26.7 Our Picks

Although we certainly haven't used every power supply available, we have used a lot of them over the past 20 years. During that time, we have come to prefer power supplies from PC Power & Cooling (http://www.pcpowerandcooling.com). In every respect, PC Power & Cooling units are simply the best power supplies made. They are built like tanks, extremely reliable, and well regulated. In all the years we have used PC Power & Cooling power supplies, we have had exactly one unit fail. And that power supply failed gracefully, not taking the motherboard, processor, drives, and other components with it, as so often happens with lesser power supplies. PC Power & Cooling makes a variety of power supplies, including the Standard economy series, the TurboCool performance series, and the Silencer series of quiet power supplies. One of them is almost certainly right for your system.

In the past, we recommended PC Power & Cooling power supplies exclusively. Some readers balked at the higher cost of PC Power & Cooling units, however, so by popular request we began evaluating less expensive units. After looking at power supplies from Sparkle, Antec, Enermax, and others, we chose those made by Antec (http://www.antec-inc.com). The Antec TruePower units are the best power supplies we know of that are not made by PC Power & Cooling. They are well built, durable, tightly regulated, very quiet, and less expensive than similar PC Power & Cooling units. We regard Antec TruePower units as, if not quite equal to PC Power & Cooling units, at least the next best thing.

For what it's worth, Robert and Barbara use PC Power & Cooling or Antec TruePower power supplies in all of their personal systems and servers.

For our detailed current recommendations by brand name and model number, visit http://www.hardwareguys.com/picks/power.html.