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The Swamp
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PC Power Supply Market

Sat May 23, 2020 4:15 pm

Power supplies are getting really hard to find. Anyone else having trouble? My current power supply is about 7 years old and I'm looking to put it on backup duty. But NewEgg, Amazon, B&H have nothing in their inventories. Any advice?
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Sat May 23, 2020 4:30 pm

I imagine all of the factories in China were operating at reduced capacity or completely shut down because of COVID-19. At this point you probably just need to wait it out until the supply chain catches back up.

Edit: Jeez, you aren't kidding. Pretty slim pickings over at Amazon. Refurbs and off-brand units... if you want to wait a week or more for them to be back in stock. That's grim.
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Sat May 23, 2020 5:36 pm

Newegg still has a fair number, but for some reason more than half of their stock displayed after initial filtering requires you got click the "view details..." button before you can then add it to your cart.
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The Swamp
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Sat May 23, 2020 5:51 pm

It's been on my mind for a while now that I really needed to go ahead and upgrade my power supply. I realized my current PSU has been in service since 2013. I started looking at units from Corsair and Seasonic. Amazon had almost nothing in stock, which I thought was a bit odd. I checked NewEgg and they are back ordered on most of their inventory. Even B&H and Best Buy have almost no inventory. You can still find the ultra-expensive PSUs in stock, but I'm not paying $400 for one. Not when really nice 750w units were going for $90 a few months ago.

I guess you're right, I'm going to have to table the idea for now until inventory returns. MicroCenter has their in-house brand in stock, but the reviews on them are a bit mixed. I'd really rather wait for a Seasonic.
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Sat May 23, 2020 7:47 pm

My HX650 (first gen) has been in service for almost 10 years. And at most I would be on 50% load. So I think my unit can last a bit longer?
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The Swamp
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Sat May 23, 2020 8:39 pm

Flying Fox wrote:
My HX650 (first gen) has been in service for almost 10 years. And at most I would be on 50% load. So I think my unit can last a bit longer?


I'm not having any issues and my current PSU has always been hooked up to a UPS backup. So, it's always gotten clean power and well protected from any kind of power spike. It's a Rosewill unit. It replaced a Power PC & Cooling unit that I bought in 2005. That was back when they were still real PPC&C units before the company got bought out by OCZ. I had a lot of very bad luck with a first generation OCZ SSD. I was bummed out to hear that PCP&C had been bought out, given their PSUs were about as solid as they got.

I didn't realize my current PSU was as old as it is. I don't feel great knowing that I don't have a backup, and if this one were to die on me suddenly, my workstation would be down for several days while waiting for Amazon Prime, which has gone from 2 day shipping to 10 day shipping. It's been a long time since I've bought one, so I wasn't expecting to not be able to buy one. Unless I want to drop some major coin for a massively overkill PSU. Interestingly, RAM prices and availability don't seem to be nearly as affected as PSUs are.
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Sat May 23, 2020 8:45 pm

Could be a matter of where RAM is manufactured. Maybe more of the production capacity was away from the COVID-19 hot spots.

Also, I imagine building PSUs still involves a fair bit of manual labor, whereas DIMM production lines are more automated.
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The Swamp
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Sat May 23, 2020 8:57 pm

It looks like I can get another PPC&C unit if I want to. It looks like OCZ sold off their PSU line some time ago to another outfit. Reviews seem a bit mixed, far more so than for, say, Corsair or Seasonic. Sigh, what would you do?
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Sat May 23, 2020 9:08 pm

He's dead, Jim. OCZ killed the PCP&C we used to know and love.
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The Swamp
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Sat May 23, 2020 9:14 pm

They now seem to be made by a company called High Power. But, it's apparently a better design. Just going by what I'm reading in some reviews I found. After OCZ bought them, they really seemed to kinda fall off the map for a long time. By then OCZ had a pretty bad rep. That Turbo Cool PSU I bought back in 2005 was a tank. When it died back in 2013, I was able to send it back to have it refurbished, I liked it so much. It's now in the rig I built using the parts you sold me a couple of years ago. So, that means a new PSU for me for my current build.

So, who am I going with for my new PSU? One of the usual favorites?
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Mon May 25, 2020 2:49 pm

Seasonic seemed to take the reins from PC Power and Cooling. Some of the Corsair units are pretty solid. Emermax is either hit or miss.
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The Swamp
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Mon May 25, 2020 6:59 pm

Enermax is a name I've forgotten about. I never see anything offered by them anymore. I remember when they were the top choice for power supplies around 1999-2000. They made a 300W unit that was awesome. I went through a time when I bought a lot of Antec units, but they were not that reliable. Lot of them died after a couple of years. I stopped using them because they just didn't last that long. That was probably around the time I got the Turbo Cool and didn't need another power supply for eight years.
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Mon May 25, 2020 7:21 pm

The Swamp wrote:
Enermax is a name I've forgotten about. I never see anything offered by them anymore. I remember when they were the top choice for power supplies around 1999-2000. They made a 300W unit that was awesome. I went through a time when I bought a lot of Antec units, but they were not that reliable. Lot of them died after a couple of years. I stopped using them because they just didn't last that long. That was probably around the time I got the Turbo Cool and didn't need another power supply for eight years.

