Hey if you like Coolmax.....give PowerMax a try...it will Razzle Dazzle you for sure.....lol or give even better Rice Crispy noises from it than Timmy's CoolMax did...Snap Crackle PoP
I'm sure they are fine power supplies, Timmy very obviously simply did a botch setup on purpose for an easy shilling the video sponsor. He literally goes into the video with the intention of destroying a PSU to prove his point. Literally like some biased manufacturer-financed study with fixed prepositions. Sorry, but I don't get how noone just sees the video for what it is, seems less people understand how PSUs actually work than I thought. I really would have thought higher of Timmy than to dish out such a cheap video with misleading content entailing him basically shitcanning a good PSU for no good reason other than force-proving a point.
no it's saying Sssaaavvveee mmmmeeeeee........................ my guess is it was running a whopping 65% efficiency give or take from how high it was running based on how it hit it's 500 watt limit when the high end power supply never breaks 400 watts
A neighbor of mine brought me a dead PC to take the parts out (like, so dead the intention was to remove like capacitors, inductors or so), the typical supermarket electronics section pre-built, the power supply inside it had the fan jammed, the cables were brown-ish at the PSU's case end, and when opening it up it even had big bubbles already on the PSU's board. The damn thing looked like it had literally caught fire.
@@Kalvinjj Nowadays I don't even risk it with no name power supplies in recycled builds. I have had magic smoke come out of EVGA gold and Seasonic Gold PSU's as well, unfortunately.
@@Art7220 It would depend really on the quality of the power supply. Platinum and titanium efficiency supplies will allow for going with lower wattage. I try not to go lower than 450 or 500 Watts on builds. The OEM PSU's are great in a pinch, as some are built by good manufacturers like Seasonic and Delta.
It was definitely a valuable lesson for me, when my cheap 28€ LC Power exploded, tripped a fuse in my appartment and even killed my Nvidia GeForce 8800GT (Has damaged the VRAM and there were stripes all over the screen). I was running Furmark and Prime95 at the same time. The explosion happened roughly 15 minutes in. Yeah that was dumb of me and shouldn't have done it on such a cheap PSU. After that I bought a ~90€ Cooler Master Gold certified PSU and have it in use for almost 10 years now. My next PSU will probably be a Seasonic Titanium certified PSU.
Really TJ a 500w no name VS 750w 80+ brand name. Fair it is not. He should do 500w brand name VS 500w 80+ brand name. I think another test may be required.
I completly agreee :). What would happen with 20$ 500W PSU, if you use it to max, even if it can put out max 300W on 12 V rail :)... ME VERY INTERESTED :D
@@JPR-YT it’s not in my main system anymore, I put it in a computer my father uses, but he hasn’t called me about any fire or explosions so I’m assuming it’s fine! ☠️😂
Remember, a 500watt psu should deliver 500watts to the system. 500watt from the wall at 80% efficiency is only 400watt. It should be pulling closer to 600watt from the wall to deliver 500watt.
The shell will stop most debris plus he has "safety" glasses on lol. Also the small capacitors may be loud, however they just throw tiny paper shards and a very light small metal shell surrounding the paper within a capacitor. He was safe from the exploding parts. Shock by touching the power supply during failure is way more likely. Though it's likely to be a 12v DC shock meaning it'll burn rather than make his muscles tense tense up from AC shocks. Also the whole power supply shroud is grounded. He was actually pretty safe, and this all is why power supplies have hard metal shells which are grounded in he first place.
I thought the same thing, I had a 5+ year old cooler master psu that went out with a bang. It sounded like a gunshot, I needed a new psu and underwear 😂
I never understood why cheap PSU's like this even exist. The price difference between these awful PSU's and a good entry level PSU from a known brand with a 80+ bronze rating is like 10-20 dollars. I got an EVGA 500B 4-5 years ago for 30 dollars that I originally bought for my step dads computer and it is now used in my sisters build that I built for her last Christmas(2700/RX570). It still works perfectly and might even have a bit of warranty left on it for all I know since it came with a 5 year one. So yeah, if you are looking to cheap out do it on the case and spend the TINY amount of extra money to get even a good basic PSU.
EVGA is very serious with their warranty to the point even if its overdue you could still get a one time replacement most of the time with them. But it wont be new ofcourse if its out of warranty so they give B stock but hey i got a free GTX 970 when it died out of warranty from them so no complaints there.
They exist because not everyone is gaming, streaming, or encoding some people use their computers in basic ways like surfing the web, watching videos, and listening to music they don't need expensive power supplies for a simple cheap computer.
@@cibelal6293 mate comment that sure no problem. but why did you reply that to this comment which has nothing to do with what you are saying anx is mainly concerned with the sound.
I know someone that bought a 600W no name back in the early 2000s for $18US. I said how did you get that so cheap, at the time I was getting them locally for a PC shop I worked at paying 25+ and that was our cost for a low 250-300W at the time. A week later he said it died lol and luckily for him only the supply died, nothing else was damaged. That was back around the time the defective Chinese capacitors were hitting the market.
The last PSU that blew up on me fired a foot long flame out of it. I was cringing every time TJ put his face up against the grill. DO NOT open a PSU unless you know what you are doing. Mains capacitors can kill you even after the unit is unplugged from the wall. I’m not sure if TJ is super experienced at working on PSUs or just incredibly reckless. Either way he is reckless for portraying what he did as harmless fun when it is very dangerous.
@@TuxraGamer 220 volt capacitors can stop your heart. but what probably exploded was the 12-volt rail capacitors which the internal resistance of your body is usually too high to allow it to travel through you.
The name on the psu doesn't matter. What matters is who made it, and how well built it is, for that you would do well to check psu reviews/ breakdowns for your questions on whatever psu your looking at buying.
Even who made it might give you different results. GreatWall makes PSUs for Corsair too if I recall, but the ones they sell with their own name for PCs like the Wallmart ones, they cheap out on the parts. Gamers Nexus tested the GreatWall PSU on the Wallmart pre-built gaming PC vs another one with GreatWall board but some other brand, the noise output (electrical noise, not sound) and efficiency difference was quite significant, despite being the same rating on all, if I recall even the 80 plus rating.
all i find is a website that is written on my psu, other than its info. looks like no one ever had it. its called thessen -600pw from www.jackpotpc.com
I have killed several cheap power supplies over the years, and repaired prebuilts that skip there. The biggest issue is they start having voltage issues, capacity drops, or they cheat with split smaller rails to act as one, etc and the system acts like it is failing. Swap the power supply and it's like a new system. After so many failures I just spend the extra to at least get a good Corsair or Evga. They still go strong to this day.
I was on a tight budget and bought a evga 500w 80+ white. 3 years later it's still doing good and doesn't make any concerning noises or smells. Even with budget units, get a name brand with some kind of 80+ rating and a warranty
The reason such no-name PSUs are so crappy is because the components inside are not rated for the advertised wattage. The transistros inside are either running at the "Absolute maximum ratings" or even above and their driving signal (the signal that makes them switch at the high frequency needed for the voltage step down) has probably no "Dead time" which means that for a brief moment all of them are on and there is a short circuit and that repeats for thousands of times every single second so they overheat and stop working after a little while and the transformer cores are crapy and too small for this wattage so they get oversaturated under full load and make this noise. Also the capacitors, especially the rectifying ones on the input are so cheapish that are getting stressed by the load so much they might explode and the ones on the output probably have so high ESL and ESR that the ripple current could cause damage to other components on the PC. Never CHEAP OUT ON POWER SUPPLY!!! Thats the single thing that needs to be the most reliable and will be the most future proof since ATX standard barely changed over the last decades and will probably be the same for even more.
I wanted to see the CAPs taken off the PCB and put in a component tester. Actually I was also curious if there is enough creepage space on the PCB or the thing can even send the mains to the motherboard (Edit at 14:54 there is a shot - doesn't look terrible). Another reason for the extra heat and bad components - chokes -made of coppper plated Al.
