Where I work, I am in a position to assemble a LOT of machines. When I started, I was quite concerned about the quality of power supplies being put into the lower end machines. Most of them had very unreliable 'Orion' units in them. I insisted we get something a bit more reliable and with better overall performance.
I'm ( in general ) a fan of Corsair and Seasonic units, but there weren't any in the budget ( it was a VERY tight budget ). I was forced to find something from our supplier that was in a price range I had serious doubts I could find a PSU of even 'okay' quality for. In the end I found a Coolermaster Eilte 420W(?) unit, and the Thermaltake TR2-430W. I tore them both down and put them through some demo builds, and saw what they were capable of. I came down on the side of the TR2-430W. I knew it wasn't great, but in the price bracket we were getting them at, I was pretty impressed. I was surprised I was able to get something that was 'okay' at that price.
To confirm my results I began scouring around review sites, and found a lot of reviews showing very different results than mine. I saw a couple tear downs as well, and there were inconsistencies between the unit I had in front of me, and the one these review sites were using. I chalked this up to maybe some confusion between the specific models. I trusted my results, and we've been using the TR2-430W for thousands of machines and they've been very reliable. No regrets. I never thought about the differences between the units we use and the ones on the review sites I visited.
Today I was working on a machine that was built some place else, and it had a Thermaltake TR2-430W in it that seemed very different than the ones I'd been using.
Here is the one in the mystery machine:
LINK
You can see it indicates that it is a TR2-430W with a part number of W0070RU
Here is the unit we've been using:
LINK
That also lists TR2-430W with a part number of W0070RU
They do have a slightly different model number. Ours being TR2-430NL2NC, and the mystery unit just being TR2-430NP. I thought it might be just an older version, but I did some more digging and contacted some others with these two pictures, and they say they still get the 430NP.
I then took to googling, and I came across THIS thread post on overclock.net.
Referencing the pictures from before, the UL number on mine is E303666 made by Thermaltake, whereas the other unit is E199442 made by a company called Compucase. Apparently, both units are still in circulation, and without very careful inspection they would be very difficult to differentiate. I'm not sure if this is a warning, a tale of caution, or what. However, I thought it was an interesting little tidbit. A tale of two almost identical low price power supplies that were actually VERY different. Now I'm not saying the TR2-430W we is is great ( I'm actually looking to see if I can get an evga 430W these days for a similar price ), but it is miles ahead of the unit that came across the bench today.
