[geeks] PC Hardware (Power Supplies)

[Nate]

On Mar 2, 2008, at 9:54 AM, Lionel Peterson wrote:

> I read your statement as possibly supporting the a blanket  
> statement, if you
> allow that either Antec or PC Power & Cooling have higher  
> specifications
> across the board than others may have.

Well Antec has had a very spotty record.  If you've had no problems  
with the Antec products you've used, you should *list* those products  
you've had good experiences with rather than just say "have never had  
any problems with Antec" because that won't necessarily help someone.

> Besides, my blanket statement was about my experiences with Antec  
> products - I
> wasn't speaking to the broader product line...

When I was talking about Antec, I was only talking about their power  
supplies.

And to give you an even more specific example to illustrate what I've  
been talking about, I've personally seen over a 20% failure rate of  
Antec's SmartPower 2.0 power supplies in a sample size of about 50  
over the course of 2 years with most of the failures just at or after  
the 1 year mark.  That's even higher percentage than what was  
recorded in 2006 in France:

http://www.behardware.com/news/8550/power-supply-failure-rate.html

The very probable cause of the high failure rate has to do with Antec  
making the decision to use Fuhjyyu brand capacitors in their less  
expensive power supplies like the SmartPower series.  Fuhjyyu brand  
capacitors don't survive higher-heat situations, and Antec also made  
the decision to decrease the fan noise in their power supply by  
lowering fan speed significantly.  And I would also like to point out  
that while Antec chose to use Fuhjyyu brand capacitors in their  
Seasonic designed power supplies, Seasonic themselves has not used  
Fuhjyyu brand capacitors when they sell their power supplies under  
their own brand.

- Nate