Are they any good or of bad quality? Just been offered a 500 W iGreen (or something like that) for £40 from a mate who bought it for a system but chose to use his old Seasonic S12. I ask because if I decide to build a system for me iin a few months then it would ocme in handy.
Most of Cooler Masters products are pretty good, I don't know personaly about the psu but I did look into it on some reviews and from what I saw most sites gave it 5 or 4 stars and from what I am reading about this psu it seems like a solid unit. Here are 2 of the reviews I read, take a look and hope it helps. http://www.modders-inc.com/reviews-story--54.html http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/iGreen/
Tbh PSU reviews mean very very little. It's probably an OK PSU. I doubt it would be terrible, CM wouldn't want to ruin their OK reputation like that. However don't expect anything better than a mid-range or decent low-end PSU.
Sorry Bindi, nothing personal, but I won't put much weight in it. I don't put much weight in any PSU review. PSU reviews never take reliability into account, nor the sample variance that seems remarkably common with PSU's. The most important thing about a PSU is how reliable it is, and since this is never taken into account in a review(for obvious reasons - it's not possible) reviews just aren't that useful.
I guess if you wanted something like that in a review, we'd be a year late (to make sure it gets a good run-in)... At that point the review becomes even more useless, as the product has already been discontinued.
Exactly, that's why I said it's impossible. The only way a PSU could be reliably tested by a site(imo) would be for them to have(at least) 20-40 heavily used systems all running the same PSU with different draws and configurations, for a year or so. By which time no-one would care about "just another whatever review" because there'd be a dozen others out of the same product already. I'm not dissing bit-tech here, I just don't think review sites can really tell consumers the most important thing about a PSU, which is how reliable it is. That can only really be garnered from monitoring forums and seeing how lots of people are getting on with them overall.
Well ehm... Tbh that's just stupid :/ Let it be that MAYBE reviews can't tell which PSU is reliable, but sure hell they can tell which ones are simply bad. Ripple voltages etc only get worse and if they are over the standards out of the box then one can imagine they won't atleast get any better in years of use. Ripple is just one example...
Yes, obviously they can tell some things. But the most important factor in any PSU purchase is "is this PSU likely to randomly die and take out half my components with it 6 months down the line". While PSU ripple and the general feel of the quality is going to give some indication, it's not the be all and end all of the matter. The most important factor in a PSU is reliability, and that cannot be propery measured by a single reviewer using a product for a week or two. But of course y'know, if you don't like that answer just feel free to substitute it for "you're stupid" and we can get on with the flame war
No I think it's now a good answer, the first impression was that you were telling that reviews are no good at all. Unfortunately I've seen such people and such speech kinda gets me off every time..
I think you should re-read my posts to be honest. I made my point clear throughout this thread that the problem with PSU reviews is the lack of ability to test for reliability. I also made it clear, I feel, that reliability is what I consider to be the most important thing in any PSU, and thus that PSU reviews could never address the most important factor of any PSU purcahse. I did not say that there is nothing in any PSU review that can be useful, I know full well there are plenty of details that it can be helpful to have and that can be taken from reviews.
But that's what good warranties are for And it applies to any product whether it's computation or not. No one can do good reliability testing unless that test a massive sample from many batches produced in different locations for an extended period I hope you warrant the review merit on its content and testing methods in the mean time, spec
Well, again I agree that reliability testing is extremely hard and generally not worth any company doing. Like I said, I'm not picking at bit-tech for this, just saying it's a problem when the most important thing in a product is that reliability. Warrenties of course cover a PSU dying, but they don't cover the 5 bits it took out with it, nor do they stop you being PC-less for 2-4 weeks as a company bothers to send you a replacement.
No no, I'm agreeing but also highlighting why we have a separate section for warranty information 2-4 weeks is a cynical overstatement. Enermax said they typically turn theirs around within a day of receiving it, 3 days at most and Nanopoint have something similar. If something dies and you loose PC/PC time it's a fact of life just like everything else tbh. You could just get a bad batch within a usually fantastic model? Life is luck of the draw.
to be fair if a PSU takes out components as it dies it HAS been badly designed. it is usually possible to make things fail gracefully
It was a problem a long time ago, but I've certainly popped PSUs with CrossFire and SLI in the more recent past and all components (apart from the PSU) have been fine.
That is maybe the main reason why I would never ever use an el-cheapo PSU on my main rig. I just don't want to believe that quality PSUs would take other hardware with them, not atleast in as many cases as the cheap ones do.
