EVGA W1 500W power supply. Not as bad as people make it out to be. 1 year review

[AndreiArgeanu]

1 year ago I was making myself a cheap build and I was looking to get a power supply since the 240W included in the Optiplex I got wasn't enough. I looked and found the EVGA W1 500W, a pretty cheap power supply at the time. Asking around the forum about it, most people say it's, bad, crap and what not, and I wouldn't have got it if it weren't for a great deal I got locally. I ended up getting the PSU for 10£ brand new in box with wrapping and everything.

 

And I installed it in a system with a GTX 770 and i5-3570(not exactly low power component). And 1 year later I haven't encountered any issues with the power supply. It has worked perfectly since I got it, no weird noises, no blue smoke, no sparks and no instability, and it still continues to serve me well to this day.

 

I'm not exactly surprised to see that products aren't as bad as people make them out to be, but it really goes to show how easily people can be misled by the Tier Lists on the forum.

[Aereldor]

Glad it works for you, and it's a good deal at $10, but this doesn't really make it a good power supply. 

 

First off, it's worked fine for one year, but it's on a three year warranty. 

 

Second, your experience - and I'm glad it's positive - has a sample size of one, which doesn't tell us much about the failure rate. I'm sure there's a guy somewhere who had a SeaSonic Focus Platinum blow up in his face, but if that's the only failure out of a million units sold, still a great buy. 

 

I know plenty of people who bought no-name sketchy grey/beige power supplies for $5. I could choose to judge by the people who haven't had problems and are happy with them, or by the significant portion of buyers who literally set fire to their PCs because they bought an unreliable power supply and paid for it with the destruction of their PCs.

[BillNyeThecommieSpy]

that's because you're running Ivy, and therefore, don't have to deal with c6/c7 sleep states. If you had anything haswell and up, your groupreg would have a field day coming out of teh c7 sleep states, seeing that it lacks UVP

[boggy77]

that's not how it works though. lower tier units have a higher chance of failing. just because yours didn't fail within 1 year doesn't mean anything. 

a tier A unit has more protections and a lower chance of  failing during its warranty period. it also has a longer warranty.

tier D units tipically have less protections (failures would be more catastrophic), are more likely to fail during their warranty, and also have a shorter warranty.

 

so yes, it's normal your W1 didn't fail within it's first year. it probably has a 10% chance of failing per year, or something like that. If it fails, though, it might take the motherboard or gpu with it.

a good tier A unit might have a 1% chance of failure per year and that failure is less likely to affect other components.

[BillNyeThecommieSpy]

saying that a groupreg is good for anything above ivy, or even that, is rather odd

[WereCatf]

10 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

And 1 year later I haven't encountered any issues with the power supply. It has worked perfectly since I got it, no weird noises, no blue smoke, no sparks and no instability, and it still continues to serve me well to this day

I don't mean to diss on you, but "it has worked fine for one year" isn't much of a review. With a PSU-review, I'd expect to see details on how well it handles loads at its maximum and minimum loads, the amount of voltage-ripple, thermals and such aspects.

14 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

I'm not exactly surprised to see that products aren't as bad as people make them out to be, but it really goes to show how easily people can be misled by the Tier Lists on the forum

Personally, I don't ascribe to that PSU tier-list and how people are painting anything except the bestest of best PSUs as 100% certain firebombs just waiting to happen within days of purchase -- hell, some people go so far as to make it sound as if the PSU will burst into flames even while it's still in its original packaging, unopened! I rather read reviews from sources who have properly calibrated load-tests, thermally-controlled spaces for testing and proper equipment for measurements.

[alirafi321]

8 minutes ago, boggy77 said:

that's not how it works though. lower tier units have a higher chance of failing. just because yours didn't fail within 1 year doesn't mean anything. 

a tier A unit has more protections and a lower chance of  failing during its warranty period. it also has a longer warranty.

tier D units tipically have less protections (failures would be more catastrophic), are more likely to fail during their warranty, and also have a shorter warranty.

 

so yes, it's normal your W1 didn't fail within it's first year. it probably has a 10% chance of failing per year, or something like that. If it fails, though, it might take the motherboard or gpu with it.

a good tier A unit might have a 1% chance of failure per year and that failure is less likely to affect other components.

u r a 100% correct , but imagine spending 50 - 100 $ on a psu when the cpu costs less than the psu.... in this situation i see that its not a bad decision , but if it was on something more expensive like gtx 900 series or something above then its not recommended to get a W1 psu
(btw im a mad man so dont take my words completely lol)

[boggy77]

4 minutes ago, alirafi321 said:

u r a 100% correct , but imagine spending 50 - 100 $ on a psu when the cpu costs less than the psu.... in this situation i see that its not a bad decision , but if it was on something more expensive like gtx 900 series or something above then its not recommended to get a W1 psu
(btw im a mad man so dont take my words completely lol)

yeah usually I advise people to spend around 10% of their pc budget on the psu. kind of like an insurance policy.

[WereCat]

I used to have a Mercury PSU in a very old PC. That PSU worked for years just fine but all of the other components always misteriously died within 2 years. 

[Fatih19]

1 hour ago, WereCat said:

I used to have a Mercury PSU in a very old PC. That PSU worked for years just fine but all of the other components always misteriously died within 2 years. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQoRXhS7vlU