Cheapest I've gone is the Thermaltake smart 700 watt. Can be found between $55 and $60, and is not gonna die like a firecracker. Had an Apevia 500w that came in a prebuilt. It became an intentional firecracker at the point it got close to 450w from the wall...
back in 2014 I decided to invest in a corsair AX 1200w PSU. She is still choochin strong today. Before anyone says you wont need that much wattage ever. keep in mind I run the legendary lava powered FX 9590 at 5gz, not 1 but 2 AMD R9 390x in crossfire, 2 HDDS, a dual radiator AIO with 4x120mm fans in push/pull config, 3x140mm case fans, 4 monster setup, etc etc my pc puts out heat that of the sun and draws a insane amount of wattage at full utilization. You best bet that $350 PSU was a damn good investment because anything else would damn near explode XD
Not surprised. The efficiency curve of that cheap PSU would def require much more power from the wall in order to get the requested power to the components. I've used cheap Insignia branded PSUs on build several times, but always made sure to take the CPU and GPU TDPs into account. I'm sure that little PSU could have run a Ryzen 3 3100 and a 5500xt for many years without incident.
Seriously, a 500w cheapo VS 750w 80+ brand name. Fair it's not. He should do 500w brand name VS 500w 80+ brand name. I think another test may be required.
@@cibelal6293 This is a 350w PSU if you go by "reputable PSU brand" standards. Also the thing can't deliver more than 180w to a single component. The price you can buy this thing for is what determines whether or not it's good. I've seen these types of psus go for ~$25 and at that price it's a great value to the point where I've definitely bought them.
Hi Timmy, love your channel. Good to see someone get as excited as I do with computer hardware. I just felt I had to mention that that model of psu is only rated for about 360w on the 12v rails. The remainder of the wattage being made up of the 3v and 5v rails. 99% of your applied load was on the 12v rail, so really you overloaded this psu by a considerable amount right from the get-go. I was actually impressed that a budget model had some kind of built-in thermal protection! Interesting stuff, any chance of similarly overloading a more reputable brand?
I have a psu in my old prebuilt and it looks dodgy at best. It's not even 80+ certified. However, the only malfunction I faced in 5+ years of use was a dead fan. I also did not immediately realized the fan was dying and was using it like that for quite a while until it started shutting itself off. I replaced the fan and it has been working fine since. I figured the psu actually has some decent overheating protection as even after working essentially without a fan it did not start to smell funny or sound weird - no coil whine, nothing. No I trust it more than any other psu. Miracles happen
but the coil whine and smell definately is a huge give away for a bad PSU design. You'll also notice the corsair psu is pulling a lower wattage while running at higher clocks
My old 750 coolmax had similar coil while.. put a 2080 super on it and its got worse. needless to say theres a rmx750 in its place now!! glad to see i made the right decision!!!
I had a no name power supply last for 14 years. Spectacular fireworks and a nasty after smell is inevitable with any power supply eventually. Prior to that many years ago, I had a dx4 100 build with a no name power supply last for 10 years.
I put a no name psu in my first pc. worked fine till i tried to overclock. sparks flew out the front fan grill when it blew the caps. didnt take anything out with it luckily, but i learned my lesson and bought a Seasonic.
yeah, those rails are really aimed at ooooold ass systems that heavily loaded the 3.3v and 5v rails. Computers now have like, over 90% of their load on the 12v rails
About two years ago, I bought a 600w evga 80+ white card, and it blew up a few months later, while running a 3700x and 1080ti. Killed my motherboard, but luckily everything else survived. That was the last time I went with anything from EVGA
This video just shows that you know nothing about power supplies. 0:58 Even the amazon page says you're not supposed to run more than 14 A (172W) through the first (CPU) rail and no more than 16 A (196 W) through the rest of 12 V rails (GPU, SATA, MOLEX, often RAM VRM...). Also 9:45 when you hear electronics crackling, it's generally a bad idea to put your face in. If an ark jumps to your finger, it gets burned. Eyes don't like burning. Last but not least, 14:43 sticking your finger in the mains area of a PSU is always a bad idea, after a total failure where you don't know what burned and thus can be connected to mains capacitors it's straight hazardous gambling with your life.
Yep, it’s super dumb to jam your finger in a psu like that. The capacitors can hold enough voltage/current to KILL. He should really add a disclaimer telling people how dangerous this is and to not try it at home.
While I don't agree with your first sentence, everything after it is correct and I wanted to point out some of the same points. The other one is BOTH 12V rails combined can only do 350w if you go by the label. Since almost nothing these days pull anything substantial off the 3.3V and 5V rails, this PSU is at best a 350W max PSU. Going by the crap efficiency, the 450W+ readings at the wall are most probably the 350W max it can handle. Overcurrent protection or some other protection kept shutting it down. In the end heat killed some component. This PSU would probably last 5 years with a normal 200w load or something. It's definitely a crap PSU though. Timmy Joe, if you see this you're still awesome and I love your content, but this guy made some valid points.
I think his intention was to stress it to the extreme since he didn't want to wait months for it to fail on a more normal configuration. As a 500w psu it is certainly capable of powering a 2700x and 5700xt combo without failure. All he did was step it up slightly, something that most name brand psus can handle since they tend to be a little more over engineered than a cheap psu like this. That being said he is very lucky he didn't hurt or kill himself with the way he handled that psu.
@@johnchristianson515 yes he 100% said this is for science and that it's not a good idea. Also, a 2700X and a 5700XT would pull close to 350W so this PSU would NOT be suitable. It's not a 500W PSU by current ATX standards. Sure the TDP for those are 105W+225W, but there's no way a 2700X only pulls 105W. I would say an R5 2600/3600 and a 5600XT would be max i'd pair with it from AMD side.
Actually... he showed the wrong model on Newegg. It's the Coolmax M-500B with three rails +12V1@17A, +12V2@17A, +12V3@12A . 400W on 12V combined. That makes a bit more sense. It doesn't have Overcurrent or overtemp protection. "Over voltage protection & short circuit protection" if going by the product page.
12:25 I also own a Corsair TX750 which has problems (after many years, bought for $99) on my PC making it crash and reboot even when idle, so had to replace it with a EVGA 750 GQ, 80+ Gold, and it solved my problems. The TX750 still works, I just no longer trust it. Keep in mind Corsair TX750 was made before 80+ efficiency rated were put into place, so it has no 80+ rating at all, like the Coolmax M-500 PSU you blew up.
I always get name brand PSUs. What I have found is even bottom of the barrel EVGA stuff is leaps and bounds better than this sort of junk. I have run an N1 400w on an RX570 before. Not good idea, but it had no issues handling it, and honestly the fan wasn't too loud. The W1 and BR lineup are my go to for lower end systems, especially Bstock. A BR500 handled a 3600+1080 flawlessly.
My first build was a £60 "Hiper" 580w PSU back in 2004, that lasted surprisingly well before eventually stinking the room out and failing to power on. I've gone for Corsair RM series power supplies ever since. Sure they're expensive, but so is replacing half a rig when a PSU blows.
I recently bought a lot of old PSUs, 1 modular be quiet and like 7 complete no-name supposed crap PSUs. GUESS WHAT, the be quiet was the ONLY faulty one inside the whole lot and all the cheap noname 400W+ PSUs ran absolutely FINE with a sensible setup (95W CPU and ~100W 6pin PSU with a SINGULAR MOLEX ADAPTER even!) I tested them by MINING with them! Full tilt! The ones below 400W I OBVIOUSLY DID NOT set up with a fucking GPU, that's like trying to put a Fury X and a stupid 200W oced CPU on a 500W PSU. You just don't do it unless you insist on proving a point you just want to force!
Generally just stick to whatever you know works. Seems like a good rule of thumb, although Corsair has a good lineup of psu. Must have just had bad luck.
Which is why its even more bizarre he couldn't see the damage when he opened it up. There absolutely MUST be skid marks in there, he just didn't bother to look carefully enough.
I got a Seasonic TX850. It's awesome. The fan only comes on when rendering with the GPU. Does great with my 5950x which runs at 100% most of the time and usually overclocked, but with electricity now, I went back down.
Even name brand power supplies can be crap depending on how much you spend. My Thermaltake TR2-500W was showing the exact same symptoms as the Coolmax, coil whine and horrible smell, yet I wasn't even drawing close to the 500W rating.
I would keep the fan and send the rest to Computer Recycle to reclaim the rest of the crap that went into building that power supply. And why keep the fan? I think the fan is still the only good part in the whole thing. Could use it in other things or maybe some Frankenstein monster build that magically works. Also, able to play Doom.
Some No-Name PSU's are okay. I used to own a LogiSys PSU with my first build. Believe it or not it served me very well until I sold the whole system. It took me 2 builds until I finally could afford Name Brand PSU's. but the LogiSys and whatever OEM Compaq one I got from a scrapped system I wound up using in my second build actually didn't blow up, and lasted years. Do I recommend going with cheap PSU's? Not exactly. Maybe I was lucky and had diamonds in the rough. I had a buddy who once got a dirt cheap PSU, he said when he got home after work and started Gaming, 5 minutes later, His system started popping like a firecracker was lit inside! Good thing his actual system survived.