Antec's PSU line got hit pretty hard by the capacitor plague. I had a few of them die that way.
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The Swamp
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Mon May 25, 2020 7:49 pm

just brew it! wrote:
The Swamp wrote:
Enermax is a name I've forgotten about. I never see anything offered by them anymore. I remember when they were the top choice for power supplies around 1999-2000. They made a 300W unit that was awesome. I went through a time when I bought a lot of Antec units, but they were not that reliable. Lot of them died after a couple of years. I stopped using them because they just didn't last that long. That was probably around the time I got the Turbo Cool and didn't need another power supply for eight years.

Antec's PSU line got hit pretty hard by the capacitor plague. I had a few of them die that way.


Ah, of course. I remember that. I had several motherboards (Albatron) that ended up with leaky caps, including the Abit BX-133 board you brought back to life. Reminds me of the old Addtronic cases that were all the rage for the modders back then. Terrible airflow, but huge.
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Redocbew
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Tue May 26, 2020 2:52 am

I got a PSU from Silverstone on Amazon a few days ago. Stock has indeed been pretty thin. Amazon's tagline of "we don't know when or if this will be back in stock" used to mean the thing was dead and probably not coming back, but recently it's been a temporary thing that'll show up for a day or two until they get more stock from somewhere and then it disappears.
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Tue May 26, 2020 5:15 am

Redocbew wrote:
I got a PSU from Silverstone on Amazon a few days ago. Stock has indeed been pretty thin. Amazon's tagline of "we don't know when or if this will be back in stock" used to mean the thing was dead and probably not coming back, but recently it's been a temporary thing that'll show up for a day or two until they get more stock from somewhere and then it disappears.

I wasn't entirely happy with the one Silverstone PSU I've owned. It worked well enough as far as powering the PC went, but it exhibited audible inductor whine when the system was at certain levels of load. I eventually swapped it out for something quieter (a Corsair, IIRC).
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The Swamp
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Tue May 26, 2020 6:48 am

I think I'm going to hold out for a Seasonic, although I have no idea how long that's going to be. I'd rather get what I'm looking for instead of settling and then still having to get something better when they become available. I'm hopeful it won't be like the video card market during the Bitcoin mining craze.
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Tue May 26, 2020 6:52 am

The Swamp wrote:
I'm hopeful it won't be like the video card market during the Bitcoin mining craze.

I doubt it'll be like that. The Bitcoin/GPU thing was a sustained surge in demand which exceeded production capacity; the PSU situation is almost certainly a temporary supply chain issue. Assuming China doesn't get whacked with another wave of COVID-19 infections, things will (hopefully) return to normal soon. I suppose vendors might use it as an excuse to keep prices higher (like happened with HDDs after the flooding issues), but at least they'll be available again.
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Redocbew
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Sun May 31, 2020 8:26 pm

Some interesting stuff in this GN video. I wouldn't have thought the shortages were caused by both a supply and a demand problem, but I guess they are.

https://youtu.be/0whCHfejM18
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The Swamp
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Mon Jun 01, 2020 6:23 am

I've signed up for notices at a few sites when they get something back in stock again. I'm hoping this disruption won't last long.
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Mon Jun 01, 2020 12:38 pm

Redocbew wrote:
Some interesting stuff in this GN video. I wouldn't have thought the shortages were caused by both a supply and a demand problem, but I guess they are.

https://youtu.be/0whCHfejM18


... and a shipping problem as well, based on the video. Seems a lot of air freight was actually being sent on passenger flights, and with passenger flights drastically reduced, there isn't as much space to carry cargo. The ships apparently are chock full too (not to mention slooowwww).
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Redocbew
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Mon Jun 01, 2020 1:18 pm

Yeah, they're all solvable problems, but it might be a while before things return to normal. Pickings were slim when I picked up my latest PSU, but even more trouble was the memory. Finding 64GB of decent, reasonably priced, non-RGB rainbow unicorn barf memory in the middle of a global pandemic was no easy task. :lol:
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Mon Jun 01, 2020 2:34 pm

just brew it! wrote:
The Swamp wrote:
Enermax is a name I've forgotten about. I never see anything offered by them anymore. I remember when they were the top choice for power supplies around 1999-2000. They made a 300W unit that was awesome. I went through a time when I bought a lot of Antec units, but they were not that reliable. Lot of them died after a couple of years. I stopped using them because they just didn't last that long. That was probably around the time I got the Turbo Cool and didn't need another power supply for eight years.

Antec's PSU line got hit pretty hard by the capacitor plague. I had a few of them die that way.

I've owned some Enermax, PCP&C (the original), Thermaltake, and maybe one or two others over the last ~25 years. The only brand that I've had multiple failed units from has been Antec. The rest have been pretty solid, for the most part.
 
The Swamp
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Re: PC Power Supply Market

Fri Oct 09, 2020 9:09 am

I finally found a power supply. I went with a Phanteks AMP Series 650W unit for about $100. From what I understand, it's actually a Seasonic-designed PSU. It seems to be working fine so far. It has a ten year warranty, which is nice.
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