So, what are the odds on an exploding Hiper PSU fritzing the rest of my rig?

[b0ned0me]

A couple of years ago I found myself short of a PSU with modern (for the time) mobo connectors and ended up making a desperation trip to the PC World where I grabbed a Hiper Type-R just before closing time for a silly price.[*]

Today I went to power up my games machine, and nowt happened. After trying a few other things I thought to try the power cable from my other PC , in case there was something wrong with the fuse in the original cable. Plugging it in yielded a nice loud crackle and a shower of sparks out of the back of the PSU - so now I have a rock-solid excuse to do my upgrade before rather than after christmas.

What are the odds on any of the remaining components being salvageable? Hiper seem to have a bit of a reputation for dying, but do they usually mount a gallant last stand or take everything with them in one last blaze of glory?

[*] It came in a plastic toolkit thing which is great for keeping little bits and bobs in. Best thing about it, I think.

[staffsMike]

I believe hipers are actually ok when it comes to the blaze of glory scenario and everything should be fine. But you may be unlucky.

[b0ned0me]

I believe hipers are actually ok when it comes to the blaze of glory scenario and everything should be fine. But you may be unlucky.

Ah well, fingers crossed I guess. Hopefully should be enough to upgrade my non-game machine, and maybe salvage the Raptor to build a RAID for my new machine.

New System Spec Time :
LN19778 Silverstone Kublai KL01-B Black Tower Case aluminium Door Front w/o PSU £65.79
LN17685 768MB BFG Technology 8800GTX £299.50
LN18301 Creative SoundBlaster X-FI Xtreme Gamer PCI 7.1Ch Sound Card OEM £51.57
LN19488 Intel Core 2 Quad-Core Q6600 G0 SLACR, £152.62
LN18577 2GB (2x1GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2 DHX £37.18
LN18914 Abit IP-35 Pro, £113.85
LN11320 530w Tagan EasyCon - TG530-U15 - 2Force Silent Modular PSU £63.32
LN12802 150 Gb Western Digital WD1500ADFD Raptor Enterprise £113.85
Total: £912.20

Comments?

[staffsMike]

I would go for the 520W Corsair HX Modular, its a fantastic PSU

Check Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK for the 8800GTX. Scan are selling an OEM one for £230 or the BFG for £270 this weekend.

Also in today only,the RAM is £2 cheaper and the Corsair PSU is at the bottom a few quid cheaper than normal

Are you overclocking?

[Buzzsaw]

LN19778 Silverstone Kublai KL01-B Black Tower Case aluminium Door Front w/o PSU £65.79
LN17685 768MB BFG Technology 8800GTX £299.50BFG? The SCan OEM is good, and very cheap ATM. Or you could go for a new GTS, almost as fast, and rumour has it that they may get faster.
LN18301 Creative SoundBlaster X-FI Xtreme Gamer PCI 7.1Ch Sound Card OEM £51.57Why? The mobo has perfectly good 7.1 sound capabilities.
LN19488 Intel Core 2 Quad-Core Q6600 G0 SLACR, £152.62I'd go for either a dual core now, or one of the new quads next year.
LN18577 2GB (2x1GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2 DHX £37.18
LN18914 Abit IP-35 Pro, £113.85 Although, it doesn't have much more functions than the IP-35, which is only £76.
LN11320 530w Tagan EasyCon - TG530-U15 - 2Force Silent Modular PSU £63.32UM, I'd read some of the other threads on PSU's. My vote is for an Enermax Liberty, the 500w or 620w.
LN12802 150 Gb Western Digital WD1500ADFD Raptor Enterprise £113.85You'll find that 250Gb drives are better value, and not that much slower. If you buy 2 (£35 each) you can raid them. Again, this is a subject that I've seen gone over recently by people with far more knowledge and experience than me. Look for the threads!

Oh, and if people start arguing over a point, either ask them to justify their position, or to provide evidence. And more evidence (not opinion) = better.

[Agent]

Hipers don't usually take stuff with them, thankfully

[iranu]

When you get your new PSU for the new rig I would look to take apart the old one, inspect it and use the new PSU to power it up with minimal kit. That way you will know that the older/remaining parts are OK and you can then either re-use them in your new rig or sell them to offset the cost of the new purchase knowing full well that any buyer is buying OK kit.

Usually PSUs get a bad reputation for a) dying frequently, or b) dying AND taking components with them.

I'm not aware of Hiper PSUs taking rigs with them when they die. :fingers crossed smilie:

[aidanjt]

With a) much more preferable than b)

[Salazaar]

When mine went pop nothing else was damaged.

[this_is_gav]

Hipers don't usually take stuff with them, thankfully

The old ones don't, the newer ones aren't quite as forgiving. New Hipers (last 8 months perhaps) are just another cheap generic PSU name, but trying to spin off of their reputation for having a very good budget range.

~ pre 2007: good PSUs at a great price

~ post 2006: rubbish PSUs at an inflated price

A buyer on another forum made a comparison between old and new of supposedly the same model, and the difference was plainly obvious.

[b0ned0me]

Hmm, it does sound rather promising in terms of salvageability. It's kind of annoying having to go to bed thinking that a grand or more of hardware has just gone up in sparks. I guess I'll find out soon...

