Thousands of You are Buying Dangerous Power Supplies

Metatube

Shop Micro Center’s Monitor Madness Event: https://micro.center/fz3d Sign up for a FREE 128gig Flash Drive When Santa Clara Opens: https://micro.center/d3cp  Check out the MSI MAG CORELIQUID A15 360 at https://lmg.gg/sqFc4  Check out Power Supply Circuit: @PSUCircuit  Check out the Labs website: https://www.lttlabs.com/categories/power-supplies   Power Supply Circuit - our new PSU channel - has been hard at work testing power supplies for a while now and it turns out some PSU manufacturers have not exactly been honest.  Discuss on the forum: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1605412-thousands-of-you-are-buying-these-power-supplies/  Buy a Corsair SF850L 850W 80+ Gold PSU: https://geni.us/mN725R Buy a FSP VITA-850GM 850W 80+ Gold PSU: https://geni.us/IqjrKH Buy a NZXT C1000 1000W 80+ Gold PSU: https://geni.us/bumZBg Buy a NZXT C850 850W 80+ Gold PSU: https://geni.us/rvMR32B  Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.  ► GET OUR MERCH: https://lttstore.com ► GET EXCLUSIVE CONTENT ON FLOATPLANE: https://lmg.gg/lttfloatplane ► GET A VPN: http://www.piavpn.com/linus ► SPONSORS, AFFILIATES, AND PARTNERS: https://lmg.gg/partners  Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.  CHAPTERS --------------------------------------------------- 0:00 - Intro 1:06 - MSI! 1:16 - PSU Tester Overview 4:56 - What makes a PSU good? 7:59 - What kills PSUs? 10:57 - How we test PSUs 13:23 - How PSU Circuit videos are made 15:05 - Micro Center! 15:54 - Outro

Transcript

00:00Woo! Look at her go! Here in my hands is the power supply that's responsible for that fireworks display.

00:08And guess what, guys? We didn't try to kill it, and it isn't from some random AliExpress brand.

00:15This unit has five stars on PC Part Picker and thousands of sales on Amazon.

00:21And yet, it failed spectacularly during routine testing for Power Supply Circuit,

00:26our channel that's been testing legions of power supplies and, along the way, discovering that

00:31many power supply manufacturers aren't so honest.

00:35Some are over-representing their products and, wait, some are underselling their performance?

00:41That's not what I expected.

00:43Well, either way, it's finally time to take a look at our power supply gauntlet.

00:48And when I say gauntlet, I mean it, because our power supply testing process has resulted

00:53in a staggering 23% failure rate, really separating the good from the, well, bright, at least.

01:02Speaking of failure, I just failed to do a segue to our sponsor, MSI.

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01:17Nine months ago now, we launched our first Labs team channel, PSU Circuit.

01:22And since then, we've tested 39 power supplies, nine of which died at some point during our test suite.

01:29But we're getting ahead of ourselves a little bit.

01:31First, it's time to take a look at our fully armed and operational power supply station.

01:37Because a keen-eyed among you might have noticed that it looks a little different from how it looked

01:42two and a half years ago when we first unboxed this bad boy.

01:45Starting at the bottom, we've got our AC source, which is able to deliver three kilovolt amps,

01:50which is basically 3,000 watts, but not quite because... reasons.

01:57This is enough for us to test up to 1,600 watt power supplies,

02:00because we need to be able to briefly deliver 200% of the rated power for the power supply for excursion testing.

02:08As for why it isn't exactly double, uh, the, uh, reasons.

02:13Anyway, above that, we have what Chroma calls their on-off controller,

02:17which is just a big relay, which is just a fancy name for switch.

02:22Then above that, we have our short-circuit and over-voltage protection tester.

02:26Moving up, we have our DC power source, which we don't really use at this time.

02:30And then above that, we have our timing and noise analyzer,

02:32which is basically a headless oscilloscope with a host of relays that can be used to automate functions,

02:38like turning the power supply on or off, or changing the characteristics of our load.

