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khenry
Not only did I receive issue 59 last weekend but also the two other PSU labs issues courtesy of Faceplant on the forums. That makes my last purchase the most researched for three years as opposed to the general guesswork or emergency panic buying of the last two builds.
As usual, there was a PSU for everyone in the test despite the no-shows and I ignored the award winners and went for the Antec Earthwatts EA 650. Why?
1) I can hide the captive cabling because the case isn’t windowed anyway – having got over my fixation with lights, I can fit another LED/cathode in the case floor to make up for the Antec’s deliberately generic looks, which will take away the red light from the current unit. As admitted somewhere in one of the three labs, captive cabling is slightly more efficient even if it’s cumbersome (though the percentage must depend on how many cables the user plugs into a modular unit).
2) The next step up in efficiency terms, from 83% to 85%, would have cost a minimum of £30 extra for one of the Corsairs. In the real world, the credit crunch (and maybe exploitation of the added sales CPC might generate) has added another tenner to the price all in from eBuyer. The listed stockist sold out BUT was yet another company where you didn’t know if VAT would be added to the **£13** delivery charge on top of the attractive price. Ebuyer had the stock and my April build came from there, so it made sense to stick with them if their couriers were happy to pick up RMAs.
3) The EA 650 matched the price of the predecessor in this machine. Hiper’s 480w Type-R family, which was updated every quarter, achieved 74% efficiency back in issue 26. It’s doubtful that my version would have performed better than the test unit aside from not proving as explosive as later models. Attaining 80% efficiency in my main PC and gaining the ROHS standard, a third 12V rail, a more powerful non-LED fan and native PCI-E connectors for £4 more – ie a higher delivery charge than previous supplier CCL - represents the perfect bargain. Most importantly, I can now cover the overheads of a future GPU like the Radeon 4870.
4) There’s the possibility implied by an American reviewer that like the 430w model, Seasonic may be the true manufacturer for Antec’s Earthwatts range. If this is true, then it’s good to know that they have a more competitively priced model in this Labs, albeit rebadged, which can output the same 83% efficiency even if the cabling isn’t modular and it peaks at lower wattage by at least 50w.
5) It carries its environmental branding over to the packaging, all of which is no-frills recyclable paper and card and if your council won’t take away a slightly shiny box, your supermarket certainly will. By contrast Hiper’s plastic lunchbox, freebie LED fan and other frills may have been a nice way of showing where your money went, but irrelevant for the fairly standard twin 12v rail PSUs it was selling. The money’s in the unit with the Earthwatts range.
6) It’s only a small thing but I don’t care how good that Be Quiet 850Watt model is, if the 650Watt model could feature a standard kettle lead, this one should have done the same. Proprietary cabling is a bad 1990s throwback, as you’re locked in to trying to find a converter or you’re tied to buying spares from just that firm. Hopefully this was a shipping issue for the labs and future Be Quiet 850s will sport a standard kettle lead plug socket like the other 28 units tested, in future quarters, and I wouldn’t personally choose the one on test knowing none of the power leads I have lying around, work with it.
Fitting this PSU will at least represent a 99% completely new build, with only the soundcard recycled from another machine. Since the financial benefits to my power bill will be greatly appreciated, I just hope it arrives in a working condition to make it a straightforward PSU swapout.
It just goes to show that even if you’ve been waiting a long time for a new labs test of something you want to buy, it might throw up more questions than answers. Thankfully the answer in this case was to buy more of the same if I was happy with the first one, and it’ll be a long time before I see myself looking at the 90 Plus PSU badge - that’s as long as these two units will last.
Absolutely agree - the warthwatts seemed like a sensible choice for anyone who isn’t trying to power a mainframe!
Despite agreeing with sound reasoning above, I’d never buy another Antec PSU again because of their terrible customer support in the UK. I accept that things can go wrong with even the highest quality of kit, but the lack of communication, and affirmative action in replacing my Antec PSU under their 5 year replacement warantee is absolutely terrible. I’ve been waiting over 3 weeks. Sure, they say up to 28 days, but I can’t see why it should take more than 5 days. I suspect it’s because they don’t manufacture all of their own PSUs and that they don’t offer their own support, relying instead on the retailers.
Next time I’ll pay the extra and go straight to Seasonic rather than trying to cut corners, at least then I’d be dealing with manufacturers, and not adding an extra layer of administration to the RMA procedure.
If you can afford to have a spare PSU lying around, then you’ll be not care about customer service, it will be replaced sometime in the next 28 working days, but for those with limited funds, 3 weeks (and counting) to replace a PSU is not funny.
That’s a fair point Kroy, thanks for that information. Reputations can be unfair though, my Hiper gave me the full three years of its warranty, but it was efficiency and construction methods that made me replace it.
If these units give me their full warranties, I can’t complain, though yes, I suppose Seasonic is technically competing with itself when it makes PSUs to be rebranded by others, and then has models under its own name.