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Leadman PSU - Reliability issue?
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(link) Tuesday, 19-September-2000 23:05:45 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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There's been a lot of talk about the reliability of the Leadman 400W PSU lately. As a bit of background: JimX reviewed one for us here about a year ago and soon thereafter EYO started importing them into Australia. Jim's original one is still soldiering on and I've had one here for a good few months now with no problems. I've also gotten a lot of good feedback on them from readers. Because of this, we've been recommending them as a vital component in any Athlon system. Leadman themselves have put the URL to Jim's review on their packaging, on their website and in their advertising.
However, lately things have not been completely rosy. I've had a few reports of units dying after a few months (see here for an example thread), Reaper had a strange experience with one making a loud whining noise (can't find his thread but here's a similar complaint) and now Manaz has told me they're no longer on the AMD-approved list. It seems that there has been a drop in quality, coinciding with a revision of the unit that included the front-mounted fan becoming slightly thinner. The 400W unit has two fans; an intake mounted on the front, inside the PC and an exhaust mounted normally.
I mentioned all this to Nikol at EYO, primarily to find out if they had noticed a higher rate of return. We're hearing about more failed units, but that may be because the volume of sales has gone up. This was Nikol's response:
The very first one or two batches's fans are thicker than the later ones. We have not checked the CFM of the fans though. We believe the change in design may have required less cooling needs. I have checked with our RA guy. We have not noticed any jump in returning rate for them.
The 400W Leadman PSUs have indeed gone through many revisions since we first brought them in. They have been re-designing the PSU mainly due to the compatibility to certain motherboards. The first batch may not work 100% with K7M (K7M uses 12v to step down to produce the 3v needs instead of using 5v. This leaves 5v with no load in case of no external devices are connected. In this case, the PSU will not power up in some cases until a hard drive or something is connected). One certain revision produces some squeaking noise when a P3B-F M/B is used and does not work with AK72 properly. The latest batch is a new revision we have so far found no problem.:)
I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who has anything extra to add to this. Had a good/bad experience with the Leadman LP-6100 400W unit? Let me know in this thread please.
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