[EOL] PSU Tier List rev. 14.8

[Juular]

Just now, Newbie0 said:

BAnd my PC literally runs 20 hours a day

That's no problem whatsoever if you don't buy 30°C shit.

[Newbie0]

1 minute ago, Juular said:

That's no problem whatsoever if you don't buy 30°C shit.

Thanks a lot man. I’ll be going for the TT then. 

[Dhonny]

23 hours ago, Juular said:

 

 

- - -

 

@Dhonny Third link doesn't work for me. Choosing from those options, cheapest one, Gigabyte P650B would be okay. But with this GPU i'd recommend smth better, Gigabyte G750H probably since there are no other alternatives in high-end-ish range unless you go all the way to 14-15k ones like Seasonic Focus. I'm not entirely sure about that Segotep GP700, it may be on different platform than GP650.

 

- - -

 

Thank you man for your help. 

Now, im not arguing, just trying to learn. How could you know that the more expensive GB PSU would it be ok if it's not tested? Or it's just assumed because it's a more high end one of the same line up of PSU?

Also, now i have available this one for the same price: Seasonic FM 750W

Would that be a better choise?

And finally, i'm helping a friend build his first PC. I'ts basically the same as mine (r5 3600, etc) but with a 1660 super GPU.

Dou you reckon that something like this would be ok?

DeepCool DA500W

 

Thank you again brother. You are being very helpful.

 

Edit: Grammar

[Juular]

4 hours ago, Dhonny said:

How could you know that the more expensive GB PSU would it be ok if it's not tested?

It kinda were.

https://ru.gecid.com/power/gigabyte_gp-g750h/?s=all

Not very reliable review so data is useless but we see there that it's CWT GPS platform so it's fine, we have a bunch of good reviews on other PSUs using it.

4 hours ago, Dhonny said:

Also, now i have available this one for the same price: Seasonic FM 750W

This should be better choice, yes.

4 hours ago, Dhonny said:

Dou you reckon that something like this would be ok? DeepCool DA500W

Nope. Gigabyte P650B would as it's cheapest DC-DC unit i see there aside of CM MWE V2 which has issues with high ripple.

[Dhonny]

27 minutes ago, Juular said:

It kinda were.

https://ru.gecid.com/power/gigabyte_gp-g750h/?s=all

Not very reliable review so data is useless but we see there that it's CWT GPS platform so it's fine, we have a bunch of good reviews on other PSUs using it.

This should be better choice, yes.

Nope. Gigabyte P650B would as it's cheapest DC-DC unit i see there aside of CM MWE V2 which has issues with high ripple.

Thanks man!!

[boghubodaghi]

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/be-quiet-straight-power-11-650w-platinum-power-supply-review/3

 

This PSU makes it to tier Tier A+ because it has "better protection features" while having most of its protections improperly configured? V reg is also bad

[Juular]

4 minutes ago, boghubodaghi said:

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/be-quiet-straight-power-11-650w-platinum-power-supply-review/3

 

This PSU makes it to tier Tier A+ because it has "better protection features" while having most of its protections improperly configured? V reg is also bad

12V rail v.reg. within 1%, yes, that's higher than some other high-end PSUs but still well within comfortable limits. I see nothing about protections being improperly configured, yes, 12V rails are high but 40A is still rather low compared to 120A+ OCP of single-rail high-wattage PSUs like beloved Seasonic Prime 1.3kW and EVGA P2\T2 \ SF Leadex 1.2kW+, hence it's placement in multi-rail tier. I don't care about OCP limits on minor rails as long as v.reg. is still in specs, you barely would use them anyway, certainly not to those current levels, if anything that would be a plus for those who want to build high-HDD count NAS systems. Additionally, this quite possibly could be early sample, with changes being done to production revision after feedback from reviewers.

[boghubodaghi]

3 hours ago, Juular said:

12V rail v.reg. within 1%, yes, that's higher than some other high-end PSUs but still well within comfortable limits. I see nothing about protections being improperly configured, yes, 12V rails are high but 40A is still rather low compared to 120A+ OCP of single-rail high-wattage PSUs like beloved Seasonic Prime 1.3kW and EVGA P2\T2 \ SF Leadex 1.2kW+, hence it's placement in multi-rail tier. I don't care about OCP limits on minor rails as long as v.reg. is still in specs, you barely would use them anyway, certainly not to those current levels, if anything that would be a plus for those who want to build high-HDD count NAS systems. Additionally, this quite possibly could be early sample, with changes being done to production revision after feedback from reviewers.