02:44Say, for example, to add capacitance.

02:47Then there's a shelf, which does shelf things.

02:50Above the shelf, we've got the connection panel, which allows, well, easy connections,

02:54so that poor Lucas doesn't have to go spelunking in the back of a rack every time a wire needs to be plugged in.

03:00Of course, the real meat and potatoes is up here, our 13 loads, an unlucky number for many a power supply.

03:08Basically, these guys use MOSFETs to dissipate the energy from our power supply as heat.

03:13We've got 12 400-watt loads that can be strung together to fully load any rail on any power supply up to 1600 watts.

03:22And then our 13th unit has two 100-watt loads,

03:26which we typically use for 5-volt standby and minus 12 volts,

03:30since we don't really need a big individual load for those.

03:33It can get pretty warm behind these guys.

03:37And beside that is a digital multimeter,

03:39which we use for the, well, the seven thermocouples that go into our test chamber to measure ambient air,

03:45intake and exhaust air for the power supply,

03:48and measures the connectors to make sure that they don't, you know, melt.

03:52We don't publish our temperature results yet, but it is something that we're working toward.

03:56Finally, there's the crown jewel of our tester, our Rodin-Schwarz MXO-58 oscilloscope.

04:02She's got eight analog channels, 16 digital channels, which is nice,

04:07but the real benefit of this scope is the ease of programming and the nice waveforms you get to look at.

04:12Truthfully, we know we're kind of using the Ferrari of oscilloscopes to go get groceries,

04:18but that can be worth it when you acquire this equipment,

04:21and sometimes it takes years to finally start using it, which, yeah, yeah, what's the deal with that?

04:29Okay, I do know the deal with that.

04:31The chroma, it's not exactly user-friendly or documented.

04:35Making matters worse, the programming is very similar to assembly code,

04:39which turns the automation process for our testing from a two-month project to a ten-month project.

04:46For poor Lucas, thankfully I didn't have to do it.

04:48But now that it's finally done, we can figure out what power supplies are good and which ones are not so good,

04:55which brings us to an important question.

04:58What makes a power supply good?

05:00Well, at its most basic level, a good power supply must adhere to the ATX specification

05:06and deliver these voltages to your compu regardless of the kind of load that it's under or the input power conditions.

05:14Now, we don't follow exactly the ATX prescribed test plan,

05:18but we try wherever it's practical and our tests are heavily inspired by ATX.

05:24The good news is pretty much everything we've tested,

05:27even the ones that failed, has pretty much operated within the ATX specification until it didn't.

05:34But the bad news is we have seen some big differences in efficiency.

05:39In simple terms, the efficiency of a power supply is the percentage of the power that you draw from the wall

05:44that gets turned into useful energy that your computer can use.

05:48Now, many manufacturers market their power supplies with a little 80-plus certification that you'll find on the box.

05:54But in our testing, there were two power supplies whose measured efficiency didn't match their ratings,

06:01the Corsair SF850L and the FSP Vita 850GM.

06:07Both of them actually exceeded their rated efficiency,

06:11a result that is validated actually by Clear Results' own 80-plus testing.

06:17Why would anybody market their unit as 80-plus gold when they could have labeled it 80-plus platinum instead?

06:25When we talked to Corsair and FSP about this, we got similar answers from both of them.

06:30These power supplies, it turns out, were designed to be gold efficiency power supplies,

06:35but then their engineers went and did a bit too good of a job and they exceeded their target.

06:41But here's the thing, even though their tested units exceeded the target,

06:45they're not confident that every single unit off the line is going to hit platinum efficiency.

06:50So they decided they'd rather be conservative with their ratings.

06:53Also, in the case of Corsair, the design team had just plumb finished the box and label designs with that gold rating on it.

07:00So they ran with that.

07:03We verify more than just 80-plus though, which honestly is kind of falling out of fashion.

