How to determine if your POWERSUPPLY (purchase) is CRAP

[olafreinhardweyer]

Okay. This IS new terrain for me as i'm no technican but just a screenwriter-yet-not-in-hollywood :P

What writers are good at though is RESEARCH and today ... well, i got a new graphics card, need more power

now and was trying to figure out which PSU (Power Supply) to get. And which one could be any good.

I found out that silver certificates are in some cases merely downgraded-not-as-good gold PSUs and

i found out that all XFX Power Supplies are made by top notch Seasonic.

All of a sudden i found myself in a jungle of fake labels, some to my advantage, most not.

 

Enough blah, blah. The PSU you have has a so-called UL-Number.

It's an industry standard registration number with some US goverment office, i won't bore you

with the details. Lock at the pic below, to see how to find an UL-Number on an PSU.

 

http://media.bestofmicro.com/ul-number,0-K-255332-13.png

 

Now the following govermental site you can search for the manufacturer who is behind this number.

Scroll down the page until you find "BEGIN BASIC SEARCH". Than put your UL-Number into the

field "UL-File Number". HIT the search button.

 

ONLINE CERTIFICATION DIRECTORY:

 

http://database.ul.com/cgi-bin/XYV/template/LISEXT/1FRAME/index.html

 

If the UL-Number can't be found, it is a FAKE. I would say, the PSU you've choosen is already

not worth your trust. The same is true if you can't find that number on an PSU!

 

So now you know the manufacturer. How is that any help? You need not learn german just

read the manufacturers names on the last part of that site. Those are considered BAD:

 

http://www.tomshardware.de/Netzteil-OEM-Hersteller,testberichte-240604.html

 

 

And finally this link will show IN DETAIL which label/seller is behind which manufacturer an vice versa.

It's only brands and UL-Numbers so nobody should have any trouble reading it.

 

http://www.tomshardware.de/Netzteil-OEM-Hersteller,testberichte-240604-4.html

Well i hope this little article helps you when you start your own investigation in what PSU you should

get. Since i don't want to get into any trouble (Brands are mean an POWERful, LOL) i hope you

feel at least encouraged and don't get something what we in Germany refer to as "China-Boellers"

(China-manufactured Power-Supplies-which-will-give-you-impressive-graphic-explosions-on-and-of-

-the-screen.)

 

Best

 

Olaf

 

PS: Found out my current PSU is from Int*rtec. Am i glad to have reasons getting a new one.

[Bloodinfested]

Not sure if I put too much thought behind this also forgot about CA listing. A good example of why not to worry is home theater amps as some are listed with thx certified also many are not listed thx. Not that some of the ones that are not listed do not qualify but a simple fact that companies want to stay competitive and this thx certified stamped on it extremely drives up the unit price. UL CA listed products are nice to know that it meets with the basic standard requirements and in some cases are necessary like in construction but the listing cost money on products. For the most part power is power and electronics are rated for x amount of hours lifetime.. if your really concerned about your power you will invest into a line conditioners/isolation transformer that will provide clean power before it even goes into your power supply. Not many ppl think about how dirty house power can be as they plug stuff in and say its all good. This can also improve your amount of hour lifetime you get out of electronics.

[Thandal]

Some notes to clarify/expand on this topic.

 

1) The Underwriters Laboratories is not a government agency. It's an independent lab established and funded by insurance underwriters to evalaute products for their (insurance company) clients, who in turn insure the manufacturers.

 

2) "Underwriters Listed" (the "UL") certificate means that the item in question has been evlauated by the lab and meets the SAFETY specs for what it claims to do. (That usually includes the performance specs for things like power supplies, but might not.)

 

3) "Registered with Underwriters Laboratories" (the "backwards RU") certificate means that the manufacturer has submitted samples of the product for evaluation in order to have it "listed", but doesn't want to wait on the results before selling it anyway. The backlog for testing of electrical components can stretch to over a year...

[evilneko]

See if your PSU shows up on this list. If it doesn't, consider replacing it with one that does. Over the life of your computer it could pay for itself a couple or more times over. Well, depending on how long you keep it I guess. If I had known about this when I built my system, the PSU would've paid for itself about sometime last year even if it only saved me 40W per day.

[Vindekarr]

Well, being energy efficient gets pretty important when you start using an 800-1100w PSU. I dont even want to think about the running costs of my 1100 if it wasnt optimised for effiency... gasguzzler.