The PSU competes not with 1k+ PSUs. It competes with the likes of PX-650, RM-650x, Leadex III 650, etc. Most of them has OCP/OPP on the +12V set at 65-70A. What exact difference would that make granting this BQ on a higher tier? 2+% V Reg on the 3.3V shouldn't be acceptable and gets into group regulated territory. Ripple is also worse than the PSU mentioned earlier. It can't even reach 70% efficiency on extremely low loads. If it's an early sample, only the protections can be reconfigured. Other performance metrics won't be fixed. I can see why the Bitfenix Whisper gets a higher tier, but not this BQ.

[Juular]

Just now, boghubodaghi said:

The PSU competes not with 1k+ PSUs. It competes with the likes of PX-650, RM-650x, Leadex III 650, etc. Most of them has OCP/OPP on the +12V set at 65-70A.

40A is still lower than 65-70A, isn't it ?

1 minute ago, boghubodaghi said:

exact difference would that make granting this BQ on a higher tier?

Multi-rail ? Did you read the methodology ?

1 minute ago, boghubodaghi said:

2+% V Reg on the 3.3V shouldn't be acceptable and gets into group regulated territory.

I couldn't care less about 3.3V rail load reg as long as it's still in specs. Modern PCs barely use it, some (most ?) motherboards use dedicated DC-DC for 3.3V generation anyway.

3 minutes ago, boghubodaghi said:

Ripple is also worse than the PSU mentioned earlier.

And it's still very good, 30mV is by no means a bad ripple level, there's very few PSUs that have less ripple, in fact we'll mark those PSUs separately in the next revision. And by the way, Seasonic Focus Gold has about 40mV ripple, does that make it a bad PSU ? Not.

5 minutes ago, boghubodaghi said:

It can't even reach 70% efficiency on extremely low loads.

Since when efficiency is a metric of PSU performance ? While high load efficiency can be somewhat relevant because this affects PSU thermals, but low load efficiency is completely irrelevant if you don't count cents per year.

 

We could add another 5 tiers to granulate high-end PSUs better to place PSUs with slightly better overall performance like those you mentioned above PSUs that look somewhat mediocre by high-tier options means but that would be a hell to maintain and navigate. Instead of that, again, we will implement two colors to highlight lower than average and higher than average units in the tier, requirements for that are already in the updated methodology located in the spreadsheet, so it a changelog for pending revision.

[boghubodaghi]

34 minutes ago, Juular said:

40A is still lower than 65-70A, isn't it ? Multi-rail? Did you read the methodology ?

Of course it is lower, but what exact difference would that make granting this BQ on a higher tier? You guys chose the methodology, and it shouldn't be brought to justify anything. It shouldn't place worse PSUs on a higher tier.

 

34 minutes ago, Juular said:

I couldn't care less about 3.3V rail load reg as long as it's still in specs. Modern PCs barely use it, some (most ?) motherboards use dedicated DC-DC for 3.3V generation anyway. And it's still very good, 30mV is by no means a bad ripple level, there's very few PSUs that have less ripple, in fact we'll mark those PSUs separately in the next revision. And by the way, Seasonic Focus Gold has about 40mV ripple, does that make it a bad PSU ? Not.

Still doesn't change the fact that three out of the four PSUs I mentioned has less than 20mV ripple on the +12V rail and even less on the minor rails. All of them have less than 1% V.Reg. 3.3 VDC is feed straight into HDDs and SATA SSDs, so while you may not care, it still matters. If it doesn't matter, does anything matter more than anything else? Why does OCP matter above anything else anyway? It only protects you in shorts, and the protection isn't absolute either.

 

34 minutes ago, Juular said:

Since when efficiency is a metric of PSU performance ? While high load efficiency can be somewhat relevant because this affects PSU thermals, but low load efficiency is completely irrelevant if you don't count cents per year.

Yes, it's very nitpicky, but I brought it up just to tell you the long list of metrics that the BQ lacks over its main competitor. Yet, it is placed on a "higher tier".

 

34 minutes ago, Juular said:

We could add another 5 tiers to granulate high-end PSUs better to place PSUs with slightly better overall performance like those you mentioned above PSUs that look somewhat mediocre by high-tier options means but that would be a hell to maintain and navigate.