07:09And part of the reason for that is 80-plus only factors in efficiency from 20% to 100% load.

07:16So instead, we measure all the way from 2% load to 110%

07:21so that you know how your power supply is going to perform when your computer's asleep,

07:25all the way up to when it is, oops, slightly overloaded.

07:29Now, I can't say that it'll make a big difference on your power bill if you pick up a C850 or C1000 from NZXT,

07:36both of which have outstanding 2% load power efficiency, LTT hat pros off to them.

07:42What I will say is that this expanded testing scope helps us to separate the overbuilt units from the underbuilt ones.

07:50While testing at 110%, we have registered four power supply deaths total, including this one, which is not a good result.

07:59In fairness to these power supplies, 110% of rated power is out of spec.

08:04And we performed some of these tests with the input voltage and frequency being slightly off to simulate non-ideal conditions.

08:11But the thing is, with all of the protections that a power supply is supposed to have,

08:17an overpower or an overcurrent event really shouldn't result in outright failure.

08:22But sometimes it does.

08:24The Game Max power supply that we featured in the thumbnail,

08:27the one that Lucas is looking at here, spectacularly failed during this very test.

08:31The AC source on the tester went into protection mode.

08:34And when Lucas popped the power supply out of the test chamber,

08:37he wisely fired up his phone camera, plugged the unit into the wall, and...

08:43Yeah, you don't want that going on inside your PC.

08:47But, I mean, Linus and Lucas, that was probably just one bad unit, right?

08:54No.

08:54See, here's the thing.

08:56Anytime a power supply dies during our testing, we obtain another one.

09:00And almost every time, the second unit has also died.

09:06Across our overcurrent, overpower, and short-circuit protection testing,

09:10we've found six power supplies that have gone to sleep permanently,

09:14securing our coveted We Cannot Recommend award.

09:18See, while catastrophic failure protection is technically a recommended part of the ATX specification,

09:25we feel that any power supply that you spend good money on should do three things.

09:30One, it should protect you.

09:33We can't have your house, and therefore you, lighting on fire.

09:36Number two, it should protect your computer.

09:39We can't have your motherboard, and therefore your computer, lighting on fire.

09:43And three, it should protect itself.

09:46We can't have your power supply, and therefore your power supply,

09:49lighting on fire, producing molten material, or making startling noises.

09:55Another surprisingly effective killer has been our brownout test,

10:00which has claimed the lives of these three power supplies.

10:03This test is pretty simple.

10:05You know when the lights flicker briefly?

10:07Well, we're testing to see how long that needs to last before your computer will shut down.

10:12We're not even looking at surges or anything like that.

10:15It just turns out that some power supplies really don't like power getting turned off briefly and then back on.

10:21A surprising non-killer, though, is our excursion testing,

10:25where we hit the power supply with a 150% load for 1 millisecond,

10:30and then a 200% load for 0.1 milliseconds,

10:34to see how it'll handle something,

10:36looking at you, GPUs,

10:39briefly drawing way more than it should.

10:42While this hasn't killed anything yet,

10:44there are differences in performance in these tests.

10:47So, if you plan on overclocking, you're going to want to look for a power supply with all green check marks here.

10:53Now that we know what we're testing for, let's set up a test.

10:56Why don't you explain step one, because it's not obvious to me looking at it.

11:00Yeah, so the first thing we do, we unbox it, find out any of the manufacturer's claims,

11:04and write all of it down for metadata.

11:06That later gets uploaded to the website.

11:08Then we go through input and output ratings for the power,

11:10to make sure that we're loading it correctly,

11:12and that the loads are properly portioned to it and configured for that,

11:15so we're not nailing it on one rail and then leaving another one alone.

11:18And then we go through and we decide what tests to run on it,

11:20which is exactly the same for all of our standardized testing that we go up on PSU Circuit and the Labs website.

11:25And then we take kind of an inventory of all the cable that comes with it,

11:27and quick measurements of the length, so we have that data as well.

