Help on choosing a budget PSU that won't explode

[Elisis]

7 minutes ago, Eviljuche said:

Corsair went instead with a half-bridge topology and an LLC resonant converter, delivering way better performance than the double forward design. The CX units use similar design platforms, provided by CWT and Great Wall, though.

The platforms are alike in literally one way: Being LLC and DC-DC. If you even looked at the pictures you'd know Aris is just simplifying for the average interested reader.

[PMizuki]

may I ask about the A650GF then?

also it seems that I don't really belong in this conversation, I'll leave it to you all lol

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, Eviljuche said:

Well, from that sentence I can see that the author of that article thought that CX's platform are pretty CWT/Great Wall-ish. I guess that's a *FaKe NeWs* to say the least...

 

I guess that is not common for a US citizen to experience the complete disgust that Aerocool produces through all of the Asian countries. In many ways, Aerocool is like Apple, but its products are really bad. I am talking specifically about the ECO, VX, and the KCAS lineups. All of them (Especially VX and KCAS) are well known for fake 80+, exploding capacitors, burning wirings, fire accidents. But why do people buy them? Because Aerocool is trying really hard to create an illusion of a good PSU - they use gaming designs, RGB, braided coating on wires, even a detachable wires sometimes - Aerocool garbage looks like a Seasonic or even cooler - plus they have a massive PR campaigns all across the Internet, they sometimes even bribe the youtubers and the governmental structures. This all makes the Aerocool the single worst corporation on the market. No other PSU company are at that level of scumbagery as them. Just have a look at what they call a hardcore-gaming-ready PSU(And yes, that is a dead inflated capacitor just right above the burned coil):

What Aerocool is this?  Is this before or after the company was purchased by Caseking? 

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, PMizuki said:

may I ask about the A650GF then?

also it seems that I don't really belong in this conversation, I'll leave it to you all lol

That's by far the best unit you've mentioned so far.

 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Eviljuche said:

It is nowadays Aerocool. You can find ECO's, VX'es and KCAS'es in any store in CIS, Brazil, Indian Amazon, some of VX'es are even present at Spanish (An EU country!) Aerocool website.

I'm aware.  I was asking about the specific PSU in the picture.  It looks particularly crappy.  Of course, I also realize that Aerocool will change what's inside a year down the road so customers think they're getting one thing, but ends up with another.

 

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, Eviljuche said:

A couple of years ago it's design was better, a plain copy of a KCAS(which is also burns a lot), and newer revisions are getting worse. But it was always known for its bad, fast-degrading capacitors - its power pulsations on a 5V line are damaging the PC components

Yeah.  They're notorious for that.  I saw an Aerocool Integrator review on KitGuru.  Found it at a suspiciously low price, so I bought one to investigate.  Opened it up and the insides were completely different than the one in the KitGuru review.

 

[Guest]

Well, if you look at the label:

It only has CE (self declaration), FCC (EMI and RF testing only), C-tick (EMI and RF testing only), EAC (mafia scam) and IRAM (also mafia scam).

 

That means they didn't pay the Indian mafia, and they didn't pass testing for UK, Taiwan, China or Korea. 

[PMizuki]

oh, it seems the rosewill photon is actually tier B according to the PSU tier list

same tier as CX

conflicting information lol, are those bad or good

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, PMizuki said:

oh, it seems the rosewill photon is actually tier B according to the PSU tier list

same tier as CX

conflicting information lol, are those bad or good

That would be bad information.  CX is LLC with DC to DC.  Which is better than double forward.  CX-M is double forward with MOSFET SR.  Photon is double forward with Schottky diode SR.  Quite the difference.

[Elisis]

5 minutes ago, jonnyGURU said:

Photon is double forward with Schottky diode SR

Only >=850W models are double forward, no?

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, Elisis said:

Only >=850W models are double forward, no?

No.  That actually doesn't make sense.  Why would the <850W be LLC and the higher wattage DF?  Regardless, the Schottky diode SR is a big no from me.  It's just cheap on top of cheap.

 

[Elisis]

4 minutes ago, jonnyGURU said:

No.  That actually doesn't make sense.  Why would the <850W be LLC and the higher wattage DF?

I mean, that's what it looks like.

Photon 750 (https://web.archive.org/web/20200420074431/http://www.jonnyguru.com/blog/2014/12/15/rosewill-photon-750w-power-supply/5)

 

Photon 1200 (https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/rosewill-photon-1200-power-supply,4236-3.html)

[Sakee__]

36 minutes ago, Elisis said:

I mean, that's what it looks like.

Photon 750
(https://web.archive.org/web/20200420074431/http://www.jonnyguru.com/blog/2014/12/15/rosewill-photon-750w-power-supply/5)

 

Photon 1200
(https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/rosewill-photon-1200-power-supply,4236-3.html)

I would guess that the Photon 1200W transformer has the resonant tank built in, like this:

 

Apexgaming AG-850M
(https://www.techpowerup.com/review/apexgaming-ag-850m/4.html)

 

By the way, that's not the case:

 

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, Sakee__ said:

I would guess that the Photon 1200W transformer has the resonant tank built in, like this:

 

Apexgaming AG-850M
(https://www.techpowerup.com/review/apexgaming-ag-850m/4.html)

 

By the way, that's not the case:

 

So it's not really clear.  What platform is the Photon 850W the OP asked about using?

 

Regardless, the MSI is still the far superior choice.

 

[boghubodaghi]

1 hour ago, jonnyGURU said:

So it's not really clear.  What platform is the Photon 850W the OP asked about using?

 

Regardless, the MSI is still the far superior choice.