You guys don't have to make an over complicated list, all you have to do is change the methodology so it doesn't skew OCP too much. I am objecting to why better PSUs are placed at the same tier or even lower than worse PSUs, especially the A+ and A category. Many that read this list are newbies trying to build their first PC, so they don't bother reading the methodology because they won't understand a thing. They could end up in a worse PSU just because the tiers indicate so.

[Juular]

21 minutes ago, boghubodaghi said:

Of course it is lower, but what exact difference would that make granting this BQ on a higher tier? You guys chose the methodology, and it shouldn't be brought to justify anything. It shouldn't place worse PSUs on a higher tier.

The sole purpose of tier A+ is to highlight multi-rail units, 40A vs 70A might not sound like a big difference but that's 1.5x more current, and if you look at 1.3-1.6kW units the difference would be enough to make a little explosion in your PC if smth shorts. It's not a common situation but we feel that users need to know that there are PSUs with more protections (multi-rail is an essentially yet another protection). The PSUs themselves can be worse, but if you're buying 850W+ PSU we feel that you should look at multi-rail assuming the performance are good enough, and since there are performance requirements in place for tier A and above - anything in tier A+ would be good enough for high-end market, there are definitely better units from tier A than some tier A+ ones if we disregard multi-rail, if you or someone else feels that it's not relevant then just treat both tier A and A+ as equal.

21 minutes ago, boghubodaghi said:

Still doesn't change the fact that three out of the four PSUs I mentioned has less than 20mV ripple on the +12V rail and even less on the minor rails.

You've managed to pick quite good units ripple-wise, there are very few units on the same level other than those, or rather very few platforms since most of them are based on either Seasonic Prime or CWT GPR\GPU and Corsair HX custom.

21 minutes ago, boghubodaghi said:

3.3 VDC is feed straight into HDDs and SATA SSDs, so while you may not care, it still matters.

Nope, HDDs work on 5V and 12V. SSDs do work on 3.3V IIRC but do they need this level of voltage accuracy ? They do not.

21 minutes ago, boghubodaghi said:

Many that read this list are newbies trying to build their first PC, so they don't bother reading the methodology because they won't understand a thing.

That's why we specifically named tier A and A+ as such to highlight that you only need tier A+ if you have high-wattage system. Whether a newbie does realize that their gaming system wouldn't need more than 650W PSU regardless of hardware is unrelated question but still.

21 minutes ago, boghubodaghi said:

They could end up in a worse PSU just because the tiers indicate so.

If so - barely. Again, we have requirements for all tier A and up units in place so you can literally pick any of them, they would be good enough electrically. And again, we implemented another level of so to say tiering with gray and gold colors in the pending revision. Like that :

Spoiler

 

 

[boghubodaghi]

57 minutes ago, Juular said:

The sole purpose of tier A+ is to highlight multi-rail units, 40A vs 70A might not sound like a big difference but that's 1.5x more current, and if you look at 1.3-1.6kW units the difference would be enough to make a little explosion in your PC if smth shorts. It's not a common situation but we feel that users need to know that there are PSUs with more protections (multi-rail is an essentially yet another protection).

Yes, I think that's the problem. Your priority towards multi-rail OCP on PSUs is too much so it skews the list on situations where it almost does not matter. We're talking about 650 W PSUs here, and what exact difference does that 1.7x more current makes? Not too much when something shorts. If we're talking about >3x then it starts to become a concern. This is where the problem is, it makes worse, <850W PSUs at a higher tier than much better units and that's not something that should happen. 

 

57 minutes ago, Juular said:

Nope, HDDs work on 5V and 12V. SSDs do work on 3.3V IIRC but do they need this level of voltage accuracy ? They do not.

You sure? Cut the orange power cables on your HDD, it might render that SATA power cable useless on HDDs. I don't know for sure what the percentages are like, but I'm pretty sure a significant portion of drives still use 3.3, especially low power ones (2.5" drives). All components need voltage accuracy, the accurate it is the better. How much accurate? How important is the accuracy? That will require extensive testings that we will never be able to do, but can't the same be said for 1.7x higher OCP limit? It's about the scale of importance of very detailed things that all might not matter 99.9% of the time

 

57 minutes ago, Juular said:

That's why we specifically named tier A and A+ as such to highlight that you only need tier A+ if you have high-wattage system. Whether a newbie does realize that their gaming system wouldn't need more than 650W PSU regardless of hardware is unrelated question but still.

If that's the case then the BQ PSU shouldn't be higher up the list! If you guys are making a new version - which is great and I'd appreciate that greatly, please consider my feedback. It seems that the screenshot will make nice changes, but I'll still make an objection when this BQ PSU stays at a higher tier than other, better PSUs.