My first gaming PC was a pre-built from iBuyPower that it had a "Xion" PSU in it. Back then I had no idea about PSU quality, wattage or anything like that so when my PC started turning off while I played Dead Island I began the troubleshooting. That's when I learned the lesson of non-name brand PSUs. I promptly built a new PC with a Corsair AX full-modular 80+ Gold PSU and I've been using it since 2013. She's a beast and has been in 3 different PCs, outlasting every other component including one motherboard, a processor, and a few HDDs. Lessons: 1.) Pre-builts can be great for beginners to start their tinkering journey 2.) Never cheap out on a PSU
Some Roswill units like the Hive or Glacier are junk and other Rosewill units like the Quark or Capstone are pretty good. The Rosewill Lightning is another good one.
Not a complete waste, 1. Good video content. 2. Cut the cables off use them for something else. 3. Maybe a few components are salvageable 4. Project case. 5. Build a whole computer in the power supply project. (that's a Dare) Thanks for the video. Reminds me of my passed when I would buy 15 dollar power supplies. Be safe stay healthy.
Alienware sucks I had one years ago it cost 1200$ and it had a lot of driver issues I called support and the guy kept telling me to restart the pc and kept asking when I bought it and I bought it that day.. yeah returned that shit to bestbuy immediately after that headache. Never will buy dell or Alienware again!
@@slipstream502 for me, dells have lasted me years, I have plenty of 15 year old dell laptops and desktops that still work perfectly fine, then again you bought from best buy and you don't completely reinstall the os on your prebuilt systems.
Cheap power supplies are inefficient so even if the PC only draws 300 watts the power supply might be drawing 400 watts from the wall so it can happen that a for example 500 watt power supply draws 550-600 watts from the wall That ist why it drew more than 500 watts for a moment in the video.
@@cibelal6293 I think you missed the part where Timmy showed the Power consumption of the 750w Corsair vs the 500w Coolmax. In which case boils down to efficiency. The Coolmax he tested clearly couldn't handle supplying even 400w of power to the parts, while the rest went to waste. Someone else pointed out the Coolmax isn't even rated for 500w on the +12v rail, which I totally spaced. Even rookie builders know that the +12v rail is what really matters.
As soon as you get into adapters... it is game over. I have used Apevia (great wall) power supplies with good results. No whine, cheap, 80+ efficiency. Your mileage may vary.
I bought a $21 psu from ebay for an Athlon 3000g for my grandpa. It has worked just fine for playing solitaire and listening to music. The whine from the psu is the switching of the mosfets.
I use cheap used power supplies a lot but I make sure it’s a know brand with decent amps and some weight to it. Generally pay €20 for 550watt unit and never had issues.
I must have bad luck because I have bought 2 different EVGA 80+ in the last year that were both junk, they both came bad. One of them the (a 600Watt 80+ white) P4 Cable would not work & the other one a (450 watt 80+ Bronze) just keeps crashing the Systems I test it in.
Nice vid Timmy. You've easily solidified the fact of Investing in a good, more expensive PSU is always a safe bet. It will outlast any other component in a system by years. Plus this gives you the headroom to OC safely when you really need to squeeze out more performance on aging setups....Not to mention they don't risk burning your house down! Decent PSUs are very underrated.
I've used cheap power supplies (mainly Apevia) in many budget builds and never had an issue with them. The real problem with this el-cheapo brand is that they are deceptively advertising 500 watts but what they are doing is adding the 12v and the 5v rails together to get that 500 watt rating. If you pause the video at 01:03 you can see the 5v is rated at 150 watts and the 12v is rated at 350 watts. Add them together and you have 500w. The problem is that only the 12v really matters since it's the one that powers the CPU and GPU. This power supply should really be rated at 350 watts. As a general rule I try to keep total system power to less than 80% of the 12v max wattage (350*.80 = 280 watts in this case). That's more than enough for a budget build for something like an i5 9400 and GTX 1650 super. The components you used in this test wildly exceeded the PSU's capabilities.
There’s a video on tech yes city where he explains the 12v+ rail and you always want the amps to be above 32a. It’s simple math that power supply is 12v x 16a= 192 watt power supply.
You seem to understand how the rails work. So I don't get why you would just completely disregard them, because you're CLEARLY overpowered for this PSU. Nothing wrong with this PSU if you make sure you're components aren't maxing out the rails. But yeah, if you're building a mid to high end system, you definitely don't wanna cheap out on the PSU, because it almost certainly won't handle it. There are PSU's WAY worse than that Coolmax though. A lot of the budget ones only have ONE 12v rail, and they look a lot like the 3rd rail on this Coolmax, 12v at 12amps which just isn't going to cut it with even a lot of budget builds out there. At least this Coolmax has 2 other rails at 17amps. Still not great, but like I said, it's possible if you don't push it.
Be very carefull while opening power supply !!!! Capacitors still have lots of charge even when unplugged and "OFF" !!! Either discharge the capacitors (via ground) or make sure they are discharged already...
Hi there These are my specs: Cpu: i5 10400f Gpu: ghost gtx 1650 4gb Motherboard: gigabyte h510m h Ram: 16gb 8x2 3200hz Ssd: 120gb Hdd: 1tb Psu: xigmatek 600w plus +80 Case: xigmatek medusa I’m planning on upgrading to a rtx 3060 ti but people always advise me to change the psu (probably cuz it’s chinese lol). so should i change the psu to a better brand psu or upgrade to a rtx 3060 ti?
I imagine the case is a xigmatec medusa, and the PSU is xigmatec x-power. Looking at the specs the 600W one can only supply 504W of that on the +12V rail. In modern PSUs, supplying significantly less on the 12V than the nominal rating is _always_ a bad sign. Even the meanest PSU I would ever recommend could supply 99% of the rating (594W in a 600W) While it may "work," these PSUs supply dirty power to your components, reducing their performance and often lifespan. Power is not just power- look at any oscilloscope videos with PSUs. Clean power is very important. There is a PSU tier list on LTT, google it (YT won't let me post the link). It's a little old, but the recommendations are still good enough. Anything tier B and up there is fine for a 3060Ti.
the only part i would skimp on is the CASE, i buy a few of these cheap power supplies for the cables, i chop the cables off and make extensions because some of my builds the stock cables are too short, other times i but cheap power supplies is for testing water loops to make sure its 100% sealed, i personally prefer seasonic/fsp power supplies since they are cheaper than other brands where i live and they are also the manufacturer of most of the other brands like corsair.
I put a RX590 in my wife's PC and her 550W supply immediately started sounding like a banshee and proceeded to go down like a lead rake (it was a Cooler Master PSU). I definitely underestimated the draw that card has. Swapped it to a EVGA 800w Gold and it's been smooth sailing since.
If, for some reason, I'm going for a cheaper power supply, I'll go for something like a FSP branded one. FSP is the OEM for a lot of power supply makers, and they've been reliable for me. There's definitely some alright cheap power supplies out there. Coolmax isn't one I'd trust with anything good.
PSUs literally can make or break your system... NEVER SKIMP!!! Listen to the man here!!! LISTEN!!! Worst PSU I ever bought was a Solid Gear Neutron 850w. The PCIE cables were totally dead. It was brand new. It's been sitting in my closet for about a decade now. Couldn't return it thanks to a problem on Amazon. My old rig had a Thermaltake Toughpower XT 750. Damn thing took a lickin' and still is a tickin'! 11 years it's lasted. My new rig has an EVGA 850 B5. Love it.
happened to me Today on the same day of installing a brand New Corsair RMX 1000w. I had a back up PSU to test and didn't damage anything else. My back up is a Corsair RMX 850
why not run a test on it where you only load it to 300 or so watts i dont think this video was worth watching because you only proved you can destroy it by putting a heavy load on it
Good thing you’re waring your bullet proof glasses! Just in case a capacitor or something blows, possibly sending shrapnel out any opening. Good thing.
I have used cheap PSUs for standard builds for awhile and have had luck with some, and others have crapped out after a year or so, but none have ever had that coil whine. ugh. with headphones you really get that screeching effect.
yep, they were actually some red sparks in that psu. not even a 500w lame. and never open a psu without waiting a few days. the capacitor still hold big charge with big amps that can kill you. let them discharge.
