80 Plus rating, better now?

[LeRoy_Blanchard]

I remember reading an old article on [H] about how 80 Plus ratings aren't a good indicator of whether or not a PSU is a good one or not.

I went looking for the article, but seems Kyle didn't keep an archive of the old articles.

Link to thread: https://hardforum.com/threads/why-80-plus-r-is-irrelevant-to-you-when-buying-a-psu-h.1640990/
Link to article from waybackmachine: https://web.archive.org/web/2011100.../04/80_plus_irrelevant_to_you_when_buying_psu

Any new thoughts on this or is that article still relevant?

 

[Brian_B]

I’ve never put any stock into it, but have no data to quantify that

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

Calling @Paul_Johnson. If anyone knows it would be him.

 

[Endgame]

My go to plan for power supply selection:

1) Identify system load
2) Buy highest 80+ rated seasonic power supply to match step 1

Ex, my most recent system got a 1000 watt seasonic titanium as I expected the continuous load to be around 500 watts when running folding@home and Boinc 24x7x365.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

For personal use, I've been sticking with 80+ 1000-1200 watt gold/platinum Corsair's for just over 10 years now. They usually pass Paul's tests (just barely), but have done exceedingly well for me So well in fact that I retired an old 1200W just to be on the safe side after using it for over 10 years in many different builds.

I've still got a 1200W one in the old x79 rig (has mostly existed as a gaming rig with an OC'd 4300K that used SLI + PhysX cards at one point), and last year was used for mining with ~900W-1000W TDP from 4 cards) that's about 4+ years old now and then the 1000W in the x570 rig that's about 3+ which is feeding a 3090 Ti and the 5800X3D.

There's a pretty good chance I'll change things up in the next year or so when I move to a 16-pin PSU just to try something different. Hopefully, Seasonic will have an offering by then as they've been high on my list of companies to check out for some time now.

 

[Brian_B]

My go to plan for power supply selection:

1) Identify system load
2) Buy highest 80+ rated seasonic power supply to match step 1

Ex, my most recent system got a 1000 watt seasonic titanium as I expected the continuous load to be around 500 watts when running folding@home and Boinc 24x7x365.

This is pretty much my process as well. My only change is that I ignore the 80+ rating and go by budget. If I can afford a more efficient or nicer PSU, I do, but I have several systems running basic Seasonics with ~just~ bronze ratings that have done well for years.

 

[Dan_D]

I've literally never given two squirts of piss about efficiency ratings on power supplies. I don't care about them at all. Nor do I care if manufacturers are being truthful about them or not. All I care about is that the PSU has the wattage I need and its a quality unit that won't die prematurely or worse yet, die and take other hardware with it. A good unit is something you should be able to throw into your machine and forget about for at least five years beyond blowing dust out of it every so often.

 

[Grimlakin]

Yea I had a corsair for a LONG time before I got my EVGA but this time I decided to go platinum because I wanted it to last through the next peak in power use by video cards. Still waiting to see how that turns out.

 

[Niner51]

I just buy for the wattage I need and stick with companies I have never had any issues with (Corsair, Seasonic, and EVGA). Antec was my go to years ago until they got bought out (or whatever happened with them).

 

[DrezKill]

I went looking for the article, but seems Kyle didn't keep an archive of the old articles.

Yeah I was bummed about that too, when I tried looking for a few articles a year or two ago.

seasonic

Yupz.

There's a pretty good chance I'll change things up in the next year or so when I move to a 16-pin PSU just to try something different. Hopefully, Seasonic will have an offering by then as they've been high on my list of companies to check out for some time now.

My current Seasonic-built Corsair PSU has been in use in 2010. I'm due for a new system, which I would like to handle next year, and I've been waiting on that to jump to a new ATX 3.0 PSU with that new 16-pin connector. Also by then we should have a good idea of how much power the new generation GPUs are drinking.

I got this problem. There are plenty of good PSU models, but I have a hard time buying anything else when Seasonic is available. If I'm not mistaken, Seasonic is the only company (or one of the very few) who supplies reviewers with retail stock instead of hand-picked review units, so the reviewers test the same sh1t available to regular consumers.