There are many high quality power supplies on the market today, however in a recent survey from Hardware.fr it appears that Antec have the lowest recorded failure rate of them all.
The study, which was carried out by Hardware.fr, a leading French website dedicated to provided the latest independent hardware information for consumers showed that Antec were at the forefront of the competition for achieving the lowest overall failure rates of power supplies with consumers.
The comparison study utilized a calculation base of the number of power supplies sold between October 1, 2009 and April 1, 2010. The study parameters required the PSUs to have been active for six months to one year, and the failure rates of the PSUs measured were taken from a major French e-tailer. The statistics “per brand” were based on a minimum of 500 PSUs sold and the statistics “per model” were based on a minimum of 100 PSUs sold. For statistics “per brand”, Antec earned a rating of 0.61 percent, securing its number one spot for having the lowest rate of power supply returns. The figure below displays the statistics “per brand” comparison results.
- – Antec 0,61%
- – CoolerMaster 1,10%
- – Fortron 1,29%
- – Thermaltake 1,39%
- – Corsair 1,68%
- – Enermax 2,47%
- – Seasonic 3,32%
“Antec keeps the head from the previous rankings, again with a very low failure rate”, says Marc Prieur, editor of Hardware.fr.
“Throughout its 25 year history, Antec has remained a consumer-centric company. For the third time a row, the results in this independent study underscore the reliability and value of Antec power supplies,” said Scott Richards, senior vice president, Antec. “We’re proud of this recognition because it is product related, not just a popularity vote. The results serve as a testament to our focus on quality. It is the only independent survey of its kind I know of anywhere in the world so it is relevant to consumers everywhere.”
Enermax did very badly I thought, quite surprising.
Very surprised at the apparently poor results for Enermax and Seasonic.
But (if I am reading this correctly) why were failures under 6 months excluded?
Not really surprised with Enermax. Plenty of problems from my own experience. Last good PSU from them was Liberty series ~2005/6. Galaxy/Evolution/Revolution = problems.
Corsair is the main surprise for me, as I consider them rock solid and king of the PSU market.
Me and my brother in law both built pc`s at the same time a few years back.Both pc`s used the same components as he wasn`t sure what was good and what was bad so he just bought the same as myself.I heard Antec were good psu`s so i bought a Truepower 480.A few years later his Antec 480 went bang taking some of the pc components with it.Bad luck i thought,anything can go bad.When we took it out there was something rattling about in the psu and he binned it.
Strangely, only 5 weeks later my Antec 480 also went bang but luckily it didnt damage anything.I was like they had a timer switch in them for failure I will never buy antec again and have only bought seasonic and corsair psu which are my current favourate as they are underated by corsair themselves..My current 800 watt corsair was tested with the reviewers drawing over 1000Watts from it reliably, no problem. I currently have 3 pc`s running corsair psu`s and if i build any more then i will also use corsaiir.
I would also like to add that i have a 9 or 10 year old “Time” brand computer (msi kt266 mobo) that has had many thousands of hours usage over those years going 12-14 hours a day on and it`s still running on its original psu.Probably some no name brand.Guess i got lucky with that one.
Minimum of 500? Maximum of how much? Seasonic, the company that manufactures Corsair’s, XFX’s and its own PSUs could be selling a 100 times more than Antec. I’ll stick to your excellent reviews thank you very much.
PS: Seasonic X Series 560, 660, 760 and 850 review before Sandy Bridge re-shipping please. 🙂
I work as a PC tech and have to say that Antec is probably the WORST power supply you can get. Every computer we build within the past 2-5 years with an Antec power supply is blowing out and taking motherboards, hard drives and anything else about 90% of the time when the power supply burns out. Avoid Antec at all costs, it will save you money down the road.
Personally, I’ve been building PC for over 20 years and have used almost exclusively Antec PSUs for the last decade. Of the several thousand Antec-powered PCs and Servers built and sold by my company over the past several years, I can only find reference to 3 Antec PSU RAs and zero DOA. I would say the facts speak for themselves.
I’m sorry you had a bad experience with Antec Trinitro, but it seems you were just very unlucky. 🙁
I have used various brands in my 15 years of building. But have used Antec exclusively for 7 years once I was fed up of the problems with other brands. It would be interesting to know what conditions those with problems had e.g. overloading poor thermal control etc.