Danger - High Voltage!


The readers of AnandTech have waited a long time for us to do real power supply reviews. The waiting has come to an end and we hope you will find the results to be worthwhile. In the near future we will begin publishing power supply reviews on a regular basis, with the goal of providing the detailed analysis and benchmarking results our readers have come to expect.

We know the AnandTech audience expects a high level of professionalism, and it took a while to put together the right equipment in order to provide that for PSU testing. To kick things off, we want to talk about each part of the equipment and how it will help us with the reviews. With a proper understanding of the equipment and testing methodology, we hope you will see what will make the AnandTech power supply reviews so special.

Why It is so Difficult to Test Power Supplies
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  • Adul - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - link

    I'd love to see a power supply catch fire :). Maybe one of the cheaper ones will break enough for this.
  • CrystalBay - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - link

    I would also like to see a short video of substandard PSU's lighting up...

    I'm sure many enthusiasts have had Dram's start flaming or smoke. But I have never had a PSU actually catch flame out....
  • Martimus - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - link

    I had a Antec NeoPower PSU spew black smoke. It was not fun. Also fried my motherboard. It was less than 6 months old too, and I wasn't using it at anywhere near it's supposed capacity.
  • BladeVenom - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - link

    quote:

    The bottom line is, a normal PC is just not enough to fully load a high-end power supply, and therefore it cannot be properly tested and surely not approved by such a configuration.


    Then test power supplies that are in the range that most people actually need. Also test some budget ones. Let's see which ones are good for the money, and which ones are fire hazards.
  • xsilver - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - link

    what is meant is that the idea of having a psu is NOT to load it to 100% capacity.
    and the problem being that it is very difficult to get a stable and repeatable psu testing setup.


    I highly recommend that industrial manufacturers be pointed out just like in xbit labs reviews. That way we will know that antec has 3 or more suppliers providing psu's and be able to tell the seasonics from the other crud ;)

  • Wesleyrpg - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - link

    hmm i wonder if thats why some people rave about Antec and some people like me curse them! I'd have to say Antec have the worst failure rate by far, probably at about 75% in the first year, where i can buy a $22 550W Generic (Honli) and only have about a 25% failure rate, maybe thats related to the power supplys released into australia by antec.
  • imaheadcase - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - link

    I kid! :P
  • gersson - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - link

    just a red 'X'
  • gersson - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - link

    nevermind -- working already :-)

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