FSP Epsilon or Tagan Dual Engine?

[EsaT]

FSP Epsilon 700W (/OCZ GameXstream) definitely has very high efficiency, quite silent sound and nicely sleeved cables but they don't have so many connectors, I've got such amount of drives+accessories that 6 Molex connectors is little too few.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/oth...roundup_6.html
http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/r...am_700W_7.html
(also while small heatsinks are enough IMO they could have left some spare cooling capacity)


Tagan Dual Engine apparently has nearly equally good efficiency and definitely has enough connectors (7 Molex, 10 SATA +4 SATA>Molex adapters) but basing to pictures sleeving might have been left to "half-way" which means quite a lot of cable spaghetti with that amount of connectors.
Design of cabling should be similar to this.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/shopper/labs/...gine-600w.html


So I wonder has anyone experiences from both of these? Tagan is about 50 euros more expensive than FSP/OCZ.
How noise level of these Tagans compares to FSP Epsilons? One 12cm fan moves more air with less noise than 8cm fans but on the other hand bigger heatsinks again should work well with smaller airflow so I wonder what situation is under bigger loads.
Case will be CM Stacker (original model) so PSU don't need to take much part to cooling of case and Tagan being longer doesn't matter. Also FSP's downfacing fan would work in it unlike in some cases which would require making hole to bottom of PSU "rack" to allow airflow for it.

[kimandsally]

Get the OCZ Tagen are not in the same league they're made by Top power OCZ made by FSP like comparing chalk and cheese plus you have the legendry OCZ warranty if it ever does need it which I doubt.

[perkam]

Tagan units have served very well for high powered systems and Tagan's Quad rail psu is just as good as any other and second only to zippy's and pcp&c's.

Get the FSP, as its most likely cheaper and all the power you need. If there is a significant price difference, get the cheaper one, as both are very powerful powersupplies.

Perkam

[EsaT]

That's about what I thought.
FSP and OCZ are ~25% cheaper than Tagan so that's quite big difference in price class of these.

Also I found few complaints about average noise level with FSPs in one forum but those PSUs were from old production lot and FSP started using other fan fast after that.


BTW, I asked Tagan's tech support about configuration of 12V rails in Dual Engines if someone is wondering that:

12V1 for Molex ,FDD,SATA
12V2 for CPU (P4,P8)
12V3 for M/B (20+4Pin)
12V4 for PCI-Express

FSP Epsilon/OCZ GameXtream have those directly in sticker on side of PSU:
12V1: CPU1
12V2: PCI-E2/CPU2
12V3: M/B, accessories
12V4: PCI-E1

So FSP might be better for ultra high end SLI/Crossfire configuration if graphic cards draw most of current from PCI-E connectors. While one rail is propably well enough (after all MB can provide 75W for GPU through PCIe) from electric engineering perspective it would be better if loads are distributed more evenly between rails, at least considering fact that these loads don't draw constant, even current but more like big gulps.


PS. kimandsally, try to get at least names right if you want to sound convincing.

[kimandsally]

That's about what I thought.
FSP and OCZ are ~25% cheaper than Tagan so that's quite big difference in price class of these.

Also I found few complaints about average noise level with FSPs in one forum but those PSUs were from old production lot and FSP started using other fan fast after that.


BTW, I asked Tagan's tech support about configuration of 12V rails in Dual Engines if someone is wondering that:

12V1 for Molex ,FDD,SATA
12V2 for CPU (P4,P8)
12V3 for M/B (20+4Pin)
12V4 for PCI-Express

FSP Epsilon/OCZ GameXtream have those directly in sticker on side of PSU:
12V1: CPU1
12V2: PCI-E2/CPU2
12V3: M/B, accessories
12V4: PCI-E1

So FSP might be better for ultra high end SLI/Crossfire configuration if graphic cards draw most of current from PCI-E connectors. While one rail is propably well enough (after all MB can provide 75W for GPU through PCIe) from electric engineering perspective it would be better if loads are distributed more evenly between rails, at least considering fact that these loads don't draw constant, even current but more like big gulps.


PS. kimandsally, try to get at least names right if you want to sound convincing.

I'm not sure what you mean get the names right to sound convincing?

I am giving you the benefit of my considerable exerience with Tagen, I build PC's for a living and I can tell you here in the UK 2 MAJOR suppliers have stopped selling Tagens because of the failure rate and I'm sick of their VERY bad customer service when they have failed in PC's I have built, if you want satistics hows this out of 1152 PC's I built in the last 2 years 17 Tagens have failed out of 312 out of the remaining 840 power supplies of different makes including Enermax OCZ and Hiper 27 units have failed.

So I don't need to sound convincing work out the figures for yourself and you'll see Tagen have a failure rate of just over 5% with the units I have bought so if you buy Tagen I hope you get a good one otherwise with the poor customer service you will wish you hadn't.

Hopefully that might put things in a better perspective.