In my experience these cheap power supplies are fine if you know what you are so doing and are definitely worth it if you can find one for ~$20. That's also definitely not a 500w power supply. From the 12v rails it comes out to 360w. This should be advertised as a 350w power supply if you go by "reputable PSU brand" standards. They get 500w by adding up the total power the PSU can deliver from all the rails. So 360w (the two 12v rails) + 140w (the 5v rail which is shared with the 3.3v rail) = 500w.
If you are after some good-ish cheap power supplies, Aerocool is a pretty good brand in my experience. Aerocool Cylon 700W powers my Thermi card with no issues. Needs good airflow though.
I think you overloaded it when you plugged the ssd onto the same strand as the graphics card supplemental power adapter. The only thing better that could have happened would have been flames shooting out from the fans on the power supply.
My first build a few yrs back i bought a 1000watt psu from ebay it was like 30 bucks. I didnt really know then that is super cheap. Anyway when i got my pc powered up i smelled burning electronics within 10 to 20 minutes. The pc would still run but it stunk really bad. I then bought a 1000watt EVGA for wayyy more money lol and it lasted me a long time
Reminds me, of when my cousin went from a 4th gen Intel i3 to a R7 1700. He sold me the i3, board, ram and PSU for like £80. I didnt know what PSU he had, was a Corsair 550w 80+ gold rated PSU, fully modular too...I got a damn good deal. As for selling builds, I always at minimum used a 80+ white rated PSU from a decent brand, usually 450/500w.
I've tortured a PSU before but I never got it to blow. I had an old no brand PSU which had Pentium 4 printed on the side and it's a 550W PSU so I hooked it up to a X79 based system running a 12 core xeon and a 900 series Titan X. The fan span up, it got really loud but it never blew. It had one six pin for a graphics card, I used a six pin to eight pin adapter and then an eight pin to dual eight pin adapter to power the GPU and it worked long enough for me to determine that the problem I was having with the system was caused by a Cooler Master V1000 PSU. Name brands aren't always better.
Newer buy no namer power supply ,never cheep on good motherboard, never cheep on good CPU cooling, never ever buy used HDD or SSD for main system, never ever buy XFX Card. Buy one good case and use it for 10 years Mine rules, learned hard way. 14:43 Actually those capacitors still hold the charge and actually can hurt you bad.
I have ran an ms-tech 850w for 12 years now. Its starting to fail since 3 months now. Id say i got very lucky, or they did pretty okay. But i totally agree with this video.
This reminds me of a story that happened around 4-5 years ago.My friend said his gonna upgrade his pc fine i told him i can get him a excellent pc for the right price but he doesn't listen and bought a crap one (I5 4590 H81 mobo)So the last thing i asked him was did you upgrade the psu.His like no it's not old doesn't need an upgrade.My words was good luck in powering your setup.On the saterday of that week we just heard a faint sound and next moment every thing dead.His fking lucky only psu blew and didn't take anything with. The cheap power supplies isn't that bad when you buy a pre-build like a r5 3400 g if you run a dedicated gpu then always get a good psu
I've exploded a PSU or two in my day...one actually melted my mouse to the desk when it fried overnight. I actually just bought a new PSU to replace the 10 year old unit in mine. It's just not as efficient or quiet as I'd like it to be. Goodbye Antec TruePower Quattro 850W, it's been an awesome run. Seasonic Prime 1300W 80+Gold will be replacing it. I can't afford to be cheap.
Coolmax is my go to PSU brand. 😂
Dawid! Didn't expect you in here!
Hey if you like Coolmax.....give PowerMax a try...it will Razzle Dazzle you for sure.....lol or give even better Rice Crispy noises from it than Timmy's CoolMax did...Snap Crackle PoP
Hi Dawid
I'm sure they are fine power supplies, Timmy very obviously simply did a botch setup on purpose for an easy shilling the video sponsor.
He literally goes into the video with the intention of destroying a PSU to prove his point.
Literally like some biased manufacturer-financed study with fixed prepositions.
Sorry, but I don't get how noone just sees the video for what it is, seems less people understand how PSUs actually work than I thought.
I really would have thought higher of Timmy than to dish out such a cheap video with misleading content entailing him basically shitcanning a good PSU for no good reason other than force-proving a point.
@@BitZapple A good PSU would have protected itself. Even if it is overloaded. The PSU used in this video was indeed very shitty.
If you listen really close to the coil whine, you can hear it saying "kiiiiiiiiillllll mmmmeeeeeeeeeeeeee"
🤣🤣🤣🤣
"Pleeeeeeease! Have mercyyyyyyyyyy"
😆🤣🤣😂
no it's saying Sssaaavvveee mmmmeeeeee........................
my guess is it was running a whopping 65% efficiency give or take from how high it was running based on how it hit it's 500 watt limit when the high end power supply never breaks 400 watts
ahahahaha
Buying cheap psu be like:
"The BOMB has been planted!"
Or maybe, "Set us up the bomb" (comes from the "All your base are belong to us" thing)
OH MY GOD JC, A BOMB!
@@golemcrimson it's the ultimate bomb to plant inside your pc
I have never seen someone so excited over failing hardware. Great demonstration of the dangers of cheap PSUs and entertaining as hell.
clearly you weren't paying attention to what he said at 8:10 that tells it all why he is so happy about it cause he's getting exactly what he wants
@@Raven10241 I was paying attention, as I said it was entertaining as hell.
@@havanowoncheese Classic read the first sentence and assume the rest. Especially funny when he's trying to be the one to correct you.
Hitting the fan finger protection grid, as seen in the video should also help....Lol.
I have smelled enough of the magic smoke to know that you never skimp on power supplies
A neighbor of mine brought me a dead PC to take the parts out (like, so dead the intention was to remove like capacitors, inductors or so), the typical supermarket electronics section pre-built, the power supply inside it had the fan jammed, the cables were brown-ish at the PSU's case end, and when opening it up it even had big bubbles already on the PSU's board.
The damn thing looked like it had literally caught fire.
@@Kalvinjj Nowadays I don't even risk it with no name power supplies in recycled builds. I have had magic smoke come out of EVGA gold and Seasonic Gold PSU's as well, unfortunately.
How low would you go on wattage? Not less than 300w? Lite-Ons and Dell PSUs are they too cheap? ThermalTake PSUs are good, the one I have.
@@Art7220 It would depend really on the quality of the power supply. Platinum and titanium efficiency supplies will allow for going with lower wattage. I try not to go lower than 450 or 500 Watts on builds. The OEM PSU's are great in a pinch, as some are built by good manufacturers like Seasonic and Delta.
It was definitely a valuable lesson for me, when my cheap 28€ LC Power exploded, tripped a fuse in my appartment and even killed my Nvidia GeForce 8800GT (Has damaged the VRAM and there were stripes all over the screen). I was running Furmark and Prime95 at the same time. The explosion happened roughly 15 minutes in. Yeah that was dumb of me and shouldn't have done it on such a cheap PSU. After that I bought a ~90€ Cooler Master Gold certified PSU and have it in use for almost 10 years now. My next PSU will probably be a Seasonic Titanium certified PSU.
His characteristics are so funny and its almost as if hes always out of breath because hes so excited to say the next sentence 😁
Really TJ a 500w no name VS 750w 80+ brand name. Fair
it is not.
He should do 500w brand name VS 500w 80+ brand name.
I think another test may be required.
@@cibelal6293 the 500w no name isn't even capable of outputting 500w
Or maybe it is the ozone he is sniffing that is being discharged by the PSU.
I'm out of breath just listening to him.
No thats just unhealthy living and being a fatty....
You didn't waste $50. You spent $50 for science and entertainment.
Ayyyy EJ!
I completly agreee :). What would happen with 20$ 500W PSU, if you use it to max, even if it can put out max 300W on 12 V rail :)... ME VERY INTERESTED :D
@@ACOnetwork atleast it didn't kill his board so yes it was a great deal for science
oh my god it stinks!!!!!!!!
@@Raven10241 True, True 😁
Naaah, it is just smelly aroma teraphy 😋👍
This dude is huffing toxic fumes, no wonder he's laughing, his brain cells are dying.
pmsl
Looking at that setup, the mental decline clearly set in earlier.
@@BitZapple And what makes you say that?
@@gynaecide4382 bruh.
@@gynaecide4382 molex molex sata. to 6 pin to 8 pin.
Tim: "This 500W PSU was $50! It's a piece of crap that could kill my hardware"
Me sweating profusely with my $20 Hercules 600W PSU:
I hope you put whatever you saved on it towards fire insurance.