 

I know right, it is weird. But it seems to be the case. We know that 850W is most likely the same as the 1200W because the length and the switch at the back is different to the 750W (same as 1200W). 

 

Source:

 

https://www.rosewill.com/product-category/power-supplies/power-supply/

 

I agree on the MSI though.

[Juular]

8 hours ago, jonnyGURU said:

No.  That actually doesn't make sense.  Why would the <850W be LLC and the higher wattage DF?  Regardless, the Schottky diode SR is a big no from me.  It's just cheap on top of cheap.

I mean, it's Rosewill lol, and at the time it probably made way more sense, perhaps Sirfa just didn't have a high-wattage LLC resonant platform which is cheap enough at that.

And 550/650/750W are LLC resonant, High Power Astro Lite platform, Jeremy had a review on it (thankfully preserved by archive.org). It very old tho and i'd like to see if this is still true for current Photons but looking at exhaust grille shots on Newegg, it probably is.

But 850/1050/1200W are double forward, no resonant tank, there's CM6800.

[Juular]

11 hours ago, jonnyGURU said:

What Aerocool is this?  Is this before or after the company was purchased by Caseking? 

Aerocool is under Caseking now ? That's news to me. But then, Caseking has some real funky stuff under Xilence brand too so even if it was current Aerocool it wouldn't really surprise me. Edit: wait ... Xilence isn't Caseking is it ?

And yes, there's a reason this exists lol :

But really, people are buying dirt cheap PSUs and expecting them to be good ? That's not going to happen.

[Juular]

10 hours ago, Eviljuche said:

This is still true in lots of low-end PSU's, especially noname aliexpress ones. But there are still the examples of bad capacitors in PSUs sold by a huge brands - mostly, by Aerocool

There's a difference between 'bad aliexpress' capacitors and Teapos used in budget units from Sirfa. I'd understand expecting to find only expensive Japanese capacitors in high-end 150$+ stuff but in budget units if you're not gonna cheap out on capacitors, then you're gonna cheap out on something else, FETs for example, which are far more important, just look at what of a disaster Gigabyte P-GM is. Jon knows his stuff, and while i'm still not very positive about the Su'scon caps in RM 2019, time will tell if he's right that they're more than fine, Teapos/Capxcon/Elite are not as bad as some think, not anymore for quite some time already, 'capacitor plague' is gone.

[Juular]

15 hours ago, Eviljuche said:

Corsair is not good as a PSU manufacturer because it is *not*. Corsair sells PSUs from a company named CWT and just sticks the Corsair logo on these. This is an overprice for a brand. Thermaltake TR2 Bronze, CoolerMaster B Series are also made by CWT on the same platform and are cheaper - the only difference is that Corsair uses better fans - they buy them from thee same company that FSP does. In fact, these fans were originally created for an FSP PNR lineup, but then vent viral among all the Taiwanese PSU manufacturers These fans are the most pricey element of CX and sometimes are considered an overkill for that price range.

Literally cringed to death reading this by i assume, by this point you've been told that you're wrong multiple times already multiple times by other people including Jon himself.

I hear this a lot in Russian/Ukrainian PSU enthusiast circles, and the source they cite is always that cringy-ass YT'er - Nitroxsenys. CWT/Great Wall bad, Teapo/Capxcon bad, Seasonic/Super Flower good, all that stuff.

[Juular]

42 minutes ago, Eviljuche said:

Well, at least I said sorry and learned from my mistakes.

That's admirable indeed, you're on the right track.

42 minutes ago, Eviljuche said:

but is it worth the risk to recommend the PSU's you are afraid of?

I mean, if you believe that it's not worth it, certainly no. But there's a difference between 'i did my own research, read reviews and this PSU is not a good choice' and 'some YT'er told me that CWT PSUs bad and Seasonic are good' or even 'i don't know what it is and i'm too lazy to google around' types of 'afraid of'. And really it's not only a problem of CIS countries, the views on PSUs are fucked there, i know, i'm from Uzbekistan but in the rest of the world it's no better either. There are three types of people. Those who buy the cheapest 750-1000W stuff the can get their hands on regardless of how much the rest of their rig costs. Those who trust random YT opinion who tell them to either 'just get a 80+ Gold' PSU and then end-up with cheapest stuff like Gamemax PSUs, Gigabyte P-GM, Aerocool KCAS, EVGA GQ etc. or to 'just buy Seasonic PRIME' which costs like 3x of comparable alternatives. And those who actually at least try to do their own research, to understand what makes a good PSU, to read reviews and try to understand what they want and what the market offers, they don't necessarily end-up with the best picks either but the willingness to do it the right way is what makes a difference.

[PMizuki]

the MSI AGF seems to be the best, but is it overkill for my current setup? I know I shouldn't cheap out on my PSU, but is the agf a must have or could I get away with some of the worse ones I mentioned? (cx/cxm, photon, hydra m etc)

[IIIIIIIIII]

4 minutes ago, PMizuki said:

the MSI AGF seems to be the best, but is it overkill for my current setup? I know I shouldn't cheap out on my PSU, but is the agf a must have or could I get away with some of the worse ones I mentioned? (cx/cxm, photon, hydra m etc)

As long as you keep using the RX580, the CX450 is enough.

[PMizuki]

@jonnyGURU
Is LLC instead of double forward a nice to have or a must have?

[Guest]

13 hours ago, PMizuki said:

@jonnyGURU
Is LLC instead of double forward a nice to have or a must have?

Nice to have.  Especially if you're using a really high end GPU (like Radeon XT 6K or Ampere).

 

DC to DC on the +3.3V and +5V is a more important feature.