[Shuten.]

Yo!

 

I wonder why I'm not finding any information on the FSP Hydro G Pro 750w psu.

It seems to be in the A tier, and i ordered it going by that, but i just noticed it seems to be out of stock everywhere.

I can't find a single review on them. Makes me wonder if I've made the right choice between that and the RM750x

I remember FSP from many years ago, they've been making PSU's for a long time now.

Any thoughts?

[Juular]

25 minutes ago, boghubodaghi said:

All components need voltage accuracy, the accurate it is the better. How much accurate? How important is the accuracy? That will require extensive testings that we will never be able to do, but can't the same be said for 1.7x higher OCP limit? It's about the scale of importance of very detailed things that all might not matter 99.9% of the time

Thing is, voltage regulation is already concerned, it's 1.5% for . Can we tighten it ? Certainly but given that this almost certainly wouldn't have any effect on components reliability (the difference between 1.5% and 0.5-1.0% or 3% which is default for tier A), that's honestly would be too much hassle for us (checking all tier A units again), we're trying to write out all data from Aris reviews (as the most reliably source) so we'll have all the data in one place in more accessible way, but this goes very slowly, until then don't expect anything to change in this regard.

And again, just because tier A+ exist it doesn't mean that all tier A+ units are better than A, it's a complementary tier (hence the +), if you disregard multirail - please do so. But a newbie coming here would see that tier A+ units are better at least when it's a high wattage PSU, that 650W number may be a bit higher honestly, about 850W but still.

25 minutes ago, boghubodaghi said:

BQ PSU shouldn't be higher up the list!

Again, it's there because it fits there according to methodology. We're marking not so good units inside a tier with gray color now which still fit this tier otherwise, which you can see in the screenshot above but unless we'll make changes to methodology for voltage regulation (which seems to be main reason why you're talking about that bq! PSU at all here) - we can't move it down. And again, changes to methodology wouldn't happen at least until we'll finish writing down Aris reviews data.

18 minutes ago, Shuten. said:

I wonder why I'm not finding any information on the FSP Hydro G Pro 750w psu

Review for 850W version, it should be pretty much identical performance wise to 750W one. And otherwise it's just somewhat improved Hydro G.

Between it and RMx, well, RMx would've been bit better overall (voltage reg., ripple and acoustics) but if FSP was cheaper then it was a better choice as the difference doesn't warrant significantly higher price in this case (like 10-15$+ or so).

[Shuten.]

6 minutes ago, Juular said:

Review for 850W version, it should be pretty much identical performance wise to 750W one. And otherwise it's just somewhat improved Hydro G.

Between it and RMx, well, RMx would've been bit better overall (voltage reg., ripple and acoustics) but if FSP was cheaper then it was a better choice as the difference doesn't warrant significantly higher price in this case (like 10$+ or so).

Thank you, well i got it for ~$100 while the RM750x was priced at ~$123.

I wanted the RM750x, but it wasn't in stock, and after i ordered the FSP, it turned out it wasn't in stock either, even tho the site said so.

I'll have to wait until the 18th of may until my package leaves the store. ;(

[ZeRedz]

Are the Seasonic Prime series PSUs in any way better than the Seasonic Focus series PSUs?

[Juular]

6 minutes ago, ZeRedz said:

Are the Seasonic Prime series PSUs in any way better than the Seasonic Focus series PSUs?

Yes, not significantly tho, worth paying 5-10$ more maybe at most.

[Ricardo Harrow]

Hey, guys! I'm going to be buying a PSU sometime in the future and I'm kind of paranoid about getting a PSU that's part of a bad batch. Is there any way I can safeguard myself from purchasing a PSU that's part of a bad batch? Is there any forum site or thread that I can use for reference?

[Juular]

1 hour ago, Ricardo Harrow said:

Hey, guys! I'm going to be buying a PSU sometime in the future and I'm kind of paranoid about getting a PSU that's part of a bad batch. Is there any way I can safeguard myself from purchasing a PSU that's part of a bad batch? Is there any forum site or thread that I can use for reference?

You're indeed just being paranoid, just get a good PSU in the first place, with 99% chance it will be fine and that 1% is covered by warranty.

[Ricardo Harrow]

3 minutes ago, Juular said:

You're indeed just being paranoid, just get a good PSU in the first place, with 99% chance it will be fine and that 1% is covered by warranty.