[Larry]

I have a tygen 480w psu i like it looks very well made and has lots of nice power cables

[[XC]Atomicpineapple]

I've always stuck with Tagan PSUs. Had a 480 Watt and now a 580. Both my mothers and girlfriends PCs are powered by Tagan too, with no problems. Got a 700 Watt Tagan here waitign to go in my system. However I must admit kimandsally, youve got me thinking with that statistic, I didnt realise the return rate was that high!

[EsaT]

Here in Finland we have nice saying... Lie, whopper, statistics.

Now what serie models those exactly were? Some old models or were most of them new models? And neither are those others so spectacularly much better: 3.2% failure rate which means 5% vs 3% "chances" which is very small difference considering amount of unknown variables.
For example can you exclude external power surges from list of failure reasons? Some people tend to leave PCs on around the clock and generally common people are just damn too careless about leaving electronics with wire connected to wall regardless risk of thunderstorms. I wouldn't wonder if there's spike in breaking of PSUs at time of most thunderstorm prone season. (so if lot of Tagans were sold at that time...)

Sure one old Tagan is classified even as "dangerous" product by Safety Technology Authority... Because insulation between transformer's primary and secondary windings can't withstand 3kV 1min test but strikethrough happens at 1.8kV!
Also few Finnish shops selling equipment for overclocking and for high end PCs just happen to keep Tagan Dual Engines as very good.

Well, those incompatibility problems some people have had with Antec Neo HEs (made by Seasonic) must mean that all Seasonics are variable quality second rate scheisse, isn't that right?

But looks like I might be going towards Fortron (=propably OCZ because of better availability) because near 50EUR price difference is significant.

Got a 700 Watt Tagan here waitign to go in my system. However I must admit kimandsally, youve got me thinking with that statistic, I didnt realise the return rate was that high!

Is that Dual Engine or Easycon XL serie?
In case of first is sleeving of cables done to all parts of cables?

[Praxis1452]

topower/tagan<FSP/GameXstream

look perkam I know you like tagan but right below zippy? cmon... right below FSP maybe... Topower varies a lot. Some units are pretty decent. The 430W? w/e the 4XX model powerstream was good. The 520 was also pretty good but some of there other models aren't that great. The BFG 650W isn't all that great. SilentPcreview says it's loud right at the beginning. Jonny's review makes it mediocre I would say but not very value oriented. It gets very hot. eh... I don't want to start anything so I'll just shut up.

[Oklahoma Wolf]

The 520 was also pretty good

The 520W had its problems too right at the beginning - regulation fell apart under high 3.3v/5v loads. Only the 470W seems to have done really well throughout its run.

Lately I recommend Topower on a case by case basis, and only if I've seen the unit in question reviewed thoroughly. Build quality is much too variable with them for my comfort. Omitting discrete protection circuitry for all 12v lines and then calling it "Rail Fusion" does nothing to make me feel better, either.

[Praxis1452]

really? I've only really become an enthusiast around well close to a year. The Powerstream came out a few years ago right? Well I didn't really read many bad reports. *shrugs*

[Oklahoma Wolf]

IIRC jonnyGURU and Oleg from Xbit both ran into the regulation issues on the older 520's. Problem was fixed for the SLI model though.

[Praxis1452]

What exactly does IIRC stand for? I keep seeing it... lol

know it's kinda like fyi but...

[Oklahoma Wolf]

If I Recall Correctly

[kimandsally]

With regards to Tagen failures I have had on customers machines, I cannot exclude power surges which it could be of course. All of the Tagens were of older modles TG U22 and U15 mainly U22 but the U15 I noticed big drops on the 12v when under loads some failed before I sent them to the customers becuase they were not stable.

It could be the newer ones are better I don't know because I haven't fitted one in over 6 months, the main problem I has was customer support here in the UK it took many E mails every time and several weeks to sort the majority out and while I'm taking flack from my customers.

I actually have an old 480 Tagen in one of my own PC's which has been running faultless for over 12 months and is extemely quiet, certainly can't moan about that one.

If they have improved them and the customer support improves then they deserve to sell them.

[EsaT]

At least when I asked about distribution of 12V rails answer came in few hours... I was half expecting receiving some kind answer about sending question forward.
Here's one short report of Dual Engine 600W test.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/shopper/labs/...gine-600w.html

And here's Dual Engine 550W and Turbojet 900W test:
http://www.trustedreviews.com/articl...ge=6574&head=0
Although IMO they could have tested with higher loads on 3.3V and 5V rails. While CPU and GPUs draw about all power from 12V other devices load different voltages much more evenly.

And one French review of Turbojet.
http://www.matbe.com/articles/lire/2...atts/page2.php

[EsaT]

Looks like there might be knew contender, Seasonic M12 serie is in stock in one German shop from where I'm going to to order case accessories.

[NajZ]

I have the Tagan 530W dual engine. Is a rock solid PSU, no probs whatsoever, plus has decent amount of watts on 12v rail. + its SILENT. i got this coz it was slightly cheaper than the FSP epsilon

[Revv23]

not sure if anyone said, but there are 6 molex and 6 sata connectors on the FSP/OCZ.