@@scheve332 Good one lol
Has ur house burned down yet
Bro i need an update hows it doin cuz i have the same one😅
@@JPR-YT it’s not in my main system anymore, I put it in a computer my father uses, but he hasn’t called me about any fire or explosions so I’m assuming it’s fine! ☠️😂
Next Timmy Joe Episode - Why you should NEVER buy a no-name condom!
"IT'S CRACKLING! It smells very bad in here."
TJ u used a 500w VS 750w 80+. Fair
it's not.
He should do 500w VS 500w 80+.
Another test is needed asap?
it's simple. no one wants a baby while he's still in high school!
@mister.T Jr No, not spamming. Each post is diff.
"Its exactly like a plastic bag!"
Remember, a 500watt psu should deliver 500watts to the system. 500watt from the wall at 80% efficiency is only 400watt. It should be pulling closer to 600watt from the wall to deliver 500watt.
note to kim if a power supply makes bad smells run for it girl your in danger
seriously can we please not put our face SO damn CLOSE TO THE STUFF THATS GOING TO EXPLODE....thank you
ikr
The shell will stop most debris plus he has "safety" glasses on lol. Also the small capacitors may be loud, however they just throw tiny paper shards and a very light small metal shell surrounding the paper within a capacitor. He was safe from the exploding parts. Shock by touching the power supply during failure is way more likely. Though it's likely to be a 12v DC shock meaning it'll burn rather than make his muscles tense tense up from AC shocks. Also the whole power supply shroud is grounded. He was actually pretty safe, and this all is why power supplies have hard metal shells which are grounded in he first place.
or get high off the fumes coming off the thing as it cooks itself to death
I thought the same thing, I had a 5+ year old cooler master psu that went out with a bang. It sounded like a gunshot, I needed a new psu and underwear 😂
@@neotenken wussy
This PSU is recommended by Chernobyl reactor #4. What could possibly go wrong?
A 500w no name VS 750w 80+ brand name. Fair
it is not.
He should do 500w brand name VS 500w 80+ brand name.
I think another test may be required.
Cibelal sound like yoda you do
one BJ, rods removed to early ?
not bad, not terrible
I never understood why cheap PSU's like this even exist. The price difference between these awful PSU's and a good entry level PSU from a known brand with a 80+ bronze rating is like 10-20 dollars. I got an EVGA 500B 4-5 years ago for 30 dollars that I originally bought for my step dads computer and it is now used in my sisters build that I built for her last Christmas(2700/RX570). It still works perfectly and might even have a bit of warranty left on it for all I know since it came with a 5 year one. So yeah, if you are looking to cheap out do it on the case and spend the TINY amount of extra money to get even a good basic PSU.
EVGA is very serious with their warranty to the point even if its overdue you could still get a one time replacement most of the time with them. But it wont be new ofcourse if its out of warranty so they give B stock but hey i got a free GTX 970 when it died out of warranty from them so no complaints there.
He used 500w VS 750w 80+. Not fair.
He should do 500w VS 500w 80+.
They exist because not everyone is gaming, streaming, or encoding some people use their computers in basic ways like surfing the web, watching videos, and listening to music they don't need expensive power supplies for a simple cheap computer.
Easy makeshift 💣s that’s why!
@@aaronjohnson2547 .... Bruh... They should still get a name brand.. You can get a brand name for the same price as this garbage in the video
That psu makes the same noise as Rice Krispies
A 500w no name VS 750w 80+ brand name. Fair
it is not.
He should do 500w brand name VS 500w 80+ brand name.
Another test may be required?
@@cibelal6293 mate comment that sure no problem. but why did you reply that to this comment which has nothing to do with what you are saying anx is mainly concerned with the sound.
More like pop rocks to me...
Cibelal that has nothing to do with my comment
I had an Azza, and now I have a Seasonic Focus GX 750. My peace of mind is beautiful.
Never in my life have I seen someone so giddy at the sound of electrical arcs and potentially popping capacitors. Muahahah!!! Keep it HOT TJ!
You'll love ElectroBOOM
I know someone that bought a 600W no name back in the early 2000s for $18US. I said how did you get that so cheap, at the time I was getting them locally for a PC shop I worked at paying 25+ and that was our cost for a low 250-300W at the time. A week later he said it died lol and luckily for him only the supply died, nothing else was damaged. That was back around the time the defective Chinese capacitors were hitting the market.
He used 500w VS 750w 80+. Not fair at all
.
He should do 500w VS 500w 80+.
Next test!?
Ahh, the sweet sweet sound of capacitors blowing up
now that's entertainment folks
The last PSU that blew up on me fired a foot long flame out of it. I was cringing every time TJ put his face up against the grill.
DO NOT open a PSU unless you know what you are doing. Mains capacitors can kill you even after the unit is unplugged from the wall.
I’m not sure if TJ is super experienced at working on PSUs or just incredibly reckless. Either way he is reckless for portraying what he did as harmless fun when it is very dangerous.
Man, don't overreact. 220v charged capacitors can simply shock you for about 1-5 seconds, and that's it.
@@TuxraGamer 220 volt capacitors can stop your heart. but what probably exploded was the 12-volt rail capacitors which the internal resistance of your body is usually too high to allow it to travel through you.
The name on the psu doesn't matter. What matters is who made it, and how well built it is, for that you would do well to check psu reviews/ breakdowns for your questions on whatever psu your looking at buying.
Even who made it might give you different results.
GreatWall makes PSUs for Corsair too if I recall, but the ones they sell with their own name for PCs like the Wallmart ones, they cheap out on the parts. Gamers Nexus tested the GreatWall PSU on the Wallmart pre-built gaming PC vs another one with GreatWall board but some other brand, the noise output (electrical noise, not sound) and efficiency difference was quite significant, despite being the same rating on all, if I recall even the 80 plus rating.
What matters is if your name is TIMMEEEH and you attempt to run your PSU WILDLY OUT OF SPEC
all i find is a website that is written on my psu, other than its info.
looks like no one ever had it. its called thessen -600pw
from www.jackpotpc.com
Geezus dude, you were giving me so much anxiety putting your face right next to that screaming crackling Pandora's box of a PSU!!!
listen to it scream at you help me mercy sir mercy!!!🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Next Timmy Joe Episode: Why your should NEVER keep smelling the fumes of a power supply.
oh common the fumes are the best part about making this kind of video man
I have killed several cheap power supplies over the years, and repaired prebuilts that skip there.
The biggest issue is they start having voltage issues, capacity drops, or they cheat with split smaller rails to act as one, etc and the system acts like it is failing. Swap the power supply and it's like a new system.
After so many failures I just spend the extra to at least get a good Corsair or Evga.
They still go strong to this day.
For my budget builds I tend to go for thermal takes 500w thats 80+ rated, it’s like 40 usd and is pretty solid on the low end
is a thermaltake litepower RGB good?
PuffleAE86 I have had good luck with them in the past, they seem pretty solid
Pretty sure that's group-regulated unit... not that great. A lot better than this Coolmax one for sure though.
Akira1364 yes, but they seem reliable in my experience and the warranty support is pretty good (had one DOA)
I was on a tight budget and bought a evga 500w 80+ white. 3 years later it's still doing good and doesn't make any concerning noises or smells. Even with budget units, get a name brand with some kind of 80+ rating and a warranty
The reason such no-name PSUs are so crappy is because the components inside are not rated for the advertised wattage. The transistros inside are either running at the "Absolute maximum ratings" or even above and their driving signal (the signal that makes them switch at the high frequency needed for the voltage step down) has probably no "Dead time" which means that for a brief moment all of them are on and there is a short circuit and that repeats for thousands of times every single second so they overheat and stop working after a little while and the transformer cores are crapy and too small for this wattage so they get oversaturated under full load and make this noise. Also the capacitors, especially the rectifying ones on the input are so cheapish that are getting stressed by the load so much they might explode and the ones on the output probably have so high ESL and ESR that the ripple current could cause damage to other components on the PC. Never CHEAP OUT ON POWER SUPPLY!!! Thats the single thing that needs to be the most reliable and will be the most future proof since ATX standard barely changed over the last decades and will probably be the same for even more.
I wanted to see the CAPs taken off the PCB and put in a component tester. Actually I was also curious if there is enough creepage space on the PCB or the thing can even send the mains to the motherboard (Edit at 14:54 there is a shot - doesn't look terrible). Another reason for the extra heat and bad components - chokes -made of coppper plated Al.
