Best PSU now days?

[neufuse Veteran]

I've bought Corsair PSU's for a while now, haven't bought a new one since 2018, just been reusing it but it's probably time with my new build to get a newer one, PSU's don't last forever..

with that said, What is good now days? anything to look for or look out for? My goal is to eventually power maybe a nVIDIA 4090 (dreaming, probably will be a 4070.......) but just incase I want to size it good enough... Is Corsair still ok? anything better?

[adrynalyne]

I am a huge fan of SeaSonic.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

I have had good results with power supply units (PSUs) from EVA, Seasonic and Superflower. 

If you do intend to use an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 video card with the PSU at some point, I would suggest getting an ATX 3.0 compliant PSU which is compatible with the PCIe 5.0 specification and has a dedicated 12VHPWR connector to power a high-end video card (versus using three 8-pin PCIe power connectors with an adapter cable).

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky
 

[Ixion]

Corsair are still good, other notable brands are BeQuiet! (more so if you're based in Europe), Seasonic and the higher end Asus units. A 4070 and a 4090 are vastly different when it comes to power requirements, a 4070 will happily run on a 750W power supply whereas for a 4090 you're looking at a good 1000-1200W power supply!

If you want the current Rolls Royce of Power supplies it would be the Corsair AX1600i but the extra money is probably better spent on a GPU

[hellowalkman Reporter]

Hard to say which is the absolute best since it all depends on various factors like budget, the OEM, etc.

However, one thing I would add is that Seasonic, which previously used to be the gold standard, has been known to be faltering recently (more bad reports and RMAs than they previously used to have). That doesn't mean its PSUs are completely terrible now, just not as good as they once were.

[Tidosho]

On 30/01/2023 at 08:59, hellowalkman said:

Hard to say which is the absolute best since it all depends on various factors like budget, the OEM, etc.

However, one thing I would add is that Seasonic, which previously used to be the gold standard, has been known to be faltering recently (more bad reports and RMAs than they previously used to have). That doesn't mean its PSUs are completely terrible now, just not as good as they once were.

A lot of brands aren't what they used to be. A lot of cost cutting, Chinese outsourcing, and big names becoming nothing but Chinese owned faceless brands, going on in these troubled times. For example, I use Verbatim Bluray M-Discs to archive data, and there's been reports that Verbatim are sneakily using cheaper dye in these discs, which are supposed to last 1,000 years.

Brand loyalty isn't what it used to be. In my wise years, I now know that it is silly being brand loyal. The companies don't care about you, only the bottom line in this capitalist world. As far as PSU's, I still use an AeroCool Integrator 800W PSU in my old i7 6700K which hasn't faltered or blown up yet. I was expecting it to kill its output caps, or blow up within a year, but 6 years later, still solid, even gaming, used frequently. The SeaSonic PSU I bought with it as a standby PSU is still boxed, unused

As for the failure rate and reports, the bathtub curve is a good benchmark  It'll either die new, live a bit of a life, or die really old, or somewhere between. In my old age I've learnt that everything that COMES from the Earth, goes BACK to the Earth at some point. Or becomes drink cans, lol!

[neufuse Veteran]

yeah that's why I am asking, things have changed a lot in the past few years, Corsair always worked great for me PSU wise, just scared to put a few hundred into a PSU and have it be meh.. want something that can last me a couple CPU Generations

[hellowalkman Reporter]

what do you mean by " a couple CPU Generations"? do you want it to last for like 3-5 years, like say with Zen 4 and Zen 5? Also do you want to cover upcoming GPU generation too? like a 5090 after a 4090 as well?

[mkol]

seasonic the best

[neufuse Veteran]

On 30/01/2023 at 09:45, hellowalkman said:

what do you mean by " a couple CPU Generations"? do you want it to last for like 3-5 years, like say with Zen 4 and Zen 5? Also do you want to cover upcoming GPU generation too? like a 5090 after a 4090 as well?

I always used Intel (Except a couple Amd's i got recently) so a generation to me is like an intel revision 12000 to 13000 etc

[WaRRioR]

I updated 6 months ago and grabbed a Corsair RM850x (modular), 10 year warranty and it is quiet and works flawless.

Gives me lots of room for advancement if required.

[ThaCrip]

On 29/01/2023 at 22:08, adrynalyne said:

I am a huge fan of SeaSonic.

I agree 100%!

because at least when I bought my current Seasonic 520 watt in Nov 2012 (which is the first Seasonic PSU I ever owned), after doing research at the time, they seemed to be one of the best all-around/reliable PSU's and so far my opinion of them is quite high because it's still working in my main PC, which runs pretty much 24/7, and it's now 10 years and 2 months and counting (I had my current main PC's motherboard/CPU/RAM since May 2012).

it's now exceeded the warranty length by 5 years and 2 months (and counting) where as my previous PSU's, at least my two most recent PSU's prior to the Seasonic, failed around 1 year after warranty end of which case all of previous PSU's I have bought only had a 2-3 year warranty. like my two most recent PSU's prior to the current Seasonic are...

