Who made that power supply?

Last Updated on April 16, 2017 by Dave Farquhar

I found a cross-reference for power supply brands and OEM manufacturers. It’s a couple of years old, but still useful.

Way back when, I knew that Sparkle Power actually made PC Power & Cooling Silencer power supplies. Since Sparkle units were cheaper, I bought those, and got good, reliable power from them for years until they were obsolete. That information is obsolete now too; Sparkle was bought out by FSP many years ago.

This chart tells you a whole lot more than that. And it validates that my current practice of buying Seasonic power supplies whenever possible is probably good, since Seasonic is the actual maker for several premium brands of power supplies today.

In addition to marketing them under their own name, Corsair, PC Power & Cooling, and Antec all source some of their products from them. Not to mention that some 30 years ago, both Apple and IBM were buying from them.

And when you’re faced with a choice of power supply brands you’ve never heard of, consulting this chart can give you an idea of what no-name brands are good, and what no-name brands to avoid. This list suggests that the “Deer” branded AT power supply that Steve DeLassus and I located and bought many years ago may not have been as bad as we thought at the time. Not that we had much of a choice. We needed an AT power supply ASAP, and by that point AT stuff was getting pretty scarce, and it was Saturday afternoon and a lot of the smaller computer stores were closed.

We made fun of it for years, but it kept on ticking.

And what about my old friend Sparkle Power? Its new parent FSP makes boxes for a number of companies you’d recognize, including the inexpensive Antec Basiq line and InWin. I’ve bought some FSP boxes in recent years, usually when I needed an oddball power supply for a small micro ATX box and FSP made the only box that would fit. I think they’re fine, hopefully as a second choice.

The chart is small enough that printing it out for reference is practical, as is bookmarking it on your mobile phone. The unfortunate thing about power supplies is that you never really know when you’re going to need to go shopping for one. Sometimes you have time to order what you really want and wait a couple of days for it to arrive, and sometimes you don’t. This kind of information helps keep a bad situation from getting worse when you need a power supply immediately, there’s one store open, and all they have is an assortment of brands you know very little about.

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2 thoughts on “Who made that power supply?

  • January 1, 2011 at 4:33 pm
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    My solution to the “you never know when you’ll need one” has been to simply buy a spare. Then again, I don’t play with anything other than basic ATX cases, so my needs are simple.

  • January 1, 2011 at 6:05 pm
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    Good idea. This helps when you get that phone call. “My computer won’t turn on, so what power supply should I get?” and the person lives too far away to make it practical to loan the spare out.

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