Cheapest I've gone is the Thermaltake smart 700 watt. Can be found between $55 and $60, and is not gonna die like a firecracker. Had an Apevia 500w that came in a prebuilt. It became an intentional firecracker at the point it got close to 450w from the wall...
"Let's get this thing fired up..." And then there's magic smoke.🤣
ahhh much better smells like victory
back in 2014 I decided to invest in a corsair AX 1200w PSU. She is still choochin strong today. Before anyone says you wont need that much wattage ever.
keep in mind I run the legendary lava powered FX 9590 at 5gz, not 1 but 2 AMD R9 390x in crossfire, 2 HDDS, a dual radiator AIO with 4x120mm fans in push/pull config, 3x140mm case fans, 4 monster setup, etc etc
my pc puts out heat that of the sun and draws a insane amount of wattage at full utilization. You best bet that $350 PSU was a damn good investment because anything else would damn near explode XD
Not surprised. The efficiency curve of that cheap PSU would def require much more power from the wall in order to get the requested power to the components. I've used cheap Insignia branded PSUs on build several times, but always made sure to take the CPU and GPU TDPs into account. I'm sure that little PSU could have run a Ryzen 3 3100 and a 5500xt for many years without incident.
Seriously, a 500w cheapo VS 750w 80+ brand name. Fair
it's not.
He should do 500w brand name VS 500w 80+ brand name.
I think another test may be required.
16:50 he said it in the video too. Point is i would not even use this in a low power pc its screaming already at fcking 75 watts man.
@@cibelal6293 This is a 350w PSU if you go by "reputable PSU brand" standards. Also the thing can't deliver more than 180w to a single component. The price you can buy this thing for is what determines whether or not it's good. I've seen these types of psus go for ~$25 and at that price it's a great value to the point where I've definitely bought them.
@@LiveType ok ty
I wouldnt use a no name power supply period bro its not even worth risking a low end system
That's one example of proving the difference between Buck Converters and Linear Voltage Regulators. Nice video.
Hi Timmy, love your channel. Good to see someone get as excited as I do with computer hardware. I just felt I had to mention that that model of psu is only rated for about 360w on the 12v rails. The remainder of the wattage being made up of the 3v and 5v rails. 99% of your applied load was on the 12v rail, so really you overloaded this psu by a considerable amount right from the get-go. I was actually impressed that a budget model had some kind of built-in thermal protection! Interesting stuff, any chance of similarly overloading a more reputable brand?
can Timmy joe resurrect that power supply? stay tuned kids
I have a psu in my old prebuilt and it looks dodgy at best. It's not even 80+ certified. However, the only malfunction I faced in 5+ years of use was a dead fan. I also did not immediately realized the fan was dying and was using it like that for quite a while until it started shutting itself off. I replaced the fan and it has been working fine since. I figured the psu actually has some decent overheating protection as even after working essentially without a fan it did not start to smell funny or sound weird - no coil whine, nothing. No I trust it more than any other psu. Miracles happen
Ok, deliberately overloading a PS doesn't show diddly even if it's a cheap one.
but the coil whine and smell definately is a huge give away for a bad PSU design. You'll also notice the corsair psu is pulling a lower wattage while running at higher clocks
My old 750 coolmax had similar coil while.. put a 2080 super on it and its got worse. needless to say theres a rmx750 in its place now!! glad to see i made the right decision!!!
I had a no name power supply last for 14 years. Spectacular fireworks and a nasty after smell is inevitable with any power supply eventually. Prior to that many years ago, I had a dx4 100 build with a no name power supply last for 10 years.
I put a no name psu in my first pc. worked fine till i tried to overclock. sparks flew out the front fan grill when it blew the caps. didnt take anything out with it luckily, but i learned my lesson and bought a Seasonic.
150w for +3.3v and +5v, and 350w for +12v, so consuming more than 350w on this psu is asking for trouble
yeah, those rails are really aimed at ooooold ass systems that heavily loaded the 3.3v and 5v rails. Computers now have like, over 90% of their load on the 12v rails
Who on earth even uses 3.3v and 5v rails???? Even so, the better PSU MIGHT have used 350w on 12v rail after efficiency loss.
@@xeridea sata drives and pci express cards iirc still do
About two years ago, I bought a 600w evga 80+ white card, and it blew up a few months later, while running a 3700x and 1080ti. Killed my motherboard, but luckily everything else survived. That was the last time I went with anything from EVGA
This video just shows that you know nothing about power supplies. 0:58 Even the amazon page says you're not supposed to run more than 14 A (172W) through the first (CPU) rail and no more than 16 A (196 W) through the rest of 12 V rails (GPU, SATA, MOLEX, often RAM VRM...).
Also 9:45 when you hear electronics crackling, it's generally a bad idea to put your face in. If an ark jumps to your finger, it gets burned. Eyes don't like burning.
Last but not least, 14:43 sticking your finger in the mains area of a PSU is always a bad idea, after a total failure where you don't know what burned and thus can be connected to mains capacitors it's straight hazardous gambling with your life.
Yep, it’s super dumb to jam your finger in a psu like that. The capacitors can hold enough voltage/current to KILL. He should really add a disclaimer telling people how dangerous this is and to not try it at home.
While I don't agree with your first sentence, everything after it is correct and I wanted to point out some of the same points. The other one is BOTH 12V rails combined can only do 350w if you go by the label. Since almost nothing these days pull anything substantial off the 3.3V and 5V rails, this PSU is at best a 350W max PSU. Going by the crap efficiency, the 450W+ readings at the wall are most probably the 350W max it can handle. Overcurrent protection or some other protection kept shutting it down. In the end heat killed some component. This PSU would probably last 5 years with a normal 200w load or something. It's definitely a crap PSU though. Timmy Joe, if you see this you're still awesome and I love your content, but this guy made some valid points.
I think his intention was to stress it to the extreme since he didn't want to wait months for it to fail on a more normal configuration. As a 500w psu it is certainly capable of powering a 2700x and 5700xt combo without failure. All he did was step it up slightly, something that most name brand psus can handle since they tend to be a little more over engineered than a cheap psu like this.
That being said he is very lucky he didn't hurt or kill himself with the way he handled that psu.
@@johnchristianson515 yes he 100% said this is for science and that it's not a good idea. Also, a 2700X and a 5700XT would pull close to 350W so this PSU would NOT be suitable. It's not a 500W PSU by current ATX standards. Sure the TDP for those are 105W+225W, but there's no way a 2700X only pulls 105W. I would say an R5 2600/3600 and a 5600XT would be max i'd pair with it from AMD side.
Actually... he showed the wrong model on Newegg. It's the Coolmax M-500B with three rails +12V1@17A, +12V2@17A, +12V3@12A . 400W on 12V combined. That makes a bit more sense. It doesn't have Overcurrent or overtemp protection. "Over voltage protection & short circuit protection" if going by the product page.
12:25 I also own a Corsair TX750 which has problems (after many years, bought for $99) on my PC making it crash and reboot even when idle, so had to replace it with a EVGA 750 GQ, 80+ Gold, and it solved my problems. The TX750 still works, I just no longer trust it. Keep in mind Corsair TX750 was made before 80+ efficiency rated were put into place, so it has no 80+ rating at all, like the Coolmax M-500 PSU you blew up.
I always get name brand PSUs. What I have found is even bottom of the barrel EVGA stuff is leaps and bounds better than this sort of junk. I have run an N1 400w on an RX570 before. Not good idea, but it had no issues handling it, and honestly the fan wasn't too loud. The W1 and BR lineup are my go to for lower end systems, especially Bstock. A BR500 handled a 3600+1080 flawlessly.
Coolmax brings new meaning to the "Snap, Crackle and Pop" tagline from the Coco Pops commericals 😂
Rice Krispies.
My first build was a £60 "Hiper" 580w PSU back in 2004, that lasted surprisingly well before eventually stinking the room out and failing to power on. I've gone for Corsair RM series power supplies ever since. Sure they're expensive, but so is replacing half a rig when a PSU blows.
it's the cheapest fun you can have with a psu
lol the no name in my kids computer has been running fine for years. The corsair in mine lit it self on fire.
I recently bought a lot of old PSUs, 1 modular be quiet and like 7 complete no-name supposed crap PSUs.
GUESS WHAT, the be quiet was the ONLY faulty one inside the whole lot and all the cheap noname 400W+ PSUs ran absolutely FINE with a sensible setup (95W CPU and ~100W 6pin PSU with a SINGULAR MOLEX ADAPTER even!)