11:30And then we can just run this cell in Python,

11:32and some code I've written on the back end generates a whole mess of data and files that we can run off of.

11:39I said step one, you gave me what sounded like at least like half a dozen steps, that's great, that's efficient.

11:44Step one.

11:4480 plus platinum, this guy.

11:47It's not even titanium, I think titanium's better.

11:49Next, it's time for Lucas to turn on the tester and the scope.

11:57There's a lot of buttons.

11:58Yeah, now I can even reach most of them.

12:00Next up, we shove our power supply into the chamber,

12:03and reposition our thermocouples according to the exact physical dimensions of the unit.

12:07Then, it's time to plug into this guy.

12:10Connector board, interface board, I don't know what it's called and it doesn't matter,

12:13but shout out Seasonic for sending this thing over to us because it saves a ton of time.

12:18We can plug in as many connections as you could possibly find on a modern power supply,

12:23and the best part is this was some special work from Lucas, some tedious work from Lucas.

12:29We take our measurements right at the bottom of where everything plugs in,

12:33which is important because otherwise, the length of these wires could affect our readings, and we don't want that.

12:40Oh, there's one more thing.

12:41We have a thermocouple that we plug right into the 12-volt high power,

12:45you know, the one that has a reputation for being kind of melty.

12:50Once everything's hooked up, we start our tests at 0°C,

12:54then we move to 20°C, and finally 40°C.

12:58Everything is automated except the temperature of this chamber.

13:02We could automate that, but it's actually nice to have a few check-in times

13:06to make sure that everything is looking good with the results.

13:09Our hardest tests are only done at 20°C.

13:1216 hours later, we get this, which, as you can tell, needs some processing,

13:17but fortunately, that's automated by some code that Lucas wrote.

13:20Then from there, we get a script template for PSU Circuit videos

13:24that gets filled in with the results that are sent to Emily.

13:27For the voice in the videos, we use Eleven Labs, an AI text-to-speech dubbing service,

13:32and specifically, we use Brian because we like his voice the most.

13:36It can take a couple of tries to get a good read from Brian,

13:38and I need to balance how natural he sounds with how accurate his reading is.

13:42Some more niche phrases like ATX tend to trip him up.

13:45One thousand ATX three, two thousand twenty-four, manufactured by Seasonic.

13:50Each video has a template with parts of the voiceover that don't change in blue down here,

13:55and then I insert the generated voice above that in green.

13:58Then the footage and graphics get added in, and after two to three hours of work, we have a video.

14:02Now, if you've ever watched PSU Circuit, you're probably wondering,

14:06why don't you guys just have a human voice the videos and then have a human fully edit it?

14:11And I get it. I would genuinely love to do that.

14:14But let me put it this way.

14:15So far on this channel, we have made an eye-watering $138 in AdSense.

14:21$138.

14:23Plus a few bucks here and there from private internet access VPN affiliates.

14:27And that's across all of the videos.

14:29So the economics of humans doing that stuff, they just don't make any sense.

14:34But that doesn't mean that the channel's going anywhere.

14:37We are committed to continuing to test power supplies and continuing to upload these videos

14:41because the data isn't just valuable to viewers of the videos.

14:45It's also incredibly valuable to LTT's ability to do build videos

14:50that feature power supplies that we can truly stand behind.

14:53Also, if you don't like the AI voice, you're not alone.

14:57But you can just read the articles at lttlabs.com.

14:59You'll even find some extra data there.

15:01You might even find this segue to our sponsor.

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15:35They can even help you recycle your old tech

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15:42So click our link in the description to check out their monitor madness event.

15:46We'll also have another link there where you can get a free 128 gig flash drive

15:50if you visit their new Santa Clara store when it opens this year.

15:54If you guys enjoyed this video,

15:55why not check out the one we did on a 3,000 watt power supply

15:58where you can see what our testing capabilities used to be.

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