Knock off PSU's

[Yorkshire19931]

This isn't a post looking for help, I just want to know what everybody else has to say about this. 

 

 I got my first desktop late last year. It was advertised on Facebook of all places for £95, I got it for £90. It was advertised as a gaming PC, and once I put a GPU in it (Nvidia Geforce GTX750ti) it's actually not bad at all, despite having a really dated card. With this been my first desktop, and also the first PC I'd opened up and messed around inside apart from my laptops, it was all new to me. One thing was glaringly obvious from the beginning. The PSU was some real cheap nasty piece of crap, I'll try and upload a screenshot of it from my phone. Anyway, it was apparently a CIT Pemtium Model 500U, and that's not a typo.

 

 When I got a new case for my PC, I took the power supply out to put in my new case and it was really light, the wires were all red yellow and black, nasty cheap casing, and it just felt fake. 

 

 Fast forward to the day after getting my new case and the old Power supply thankfully wouldn't reach from the bottom of the case to the mobos power socket at the top right so I got a new one, a Corsair CV450 and immediately it became clear just how bad that old power box was. The new one is obviously much better quality, it's weighty and all the wires are black, and theyre in some sort of black netting presumably for tidiness. 

 

 I'm surprised that thing had lasted long enough to make it as far as being sold, let alone running a PC most days.

 So yeah, I was browsing this forum and decided I wanted to post this story with a picture of it to see what everyone else has to say about it.

 

 Anybody else got bad PSU tales? 

 

[Radium_Angel]

Some years ago, I had a pre-built with an Athlon x4 (IIRC) and it had a PSU that weighed (EDIT: typo) about an ounce short of nothing at all.

It gamed, and never ever gave me issues, but I was surprised it didn't, that PSU was juuuuUUUUuunnnnk!

[Yorkshire19931]

5 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Some years ago, I had a pre-built with an Athlon x4 (IIRC) and it had a PSU that weighed (EDIT: typo) about an ounce short of nothing at all.

It gamed, and never ever gave me issues, but I was surprised it didn't, that PSU was juuuuUUUUuunnnnk!

I don't know how companies can get away with manufacturing something so close to being an actual safety issue, if not being in the realms of actual danger. No more junk!!

[Radium_Angel]

Probably buried in the manual is "not to be used for gaming purposes" 

It'll pass a UL test (or european equivalent) and they'll call it good to go. Buyer beware, just like this:

 

 

 

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Yorkshire19931 said:

I don't know how companies can get away with manufacturing something so close to being an actual safety issue, if not being in the realms of actual danger. No more junk!!

They are safety issues.  That's why there's no safety certifications on that CIT power supply you used to have.

 

They get away with it because people let them.  People would rather spend $100 on a decent PSU than a few thousand on a lawyer to take them to court.  It's going to take a class action lawsuit, but then how do you do that across multiple countries?

 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

It'll pass a UL test (or european equivalent) and they'll call it good to go. 

 

No.  No it wouldn't.  That's why there ARE no logos on that PSU.

 

"CE" doesn't count.  It's self declared.  If they get busted, they just take it off.

 

[Yorkshire19931]

6 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Probably buried in the manual is "not to be used for gaming purposes" 

It'll pass a UL test (or european equivalent) and they'll call it good to go. Buyer beware, just like this:

 

 

 

Anything a product is not fit for, in this case a PSU not fit for gaming, these things should be made very clear, not hidden somewhere that companies know most people won't read thoroughly. For decency as well as safety

[Radium_Angel]

Just now, Yorkshire19931 said:

For decency as well as safety

In theory, I fully agree with you. In reality...money trumps decency for many people, and there are plenty of people out there who wont understand tech, and wouldn't know what to look for, so shady companies thrive...

[Yorkshire19931]

8 minutes ago, jonnyGURU said:

They are safety issues.  That's why there's no safety certifications on that CIT power supply you used to have.

 

They get away with it because people let them.  People would rather spend $100 on a decent PSU than a few thousand on a lawyer to take them to court.  It's going to take a class action lawsuit, but then how do you do that across multiple countries?

 

I get that. It all seems like one big grey area to be honest 

[Yorkshire19931]

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

In theory, I fully agree with you. In reality...money trumps decency for many people, and there are plenty of people out there who wont understand tech, and wouldn't know what to look for, so shady companies thrive...

Money will always rule and its us at the bottom, the consumers of dodgy products that are the ones left to deal with the aftermath unfortunately 

[Yorkshire19931]

1 hour ago, Caroline said:

This is something I did once without thinking it could be done for really dark purposes.

 

So a friend of mine comes with a dead AX760, not sure where he got it but it was surely dead as we tested it thoroughly -if you don't know that was a really high end PSU some years ago- so I said we shouldn't toss it away just like that and decided to get the main board out and it was at that time when the idea came to my mind: WHAT IF... I make a transplant, I got a junk PSU out of its box and started working on it, all of the ATX PCBs are roughly the same size so I had no problems to fit it inside the AX case, after that I just had to cut off all connectors and solder each one of the wires to the smaller board, called my friend to test it out on a computer and it worked, he had a shitty computer at that time (with a shittier PSU) so we just installed it on his computer, it looked weird as it was apparently a super high end PSU with a dual core Athlon and a GT9400 iirc.

 

I then realised I could've just sold that thing as a real AX760 to some naive gamer, on the outside it looked legit and my soldering inside wasn't too bad lol. Guess being a scammer isn't on my mind.

 

  Hide contents

Don't tell Jon I made a fake Corsair PSU with junk parts lol

 

Oh, about the CE:

Yeah that's some scammer type work right there haha,  but it's good to hear you never did this. And as for the C E Mark, I never realised how different they actually were when placed next to each other. Il have to try and remember this, it may come in handy one day 

[danalog]

That "PEMTIUM" hit different... I literally laughed at that, which is pretty rare.

Man, that's funny.

Anyway, yeah, there are probably like 10 factories in the world that make PSUs, and it's pretty cheap for a tiny, nothing company to buy up 10,000 and slap their logo on them, sell them to OEMs...

[Yorkshire19931]

7 hours ago, Mel0nMan said:

That "PEMTIUM" hit different... I literally laughed at that, which is pretty rare.

Man, that's funny.

Anyway, yeah, there are probably like 10 factories in the world that make PSUs, and it's pretty cheap for a tiny, nothing company to buy up 10,000 and slap their logo on them, sell them to OEMs...

Its amazing isn't it haha, I wonder what other Pemtium pc parts are out there waiting to be found. For a small company to buy a load up and put there logo on them surely they check these products first to make sure they're acceptable to use

[H713]

On 6/15/2021 at 3:15 PM, jonnyGURU said:

They are safety issues.  That's why there's no safety certifications on that CIT power supply you used to have.

 

They get away with it because people let them.  People would rather spend $100 on a decent PSU than a few thousand on a lawyer to take them to court.  It's going to take a class action lawsuit, but then how do you do that across multiple countries?

 

 

It's a much wider problem than just computer power supplies, however.

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, H713 said:

 

It's a much wider problem than just computer power supplies, however.

Yes.  Point?

 

Guacamole flavored Tostitos that don't contain actual guacamole get more attention than PSUs that blow up in your face and start fire.  Doesn't change anything by saying "there's a wider problem".