Today, we obtained the failure rate of power supplies recorded by a major French e-commerce. These statistics include products in shops since the first April 2006.A minimum if at least 100 units have been sold. Statistics per brand are based on a minimum sample of 500 units:
Fortron: 0.7%
Hiper: 1.2%
Seasonic: 1.4%
Thermaltake: 1.6%
Tagan: 2.8%
Enermax: 3.0%
Antec: 9.5%
Fortron comes first in the list followed by Hiper and Seasonic. Thermaltake is next and is the last manufacturer to have an acceptable failure rate. Tagan, Enermax and most of all Antec are above the limit. For Antec the entire power supply range has very high failure rates: 21.6%, 18.1% and 17.3% for the Antec SmartPower 2.0 500, 350 and 400 Watts. Not a single product has a rate below 2% and the best one is the Neo HE 430 watts at 2.6%.
For Fortron, the figures are a bit more disparate from 0% for the most reliable model to 1.5% for the "least" reliable. Hiper's rates oscillate from 0.4% and 3.8%. The two models above 2% are the modular R 580 watts. For Seasonic, the leading products S12-500 and 600 are respectively at 1.8% and 0.9%.
Thermaltake's rates vary from 0% to 2.5% except for the Silent Power 680 Watts which is at 6.6%. Tagan's figures are relatively stable from 2.3% to 3.3%. Finally, Enermax' rates oscillate from 1.8 to 5.1% (Liberty EL620AWT).
