 80+ rating has turned into a marketing tool and has many issues including the most obvious, testing is done at 22-28c (they give themselves plenty of room there) and most gaming PC cases are 40c+
modular is not important to me, most cases have PSU compartments that hide any unused cables
warranty is very important especially when your units fails, corsair and evga are two well know brands for customer service. Warranty length is useful to compare similar quality units.
Some of my current PSU
Seasonic Focus Plus - gaming rig
Corsair CX - work PC
Corsair TXM - old gaming rig
Antec Earthwhatts - delegated to backup
apevia is still around? I think they were were made by twopower or andyson, and made excellent paper weights
to prove your point, that unit was designed by CM, built by gospower for them. CM and Corsair are currently the only two brands that design their own units. Most brands ask the oem to manufacturer an already designed unit based on a price point for them to sell. The brand then handles the “front end” of the business (sales, channel marketing, warranty & customer service).
Companies like FSP, SuperFlower, and Seasonic are both a brand and oem.
Companies like Great Wall, HEC, Chicony, Delta are oems.
i haven’t had any issues with my 850w seasonic focus plus circa 2017, despite it being listed as sensitive to spikes.
but generally it won’t hurt to just go up a size. prices aren’t that big a difference. Pick a good one off the list and get at least 850 these days imo
im kinda sad, my go to brand in the late 90’s and 2000’s is basically dead. PC Power and Cooling. im still using a 1200w psu of theirs from about 2014, and ill probably keep it in my upgrade this year. but i guess they are either gone or a shell of themselves and almost impossible to reach. so if an upgrade is needed, ill have to research and find a new company.
depends on the exact unit and your specs but it won’t hurt especially at equal price. Some of the older units had bigger drop in efficiency in the bottom and top 20%. Most mid tier gaming PCs only pull 250-350w at peak so you would have better efficiency with a 650w unit than a 850w with those specs. Many quality modern units now have more of a flat efficiency curve rather than a bell curve so the efficiency doesn’t jump as much.
they were made by seasonic, I owned a few of their units back in the day. They went belly up and OCZ bought their “name” and released a few more units under the brand PC&P. OCZ themselves faltered (I believe Toshiba bought the ram side) and got renamed/restructured as Firepower and they really don’t do anything anymore.
really depends. newer GPUs are a little more efficient than say Ampere. My 3080 alone can pull 360w, and from the wall i’ve seen a big gaming load (like CP2077) pull about 500w total power (thanks overclocked 14nm intel)
