Contents
Introduction
One of the most common mistakes that system builders make is building a powerful gaming PC using expensive components, but then using a cheap power supply. One of the more common excuses I hear for this practice is “There’s nothing wrong with generic units. A 500W power supply is a 500W power supply. Why fork out $100 for a 500W PC Power and Cooling unit when surely, that $30 TaiwanBreakDownComponents Company 500 Watter will be just fine?” Well, let’s find out if they are really the same, shall we? I’ve got 8 cheap units lined up for testing. Our contenders for this round up are:
- Besta PT-500
- Powertek International PTI-400AR-T
- Sun Pro ATX-550W
- Hairong ATX-430WA
- Xsonic SZ-450W P4
- Ultrix 450UF
- Golden Field ATX-S500
- Okia 420ATX
Each one will go through the same testing procedure as a more expensive unit, which, as you should know by now, involves starting at around 120W of load and increasing the load by 50W or so for subsequent tests and measuring it’s performance during the tests. I’ll be using the old 1-page format here, just so it won’t take you all day to read.
OK, so without further ado, on we go.
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