Well, alright. If you don't mind me asking, if one of the Tier A PSUs were to crap out on a rig, is there a high chance of them taking down a component with them or is that more of a thing with PSUs in Tier C and below?

[Juular]

2 minutes ago, Ricardo Harrow said:

Well, alright. If you don't mind me asking, if one of the Tier A PSUs were to crap out on a rig, is there a high chance of them taking down a component with them or is that more of a thing with PSUs in Tier C and below?

Depends on the type of failure and quality of components, build quality. Most tier A (and B+ for that matter) units should be pretty much on par with each other at that, there are a lot more lower quality or just old units in tier C and down. Overall, with modern PSUs (tier B+ and up), the probability of PSU taking down PC with it in case of failure should be rather low even compared to probability of any failure at all. But honestly i don't really know what should happen for that scenario to occur, maybe @jonnyGURU could help here ?

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Juular said:

Depends on the type of failure and quality of components, build quality. Most tier A (and B+ for that matter) units should be pretty much on par with each other at that, there are a lot more lower quality or just old units in tier C and down. Overall, with modern PSUs (tier B+ and up), the probability of PSU taking down PC with it in case of failure should be rather low even compared to probability of any failure at all. But honestly i don't really know what should happen for that scenario to occur, maybe @jonnyGURU could help here ?

This should have been its own thread, BTW. 

 

Failure happens on the primary side:  Transformer typically isolates damage to the DC side.

 

Failure happens on the DC side:  All bets are off.

 

If you get a REALLY CHEAP PSU, then it continues to work and slowly kills all of your components between the range of 2 to 3 years.

[boghubodaghi]

On 5/11/2020 at 3:56 AM, Juular said:

And again, just because tier A+ exist it doesn't mean that all tier A+ units are better than A, it's a complementary tier (hence the +), if you disregard multirail - please do so. But a newbie coming here would see that tier A+ units are better at least when it's a high wattage PSU, that 650W number may be a bit higher honestly, about 850W but still.

Again, it's there because it fits there according to methodology. We're marking not so good units inside a tier with gray color now which still fit this tier otherwise, which you can see in the screenshot above but unless we'll make changes to methodology for voltage regulation (which seems to be main reason why you're talking about that bq! PSU at all here) - we can't move it down.

It seems clear to me that you agree that there's something wrong with the list and agree with me that this BQ shouldn't be higher on the list. But I also have to agree that making drastic changes isn't easy, but I'll try to give suggestions.

 

1. Yes, please do make the numbers higher. 850 W is more relevant.
2. Tighten the requirements for PSUs to go into tier A+. Ripple shouldn't be above 30mV, Vreg shouldn't be above 1.5%, etc. Since there isn't that much PSU over there, it will be much easier rather than making a completely new methodology from the grounds up. Either it goes down to tier A, or maybe it deserves a new Tier like "A+ minus" or something like that. I mean this tier should be the second best PSUs available on the market, so they better be ridiculously good.
3. Maybe I can help with collecting Aris' data, I'd actually love to help you guys if you need some.

[Juular]

@boghubodaghi Okay, a little update, after some internal talk it turned out that what Luke meant by 'Recommended for 650W+ systems' in tier A+ description actually means =>750W. And after some polls we decided to keep things as they're now, i.e not to raise this number to 850W and not to move lower wattage units from tier A+ to tier A. And while i were voting for 850W and to split off lower wattage units i understand the reasoning behind this. Even with lowest wattage PSUs, 450W, the difference between OCP on single and multi-rail units would be around 30% (35A vs 45A), it's already 40-70% on 550W and 60-100% on 650W. That's a lot of difference, and while there are no research to show at which currents multi-rail actually starts to matter, regardless, even lowest wattage PSU assuming it's already good enough electrically and costs the same as comparable single-rail unit would be better from safety perspective.

 

On second point, we already have those requirements for Gold color (again, shown in the above screenshots), there are quite a few of units that qualify for that so separating them to their own tiers doesn't make much sense perhaps (and we'll need to make yet another tier as there such units that are single-rail), but just differentiating them with different color would be more flexible way.

[gamer from the 3rd world]

Okay so my evga g1 is shit, that's why it failed two times in a couple of months

Should I go for gigabyte G750H 750w or Seasonic GM-750?

 

Guess gigabyte is better and also cheaper in my country

 

Edit: gigabyte is barely cheaper but I have to wait like a month cause of the virus. So if the seasonic is also tier A, I'll go for that