I tested them by MINING with them! Full tilt!
The ones below 400W I OBVIOUSLY DID NOT set up with a fucking GPU, that's like trying to put a Fury X and a stupid 200W oced CPU on a 500W PSU.
You just don't do it unless you insist on proving a point you just want to force!
Generally just stick to whatever you know works. Seems like a good rule of thumb, although Corsair has a good lineup of psu. Must have just had bad luck.
Pov: you just bought a gigabyte psu
9:43 if you look closely at the power supply, you can see a spark
Look even closer and you will see an idiot sniffing the toxic ozone gas coming from the electrical discharge.
@@MandoRick1978 This made me laugh. He probably didn't know tho 🤷♂️
Which is why its even more bizarre he couldn't see the damage when he opened it up. There absolutely MUST be skid marks in there, he just didn't bother to look carefully enough.
I got a Seasonic TX850. It's awesome. The fan only comes on when rendering with the GPU. Does great with my 5950x which runs at 100% most of the time and usually overclocked, but with electricity now, I went back down.
“Running a PC Powersupply at Max Rated Wattage might shorten it’s lifespan” more like 5 Minutes hahahaha
oh common give it some credit it lasted 45 minutes atleast not 5 minutes that's enough for one game of fortnight
Even name brand power supplies can be crap depending on how much you spend. My Thermaltake TR2-500W was showing the exact same symptoms as the Coolmax, coil whine and horrible smell, yet I wasn't even drawing close to the 500W rating.
I would keep the fan and send the rest to Computer Recycle to reclaim the rest of the crap that went into building that power supply. And why keep the fan? I think the fan is still the only good part in the whole thing. Could use it in other things or maybe some Frankenstein monster build that magically works. Also, able to play Doom.
Some No-Name PSU's are okay. I used to own a LogiSys PSU with my first build. Believe it or not it served me very well until I sold the whole system. It took me 2 builds until I finally could afford Name Brand PSU's. but the LogiSys and whatever OEM Compaq one I got from a scrapped system I wound up using in my second build actually didn't blow up, and lasted years. Do I recommend going with cheap PSU's? Not exactly. Maybe I was lucky and had diamonds in the rough.
I had a buddy who once got a dirt cheap PSU, he said when he got home after work and started Gaming, 5 minutes later, His system started popping like a firecracker was lit inside! Good thing his actual system survived.
Remember kids molex to sata lose your data
TJ u used a 500w VS 750w 80+. Not fair
.
He should do 500w VS 500w 80+.
Another test is needed asap?
Never had an issue.
sata to molex somethin something rolex
God Timmy Joe.. you are amazing. Everytime i watch a Timmy Joe video, my mood goes through the roof. Such a sympathetic guy!
I had a Rosewill PSU blow up on me.. cannot recommend.
The most important / highest quality item in your PC should be your PSU
My first gaming PC was a pre-built from iBuyPower that it had a "Xion" PSU in it. Back then I had no idea about PSU quality, wattage or anything like that so when my PC started turning off while I played Dead Island I began the troubleshooting. That's when I learned the lesson of non-name brand PSUs.
I promptly built a new PC with a Corsair AX full-modular 80+ Gold PSU and I've been using it since 2013. She's a beast and has been in 3 different PCs, outlasting every other component including one motherboard, a processor, and a few HDDs.
Lessons:
1.) Pre-builts can be great for beginners to start their tinkering journey
2.) Never cheap out on a PSU
@@Phiidyn A good lesson to learn early, i hope it didnt do too much damage before it went.
I bought a rosewill(not a cheap one) when modular just became a thing, it was a 1000w lightning model, still running today, it is gold rated though
Some Roswill units like the Hive or Glacier are junk and other Rosewill units like the Quark or Capstone are pretty good. The Rosewill Lightning is another good one.
Not a complete waste,
1. Good video content.
2. Cut the cables off use them for something else.
3. Maybe a few components are salvageable
4. Project case.
5. Build a whole computer in the power supply project.
(that's a Dare)
Thanks for the video. Reminds me of my passed when I would buy 15 dollar power supplies. Be safe stay healthy.
Still better then what Alienware uses ☝️
Dell/alienware psus are actually pretty solid, well from my experience
Alienware sucks I had one years ago it cost 1200$ and it had a lot of driver issues I called support and the guy kept telling me to restart the pc and kept asking when I bought it and I bought it that day.. yeah returned that shit to bestbuy immediately after that headache. Never will buy dell or Alienware again!
Branden Prestigiacomo ya I just bought my last prebuilt
@@slipstream502 for me, dells have lasted me years, I have plenty of 15 year old dell laptops and desktops that still work perfectly fine, then again you bought from best buy and you don't completely reinstall the os on your prebuilt systems.
Cheap power supplies are inefficient so even if the PC only draws 300 watts the power supply might be drawing 400 watts from the wall so it can happen that a for example 500 watt power supply draws 550-600 watts from the wall
That ist why it drew more than 500 watts for a moment in the video.
No where near 500w , also PSU , 450 lol , really good video , laughed a lot!
He used 500w VS 750w 80+. Not fair. at all
He should do 500w VS 500w 80+.
Next test.
@@cibelal6293 500w vs a properly rated 400w would have been a more fair comparison lol
@@cibelal6293 I think you missed the part where Timmy showed the Power consumption of the 750w Corsair vs the 500w Coolmax. In which case boils down to efficiency. The Coolmax he tested clearly couldn't handle supplying even 400w of power to the parts, while the rest went to waste.
Someone else pointed out the Coolmax isn't even rated for 500w on the +12v rail, which I totally spaced. Even rookie builders know that the +12v rail is what really matters.
As soon as you get into adapters... it is game over. I have used Apevia (great wall) power supplies with good results. No whine, cheap, 80+ efficiency. Your mileage may vary.
I'd rather have a slower CPU than a shit power supply if I'm on a budget.
Glad I went with a Seasonic PX-850 Platinum to feed with my 3900X
Bro why cheap out? Get a titanium!!! :P
The PX-850 is total overkill for this CPU.
I bought a $21 psu from ebay for an Athlon 3000g for my grandpa. It has worked just fine for playing solitaire and listening to music. The whine from the psu is the switching of the mosfets.
too much Idiocity on this vid, you just overloaded a cheap power supply and keep on smelling fumes lol.
I had a Shaw 860w psu, what it listed on the different voltage rails couldn't be supplied by the wire gauge they used, and yes it whined and stunk.
My antec 500 watt psu from 2006 is running my 3060ti like a champ, as it has run all my graphics cards since
2006. New fans over the years of course.
I use cheap used power supplies a lot but I make sure it’s a know brand with decent amps and some weight to it. Generally pay €20 for 550watt unit and never had issues.
I must have bad luck because I have bought 2 different EVGA 80+ in the last year that were both junk, they both came bad. One of them the (a 600Watt 80+ white) P4 Cable would not work & the other one a (450 watt 80+ Bronze) just keeps crashing the Systems I test it in.
Nice vid Timmy. You've easily solidified the fact of Investing in a good, more expensive PSU is always a safe bet. It will outlast any other component in a system by years. Plus this gives you the headroom to OC safely when you really need to squeeze out more performance on aging setups....Not to mention they don't risk burning your house down! Decent PSUs are very underrated.
10:00 she's popping she's popping dude
I've used cheap power supplies (mainly Apevia) in many budget builds and never had an issue with them. The real problem with this el-cheapo brand is that they are deceptively advertising 500 watts but what they are doing is adding the 12v and the 5v rails together to get that 500 watt rating. If you pause the video at 01:03 you can see the 5v is rated at 150 watts and the 12v is rated at 350 watts. Add them together and you have 500w. The problem is that only the 12v really matters since it's the one that powers the CPU and GPU.
This power supply should really be rated at 350 watts. As a general rule I try to keep total system power to less than 80% of the 12v max wattage (350*.80 = 280 watts in this case). That's more than enough for a budget build for something like an i5 9400 and GTX 1650 super. The components you used in this test wildly exceeded the PSU's capabilities.
There’s a video on tech yes city where he explains the 12v+ rail and you always want the amps to be above 32a. It’s simple math that power supply is 12v x 16a= 192 watt power supply.
it has two 12v rails. a 14 amp and a 16 amp. still only 360w though
Thank you, someone that actually understands, TJ should of started the video explaining that. That's the reason that it blew.