Thanks for all the comments on the hardware list I threw together in about ten mins last night. To clarify my (few) thoughts:

• I'm not likely to be overclocking, unless I find a game that just can't run properly at stock. My A8nSLI Premium/4000+/7900 ended up running at standard clock and even managed Bioshock OK at a slightly dropped resolution
• The BFG GTX - I would have gone for the Scan OEM if they had any in stock. The thinking behind the GTX was that I have a 1920*1600 monitor and most of the benchies I have seen show the 768mb card doing better at high resolutions. Although it does seem to vary according to who is testing, and what game they are using.
• It would be kinda cool to have the new rig ready for the new year break. I'll need to shoot a few things after Christmas with my family, so hanging on for new hardware releases isn't ideal. And if I wait for new CPUs then a new GPU will be out soon and then a new chipset just after that and so on and so forth. But I suppose I could find ~£15 extra for an E6850 if it's significantly better VFM
• IP35 / IP35 Pro - I can never figure out mobo product codes, either they all suck at segmentation or I suck at comprehension. It seems there is 6 x SATA and raid and whatnot on the IP35, and all you get extra on the Pro is microguru, an extra PCI-E and 2 x eSATA. Is this right?
• I was actually looking at a bigbruin review of the Enermax Liberty last night, seems very good. The Corsair also appears pretty popular on these boards.
• As for the HDD, if my old Raptor is still OK I'll pair it with another just so I can brag to the other nerds at work. If not I'll just stick with the 500Gb spinpoint I just found on my shelf. Not that I'm disorganised or anything.

Right, now I'm off for a while to see how much survived. I have a spare seasonic somewhere, and if I can just find a few mobo adaptors I shouldn't need to tear apart my other PC........

[t0v3]

Tiered PSU Listings - Tom's Wiki

according to this list hipers aren't rated too highly. but ive heard the newest ones are pretty decent

[Dreaming]

Ah well, fingers crossed I guess. Hopefully should be enough to upgrade my non-game machine, and maybe salvage the Raptor to build a RAID for my new machine.

New System Spec Time :
LN19778 Silverstone Kublai KL01-B Black Tower Case aluminium Door Front w/o PSU £65.79
LN17685 768MB BFG Technology 8800GTX £299.50
LN18301 Creative SoundBlaster X-FI Xtreme Gamer PCI 7.1Ch Sound Card OEM £51.57
LN19488 Intel Core 2 Quad-Core Q6600 G0 SLACR, £152.62
LN18577 2GB (2x1GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2 DHX £37.18
LN18914 Abit IP-35 Pro, £113.85
LN11320 530w Tagan EasyCon - TG530-U15 - 2Force Silent Modular PSU £63.32
LN12802 150 Gb Western Digital WD1500ADFD Raptor Enterprise £113.85
Total: £912.20

Comments?

The case and motherboard aren't compatible .

The GTX I would scrap in favour of a new GTS.

Soundcard, up to you, I've got the IP-35 Pro and use the onboard sound. My friends tell me I need a discrete sound card though. I've not yet been convinced to fork over the money. Maybe I'm just tone deaf?

Don't know loads about PSUs, I bought an Antec 550 Neo HE which is really nice though. Avoid ez cool

Again, for the hard disk I just don't see the point of raptors now. The Ip35 pro has raid built in, I've set it up so that the first 35gb of two striped WD1600YS is for my operating system and it's fast as anything. But, it's not so significantly faster than my WD5000AAKS. Random access times will be faster with the raptor. This is useful in a server application - lots of requests for lots of different bits of data all over the disk. However for the average user sustained read/writes are actually faster on the newer hard disks (Samsung T166 is another recommendation) - this sustained read/write is what will boot windows / games / load maps faster :-). The speed demons in the past have been hitatchi's, I haven't the foggiest about their new drives though.

Bear in mind the newest raptor is over 18 months old in design, it is in dire need of a re-design to bring it back up in my opinion. But, (also in my opinion), it seems western digital are now focusing on concentrating the most amount of information in the smallest area to increase speed rather than with the raptor trying to increase the mechanical speed of the drive.

[b0ned0me]

The case and motherboard aren't compatible .

Eh? How come? It's a standard ATX case and an ATX mobo, unless I've missed something somewhere (again)... Aaargh never mind, found a review that discussess the challenges of getting an IP35 into that case. Back to the drawing board

[Agent]

The old ones don't, the newer ones aren't quite as forgiving. New Hipers (last 8 months perhaps) are just another cheap generic PSU name, but trying to spin off of their reputation for having a very good budget range.

~ pre 2007: good PSUs at a great price

~ post 2006: rubbish PSUs at an inflated price

A buyer on another forum made a comparison between old and new of supposedly the same model, and the difference was plainly obvious.

Interesting. Have seen loads blow / stop working, but thankfully not anyone loose their systems yet. Its one of those things which can happen regardless of maker though if you're unlucky enough

Got a link to that by any chance mate? Would be nice to see what component differences there are

[Dreaming]

Eh? How come? It's a standard ATX case and an ATX mobo, unless I've missed something somewhere (again)... Aaargh never mind, found a review that discussess the challenges of getting an IP35 into that case. Back to the drawing board

Yea if you look on the scan forums I was after this exact case not more than three weeks ago, but saw the review and wanted to see what the scan guys said. They said pretty much it's not going to happen easily, because all the front panel connectors are too short as well.

Bring on the Lian-Li PC-A05B that's all I can say