-Rosewill (nothing fancy as it's only a 2 year warranty. but it seemed okay and the price was right at the time I got it, so I took a chance. this was on my current main PC's motherboard from May 2012 (this Rosewill PSU I got probably about early 2010 as it was originally powering my current backup computer which was my main PC at the time) until it died in Nov 2012 when I got my current Seasonic)

-Enermax (paid I think about $120 for this in March 2006 (it was supposed to be good at the time) and it came with 3 year warranty. it probably failed about early 2010 since warranty would have been from March 2006 until March 2009, so it had to be sometime after this point when it failed when I got the Rosewill PSU listed above)

any further back than that we are talking a computer from 2001 (I had PC's since 1995), of which I did replace this PC's PSU once I think. but prior to this setup, so computers I bought in 1995(Packard Bell)/1996(Packard Bell)/2000(Emachines), I never had to replace the PSU's on those. hell, the one from 2000 was a cheap Emachines PC, as surprisingly, that thing lasted a long time as I ended up sitting it to the road (I kept it's small 10GB or so HDD though) purely because it was too slow (500MHz Celeron CPU) even though it still worked. I still got the 2001 computer though (1.2GHz Athlon CPU etc which at the time was solid) even though I removed the motherboard from it I think in 2019, since I got a great price on a Seasonic 430watt PSU on Ebay (I want to say roughly $22 when it was probably worth about $40+ as shortly after I bought it, the seller raised price to $40 etc), which I used to revive my previous motherboard that was my main PC from March 2006 until May 2012. so that board collected dust in a box until about Jan 2019 as I used that Seasonic 430watt to revive it as it's currently my backup PC. because when I bought that Seasonic 430watt PSU at the time, I figured even if the computer I used it in gets outdated or dies out of no where (like motherboard failure etc), I could still always use that PSU as a backup for my primary PC in case my primary PC's Seasonic 520 watt ever fails.

but for me the bottom line is this when it comes to PSU's... the lesson I learned is, don't buy PSU's with less than a 5 year warranty as a general rule (and ill likely be sticking to Seasonic brand as a general rule when possible depending on prices etc).

p.s. it's been a while since I looked into PSU's but I would imagine nowadays it's probably more common to find PSU's with 5+ year warranties. but at the time I bought that Seasonic 520 watt with the 5 year warranty (Nov 2012), it seemed PSU's had 3 year warranties as the more common/typical standard warranty.

[neufuse Veteran]

yeah 10yr warranty is kinda a must, my current PSU in my main workstation I'm about to upgrade is going on 6yrs now? still works great but it's definitely aging

[hellowalkman Reporter]

how about a be quiet! dark power pro 12 1500w?

[C:Amie]

+1 for SeaSonic. I've had DOA's and terrible warranty experience with Corsair, to the extent that I'll never buy anything of theirs again.

 

Corsair by name, Corsair by nature.

[neufuse Veteran]

On 30/01/2023 at 14:36, C:Amie said:

+1 for SeaSonic. I've had DOA's and terrible warranty experience with Corsair, to the extent that I'll never buy anything of theirs again.

 

Corsair by name, Corsair by nature.

To be honest, I have corsair PSU's, corsair cases, corsair AIO coolers, and corsair memory, personally haven't had an issue with them at all, but I am open to try new, doing some research on seasonic now...

[bikeman25]

Always used up til 2018 was Antec Power supplys,  then finally got a real good quality one with EVGA G3 650 Watt,  eventually will upgrade it again i'm sure to support a future hopefully 40 seires graphics card or maybe 30 Series if i can't afford a 4060 in the future.       

Currently Powering An Intel 10700 with Arctic Freezer 7X,  32GB of Ram 2666mhz DDR4,  Gigabyte B460M-DS3H,   Nvidia EVGA 1660 Super 6GB video card,  M.2 500gb,  1 Storage drive (WD black 4TB) and  1 Game SSD 1TB, and 1 Wifi/bluetooth Card,  and powering various fans, and RGB Lights in the Thermaltake V200 TG RGB Case

Power supply using now previously powered  my old Asus I7 7700 Desktop--yes when i upgraded in 2020 to save money,  kept the same power supply bought in 2018 to use with the newer components

 

[C:Amie]

On 30/01/2023 at 21:51, bikeman25 said:

Always used up til 2018 was Antec Power supplys,  then finally got a real good quality one with EVGA G3 650 Watt,  eventually will upgrade it again i'm sure to support a future hopefully 40 seires graphics card or maybe 30 Series if i can't afford a 4060 in the future.       

Currently Powering An Intel 10700 with Arctic Freezer 7X,  32GB of Ram 2666mhz DDR4,  Gigabyte B460M-DS3H,   Nvidia EVGA 1660 Super 6GB video card,  M.2 500gb,  1 Storage drive (WD black 4TB) and  1 Game SSD 1TB, and 1 Wifi/bluetooth Card,  and powering various fans, and RGB Lights in the Thermaltake V200 TG RGB Case

Power supply using now previously powered  my old Asus I7 7700 Desktop--yes when i upgraded in 2020 to save money,  kept the same power supply bought in 2018 to use with the newer components

 

I used to be n the Antec train too, until they neigh on disappeared a few years back and you never hear of them now.

[dead.cell]

On 30/01/2023 at 14:46, neufuse said:

To be honest, I have corsair PSU's, corsair cases, corsair AIO coolers, and corsair memory, personally haven't had an issue with them at all, but I am open to try new, doing some research on seasonic now...

For what it's worth, I'm in the same boat as you (heh). Corsair case, AIO, and PSU to name a few... but if I had a 4090, I'd probably look at SeaSonic as well just for the surety behind them.

Corsair, even though my personal experience has been good, I've seen more mixed reviews on them recently... for whatever that's worth. Good luck!