I had a premium seasonic focus plus gold 850W die on the fifth day in November 2018 on my 9900K build. I’ve since used a Coolermaster V1000 80+ gold which was a seasonic rebrand and had unacceptably bad coil whine. That was replaced by a Corsair RM1000i which is a CWT made unit that has worked just fine - quiet and reliable.
So far, my experience with seasonic made units are 0/2 and I’ll actively avoid them based on my bad experiences. Thankfully there are comparably reputable PSU companies like superflower and CWT.
I must say I am using exclusively Seasonic and knocking on wood I have had no issues with their stuff. On the other hand my AIO is cooler master and people left and right were complaining how bad their Cooler Master AIOs are. Some of the review samples leaked right there on the review table. Mine is 4-5 years old and going strong.
So maybe I’m the lucky bastard. But it’s telling more and more people are having complaints about Seasonic units.
Super Flower are one of the big actual manufacturers, alongside Seasonic, FSP, CWT etc… I rather have a Super Flower unit than rebranded one from one of the “reputable” brands…
Follow up. I bought an outlet tester and a Kill a watt meter. Our electrical outlets test good so far. Good grounding. Solid 122V at 60Hz. My wife’s system ( that had the explosive failure) only draws 90 watts from the wall with her normal work load. She mostly casual games except for some 3D titles like SWTOR. I moved the UPS we were using for the router and modem to her rig for now.
I play more demanding titles at high refresh rates so I tested my rig. I ran Unigine Valley and Cinebench r15 at the same time. Max total system load was 480 watts.
Long and short is I think our wall power is clean. Not to say that there couldn’t be brown outs or spikes. But going forward I’m definitely out on Seasonic.
Any good recommendations? Should I go for more than 650 Watt PSU for more overhead?
PSUs are at peak efficiency at 50% load. More overhead does nothing unless you are running right against their limit or plan to change parts relatively soon to something more powerful. for almost all typical builds these days (regular CPU, any gaming GPU, couple of Harddrives/SSDs, normal amount of fans/LEDs) 650W will cover the VAST majority and have headroom still.
Better to put you money into a good quality PSU (I don’t have any suggestions) that is Gold rated or higher.
FWIW, the only PSU failure I’ve ever experienced was a Seasonic Prime Gold 1200W PSU-purchased from Newegg a couple years ago. It could pass some tests oftentimes but had about a 50% success rate in booting any system. I was in a hurry at the time, replaced it with something else, and recently sent it in for warranty. So I have the replacement now but have no system to put it in. I have been generally fortunate with power supplies over the years with several Corsair and EVGA units and this one Seasonic. Seasonic has a pretty good reputation in the enthusiast community for sure but my one experience means I shy away from them now. Now I am trending more towards EVGA because I like the customer service I’ve seen from them. Corsair usually treats me well too but I suspect there’s more of a chance of a bad unit from them…but I have nothing to back that up, just a hunch which could be wrong. Their PSUs seem to be good quality in general but I don’t usually push a PSU to the ragged edge and most systems I build have more than enough power so I could be missing edge case scenarios that way.
I’m sure no one cares at this point, but I had put the RMA replacement psu back in my system in Februrary. Just failed today no warning. I thought it had triggered over power protection and shut off. Nope completely dead. Won’t even light up my tester. I put an unbranded unit in to test the rest of it worked no problem. So this makes 4 bad ones. boo seasonic.
My guess would be the issue is in the power grid or your installation (the lines in the building)… This is not normal. Maybe try a small UPS just to clear any power issues?
This would be my first guess too, power at wall is killing your units somehow. Even a Chinese mystery psu brand shouldn’t have this much of a failure rate.
I wish I had an explanation. Right after It failed I tested the outlet 122v. My system doesn’t draw more than 550watts with a severe workload. Running a game and cineabench at the same time. I’m ordering an EVGA as we speak.
I’ve had nothing but good luck with them, so that’s a shame
A psu lasting 5 years would be a win from me, so would not taking out any other components
A lot of companies have laxed their QC department in the name of COVID-19, likely a bunch of BS to reclaim profit margin, most companies do these days regardless of reputation of quality, sucks
I have seasonic focus platinum models in both my current homebrew servers. One PX-750 and one focus plus 550W. They’re my first units of seasonic so I can’t really say anything about them other than they are currently working. They do run 24/7 with a line interactive UPS. If there is a failure, I will report back.
So, final update, and then I’ll let it go. I had purchased an evga unit, but ended up putting it in my wife’s PC since she had the explosive failure. I put the ‘better’ RMA Seasonic focus gold 650watt in my rig.
We have since moved across the country to a different apartment and power grid. Things were fine for a few months. My PC died for the final time this past Sunday. I had been running windows 11, because I’m an idiot. I was getting random blackscreen issues. I did a full reinstall. Issues returned. Sunday It died and wouldn’t turn on again. I figured my seasonic gremlins had returned for Halloween. I bought a Corsair RM850x put it in. And everything worked for about an hour. Then black screen, max fans. then… Silence. and it was no more. I tried stripping it down. There is no response from the motherboard other than a lone flash from the RGB accent lighting when i flip the switch. I tried stripping it bare. No beeps blinks or anything. So maybe the failing psu’s killed it or maybe there has been an issue with the motherboard ruining the power supplies. I was hoping it would be a 5 years build but only lasted 3 1/2. Just beyond the Gigabyte Aorus warranty. Memory and hard drives are living in a Lenovo box I have. I’m hoping it didn’t kill my GPU. I don’t have another system to test it in right now.
I don’t think this is the case here since they RMA’d them, but because it wasn’t mentioned. From what I hear nowadays there are a lot of fake products floating around on Amazon and other places.
That on top of supply issues forcing companies to use different parts suppliers or parts. I would not be surprised if the general quality of electronics now was a lot poorer than two years ago.
I use a Seasonic PSU as well, built this machine in 2017. No issues so far, but this is a sample of one, so effectively meaningless.
I have personally Fractal Design PSU in my 3 year old computer and newer Corsair unit that’s kicking for 2 years in another. Both are bronze rated, if that helps in terms of recommendation. Hopefully your PC didn’t die entirely though!
PS: those are the only units I’ve owned from either manufacturers so I don’t know how much weight anything I said holds.