Antec PSUs have lowest failure rate??

[Grampa]

As the title states, according to some French website (Hardware.fr - I am unfamiliar with them), their study states that Antec units have the lowest failure rates.

Here is a clipping to this posting at our friend's TechPowerUp's website.

Antec PSUs Achieve Lowest Failure Rate: Study | techPowerUp

Personally I'm a bit skeptical (its just in my nature).

Everyone has varying experiences I'm sure.

What do you folks think?

[Jake_HT]

weird! Seasonic losing to antec? hmm

One of the comments suggested that perhaps since enermax, seasonic and corsair are more "enthusiast" type brands, that they would be stressing their machines more, thus returning higher failure rates than antec/coolermaster, etc..

[gingerbee]

seems kinda weird considering that seasonic makes psu for almost all those company. i think i will stick with the ones i buy thanks for the info

[ilya]

I saw that on TPU and if you read the comments, only people that love to hate would believe that "study."

The sample size simply isn't good enough, manufacturer claims are honestly more likely to be accurate.
For example with hard drives, an independent research firm (wasn't the Google study) did a study and found Hitachi drives to be the most reliable. These guys found the exact opposite, only difference is they didn't give any solid numbers or clarify individual model rates for ALL models. The thing is, these guys are supposed to be the "largest" etailer in France, yet they only offer a selection of 7 measly PSU brands. A quick look at NCIX shows WAY more than I can count off the bat.

If you think carefully about it, most Antec PSUs are either Seasonic or CWT OEMs, with the exception of the new High Current models, which are Delta's. However those haven't been released long enough to be included in these test results. Corsair PSUs are typically either Seasonic or CWT OEMs as well, and yet Corsair and Seasonic are at the very bottom with a huge difference between them and Antec. You could argue that Antec modifies their models more than Corsair does, but that's honestly a moot point.

If you look at the highest failure rate PSUs you'll see all Corsair units. Two of these units are CWTs, and the other one is a Seasonic, all 3 have been rebranded by other companies that did significantly better than Corsair. (except maybe the Seasonic, I'm not sure if Antec rebranded that specific model)

The "study" simply leaves too many questions unanswered and honestly shouldn't even be released, let alone it's being released on a regular basis.

[Kilauea]

I believe Delta also makes PSUs for Antec and I must say I am quite pleased with mine.

[Grampa]

Originally Posted by ilya

The "study" simply leaves too many questions unanswered and honestly shouldn't even be released

This is the way I feel about this "study"

Too many factors not accounted for, and so many different variables, such as that pointed out by Jake_HT.
How do we know that the people purchasing from that particular etailer weren't mostly casuals who were not pushing their systems very hard? *shrug*

If they're going to conduct a study, they should take a much larger sample size, and also collect data from oh... umm... maybe the manufacturer???

Anyhow, thank you for all replies, just wanted to get other opinions on this "study"

Cheers.

[martin_metal_88]

How can seasonic be the worst since Antec, Corsair, Silverstone and many other brand use seasonic? This just make no sense to me. Maybe the sticker on the PSU make a difference.

[_dangtx_]

it probably also depends on the volumes, so if seasonic sticker on the side psus were 1000 and antec stickered ones 50000....:)

[Arinoth]

Sounds like it was a "which psu do we like best and how can we arbitrarily back it up with 'data'" kind of report

[martin_metal_88]

Is the review originally french or US? hardware.fr are saying a lot of crap compare to their US egual. They also tend to steal a lot of stuff from tom's so if the article is coming from the French section, it's just useless to read it.