You seem to understand how the rails work. So I don't get why you would just completely disregard them, because you're CLEARLY overpowered for this PSU. Nothing wrong with this PSU if you make sure you're components aren't maxing out the rails. But yeah, if you're building a mid to high end system, you definitely don't wanna cheap out on the PSU, because it almost certainly won't handle it. There are PSU's WAY worse than that Coolmax though. A lot of the budget ones only have ONE 12v rail, and they look a lot like the 3rd rail on this Coolmax, 12v at 12amps which just isn't going to cut it with even a lot of budget builds out there. At least this Coolmax has 2 other rails at 17amps. Still not great, but like I said, it's possible if you don't push it.
Be very carefull while opening power supply !!!! Capacitors still have lots of charge even when unplugged and "OFF" !!! Either discharge the capacitors (via ground) or make sure they are discharged already...
Hi there
These are my specs:
Cpu: i5 10400f
Gpu: ghost gtx 1650 4gb
Motherboard: gigabyte h510m h
Ram: 16gb 8x2 3200hz
Ssd: 120gb
Hdd: 1tb
Psu: xigmatek 600w plus +80
Case: xigmatek medusa
I’m planning on upgrading to a rtx 3060 ti but people always advise me to change the psu (probably cuz it’s chinese lol). so should i change the psu to a better brand psu or upgrade to a rtx 3060 ti?
I imagine the case is a xigmatec medusa, and the PSU is xigmatec x-power. Looking at the specs the 600W one can only supply 504W of that on the +12V rail.
In modern PSUs, supplying significantly less on the 12V than the nominal rating is _always_ a bad sign. Even the meanest PSU I would ever recommend could supply 99% of the rating (594W in a 600W)
While it may "work," these PSUs supply dirty power to your components, reducing their performance and often lifespan. Power is not just power- look at any oscilloscope videos with PSUs. Clean power is very important.
There is a PSU tier list on LTT, google it (YT won't let me post the link). It's a little old, but the recommendations are still good enough. Anything tier B and up there is fine for a 3060Ti.
bought a generic 20 dollar 450w psu like a decade ago and its still chugging fine but yeah that was back when i was ignorant on pc part quality
the only part i would skimp on is the CASE, i buy a few of these cheap power supplies for the cables, i chop the cables off and make extensions because some of my builds the stock cables are too short, other times i but cheap power supplies is for testing water loops to make sure its 100% sealed, i personally prefer seasonic/fsp power supplies since they are cheaper than other brands where i live and they are also the manufacturer of most of the other brands like corsair.
I put a RX590 in my wife's PC and her 550W supply immediately started sounding like a banshee and proceeded to go down like a lead rake (it was a Cooler Master PSU). I definitely underestimated the draw that card has. Swapped it to a EVGA 800w Gold and it's been smooth sailing since.
If, for some reason, I'm going for a cheaper power supply, I'll go for something like a FSP branded one. FSP is the OEM for a lot of power supply makers, and they've been reliable for me. There's definitely some alright cheap power supplies out there. Coolmax isn't one I'd trust with anything good.
PSUs literally can make or break your system... NEVER SKIMP!!! Listen to the man here!!! LISTEN!!!
Worst PSU I ever bought was a Solid Gear Neutron 850w. The PCIE cables were totally dead. It was brand new. It's been sitting in my closet for about a decade now. Couldn't return it thanks to a problem on Amazon.
My old rig had a Thermaltake Toughpower XT 750. Damn thing took a lickin' and still is a tickin'! 11 years it's lasted.
My new rig has an EVGA 850 B5. Love it.
happened to me Today on the same day of installing a brand New Corsair RMX 1000w. I had a back up PSU to test and didn't damage anything else. My back up is a Corsair RMX 850
My 2007 fsp 300 watt unit is still going strong. A great psu
why not run a test on it where you only load it to 300 or so watts i dont think this video was worth watching because you only proved you can destroy it by putting a heavy load on it
I will blow this power supply up you gotta love it when you hear this in the beginning of a great video
Good thing you’re waring your bullet proof glasses!
Just in case a capacitor or something blows, possibly sending shrapnel out any opening.
Good thing.
I have used cheap PSUs for standard builds for awhile and have had luck with some, and others have crapped out after a year or so, but none have ever had that coil whine. ugh. with headphones you really get that screeching effect.
yep, they were actually some red sparks in that psu. not even a 500w lame.
and never open a psu without waiting a few days. the capacitor still hold big charge with big amps that can kill you. let them discharge.
In my experience these cheap power supplies are fine if you know what you are so doing and are definitely worth it if you can find one for ~$20. That's also definitely not a 500w power supply. From the 12v rails it comes out to 360w. This should be advertised as a 350w power supply if you go by "reputable PSU brand" standards. They get 500w by adding up the total power the PSU can deliver from all the rails. So 360w (the two 12v rails) + 140w (the 5v rail which is shared with the 3.3v rail) = 500w.
If you are after some good-ish cheap power supplies, Aerocool is a pretty good brand in my experience. Aerocool Cylon 700W powers my Thermi card with no issues. Needs good airflow though.
It might not be that the PSU is smart enough to turn off, but the connected electronics may be detecting a dip in voltage and going into shutdown.
I think you overloaded it when you plugged the ssd onto the same strand as the graphics card supplemental power adapter.
The only thing better that could have happened would have been flames shooting out from the fans on the power supply.
My first build a few yrs back i bought a 1000watt psu from ebay it was like 30 bucks. I didnt really know then that is super cheap. Anyway when i got my pc powered up i smelled burning electronics within 10 to 20 minutes. The pc would still run but it stunk really bad. I then bought a 1000watt EVGA for wayyy more money lol and it lasted me a long time
Reminds me, of when my cousin went from a 4th gen Intel i3 to a R7 1700. He sold me the i3, board, ram and PSU for like £80. I didnt know what PSU he had, was a Corsair 550w 80+ gold rated PSU, fully modular too...I got a damn good deal.
As for selling builds, I always at minimum used a 80+ white rated PSU from a decent brand, usually 450/500w.
Ayy I've got a corsair 80+ white 550w in my system powering a 4th gen i7 and rx 570 and it's running awesome
I’m surprised it was that much I have a EVGA 600 W 80 white And it was only $40 from Best Buy
Thermaltake 700w psu I got for 40 bucks has lasted 7 years still going strong 🌚
Niccceeee
I've tortured a PSU before but I never got it to blow. I had an old no brand PSU which had Pentium 4 printed on the side and it's a 550W PSU so I hooked it up to a X79 based system running a 12 core xeon and a 900 series Titan X. The fan span up, it got really loud but it never blew. It had one six pin for a graphics card, I used a six pin to eight pin adapter and then an eight pin to dual eight pin adapter to power the GPU and it worked long enough for me to determine that the problem I was having with the system was caused by a Cooler Master V1000 PSU. Name brands aren't always better.
You could get a SeaSonic or a Corsair for pretty much the same price, with pretty much nearly the same wattage.
Newer buy no namer power supply ,never cheep on good motherboard, never cheep on good CPU cooling, never ever buy used HDD or SSD for main system, never ever buy XFX Card.
Buy one good case and use it for 10 years
Mine rules, learned hard way.
14:43 Actually those capacitors still hold the charge and actually can hurt you bad.
I have ran an ms-tech 850w for 12 years now. Its starting to fail since 3 months now. Id say i got very lucky, or they did pretty okay. But i totally agree with this video.
This reminds me of a story that happened around 4-5 years ago.My friend said his gonna upgrade his pc fine i told him i can get him a excellent pc for the right price but he doesn't listen and bought a crap one (I5 4590 H81 mobo)So the last thing i asked him was did you upgrade the psu.His like no it's not old doesn't need an upgrade.My words was good luck in powering your setup.On the saterday of that week we just heard a faint sound and next moment every thing dead.His fking lucky only psu blew and didn't take anything with.
The cheap power supplies isn't that bad when you buy a pre-build like a r5 3400 g if you run a dedicated gpu then always get a good psu
"crap" i5 4590 was very good 5 years ago lmao.
The only power supply i have smelt is an old one left over after i upgrade a friends PC with my spare parts, i was left with his old generic PSU
I've exploded a PSU or two in my day...one actually melted my mouse to the desk when it fried overnight. I actually just bought a new PSU to replace the 10 year old unit in mine. It's just not as efficient or quiet as I'd like it to be. Goodbye Antec TruePower Quattro 850W, it's been an awesome run. Seasonic Prime 1300W 80+Gold will be replacing it. I can't afford to be cheap.