From their site:

"You can use on a PC but only with 65watt TDP or lower and on board graphics. Basically, just know what you are doing if building a PC."

Seems a bit on the low side if you want to add a decent video card in your retro pc. Could be useful for pre socket 7 pc's though.

"These are for All Amiga setups including UnAmiga ITX, MiSTix and Raspberry Pi4 and Real Amiga systems and NOT for high end PC builds."

Not sure about the connector situation on those.

"Please note this is not a silent PSU, but it has been configured as good as possible to be unobrusive."

The German text puts it differently - "it's not quiet" rather than "not silent".

This looks like a fine development for the Checkmate Amiga crowd, but its meagre 5V line makes it unsuitable for the most problematic of retro PC builds: late P3 and early to mid Athlon systems on motherboards that feed both AGP and (dual?) CPU primarily from 5V. In an extreme case (dual Athlon MP on board without ATX12V...) you need 40A or more on that line. 17A is no better than any regular modern PSU in that regard.

crusher wrote on 2024-11-26, 07:12:

It has following specs: […]
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It has following specs:

12V - 204W 17A
3.3V - 16A
5V - 17A
3.3V + 5V combined - 138W

I think this will be suitable to power my DOS machine (Asus P5A, 233MHz Pentium MMX) as well as my Win98 machine (Asus TUSL2-C, 1.4GHz PIII).

What do you think?

I wouldn't call this "PSU suitable for retro PC", so - nope.

crusher wrote on 2024-11-26, 07:12:

Hi there, […]
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Hi there,

recently I stumbled across this newly produced ATX PSU.

https://dragonbox.de/de/checkmate-a1500-plus- … 0w-atx-netzteil

It has following specs:

12V - 204W 17A
3.3V - 16A
5V - 17A
3.3V + 5V combined - 138W

I could not find information what connectors are included. At least it has 24-pin MB connector.

I think this will be suitable to power my DOS machine (Asus P5A, 233MHz Pentium MMX) as well as my Win98 machine (Asus TUSL2-C, 1.4GHz PIII).

What do you think?

If each power rail was fully independent and the PSU rating was 300+ watts it would work for most of the Celeron/K6 hair dryer era of chips with a meh gpu which are vintage now.

As rated you would need to carefully
Navigate anything past a P1 or original PPRO single cpu systems.

It’s rating makes it best combined with systems that normally would have an AT PSU, and not ATX.

Personally I hate having to worry about an easily overloaded PSU.

If I have to be honest, it looks a bit on the shit side.

For starters, I don't see a single legit safety certification on the label - not even a fake "CE" mark. To me, that says, "we ain't even going to bother trying".

Then there's the green electrolytic caps seen right through the vents - those are almost like Teapo's colors... but not exactly. Personal experience tells me these are more likely to be crap like ChengX or Chang or ChongX... or whatever, you get it - cheap trash. I wouldn't trust these to last even past the EU's mandatory 2-year warranty.

Red selector voltage switch means no APFC, which is is both a blessing and a curse. On the plus side, no APFC means one less thing to blow up on you after some time (APFC circuits and cheap input caps are really good at that.) On the negative side, modern PSUs that lack APFC are typically cheapo crap. If we were back in 199x-2005, I'd understand, as APFC wasn't the norm back then and even good PSU manufacturers didn't always put an APFC circuit in their PSUs. But pretty much anything made past 2010 without APFC is usually not very good (to say the least.)

Otherwise, 17 Amps on the 5V rail isn't that bad if the PSU really can provide that much. That should be more than enough for a Pentium/II/3 and most single-CPU Athlon/XP systems with CPU TDP under 60 Watts and any video card other than a Radeon 9700/9800 (these are 5V heavy.)

For 65 Euro, though.... that's a bit too much for a mediocre (at best) PSU with likely cheap caps.
I would personally rather get something cheap (but known good OEM brand) on the used market and recap it if necessary (very likely) than buy something new that will end up in the same boat (or worse) after a few years.

momaka wrote on 2024-11-26, 21:29:

If I have to be honest, it looks a bit on the shit side. […]
Show full quote

If I have to be honest, it looks a bit on the shit side.

For starters, I don't see a single legit safety certification on the label - not even a fake "CE" mark. To me, that says, "we ain't even going to bother trying".

Then there's the green electrolytic caps seen right through the vents - those are almost like Teapo's colors... but not exactly. Personal experience tells me these are more likely to be crap like ChengX or Chang or ChongX... or whatever, you get it - cheap trash. I wouldn't trust these to last even past the EU's mandatory 2-year warranty.

Red selector voltage switch means no APFC, which is is both a blessing and a curse. On the plus side, no APFC means one less thing to blow up on you after some time (APFC circuits and cheap input caps are really good at that.) On the negative side, modern PSUs that lack APFC are typically cheapo crap. If we were back in 199x-2005, I'd understand, as APFC wasn't the norm back then and even good PSU manufacturers didn't always put an APFC circuit in their PSUs. But pretty much anything made past 2010 without APFC is usually not very good (to say the least.)

Otherwise, 17 Amps on the 5V rail isn't that bad if the PSU really can provide that much. That should be more than enough for a Pentium/II/3 and most single-CPU Athlon/XP systems with CPU TDP under 60 Watts and any video card other than a Radeon 9700/9800 (these are 5V heavy.)

For 65 Euro, though.... that's a bit too much for a mediocre (at best) PSU with likely cheap caps.
I would personally rather get something cheap (but known good OEM brand) on the used market and recap it if necessary (very likely) than buy something new that will end up in the same boat (or worse) after a few years.

It's a literal rebrand of a older MS-TECH unit that was also sold in Romania. That thing won't do anything in spec, no matter what you do to it. It's even worse than the generic "Switching Power Supply" sold with some older SFX Delux cases.

Alright thanks for your oppinions. Would have been too good too be true.
Been waiting for a newly produced PSU since the StarTech ATX 2.03 250W/300W ones are out of production.
Because of bad experiences I have no trust in original aged PSUs and am using EVGAs 450W DC-DC PSUs that have enough power on 3.3V + 5V rail. They are working but are still a bit too modern for my retro build.s

crusher wrote on 2024-11-28, 08:18:

Alright thanks for your oppinions. Would have been too good too be true.
Been waiting for a newly produced PSU since the StarTech ATX 2.03 250W/300W ones are out of production.
Because of bad experiences I have no trust in original aged PSUs and am using EVGAs 450W DC-DC PSUs that have enough power on 3.3V + 5V rail. They are working but are still a bit too modern for my retro build.s

One thing I've considered a few times is to completely refurbish an old PSU with fat 5V line and no active PFC: replace all caps and regulators. I have a couple of candidates, nice Antec and FSP units that have clearly failing caps but would be excellent if fixed.

dionb wrote on 2024-11-28, 09:54:

One thing I've considered a few times is to completely refurbish an old PSU with fat 5V line and no active PFC: replace all caps and regulators. I have a couple of candidates, nice Antec and FSP units that have clearly failing caps but would be excellent if fixed.

Yeah that's a good thing if you have the skills.
I'm not good in construction works and electronics so I was/am hoping for newly produced ones.

crusher wrote on 2024-11-28, 10:53:

[...]

Yeah that's a good thing if you have the skills.
I'm not good in construction works and electronics so I was/am hoping for newly produced ones.

I'm not that hot either, that's why I specified no active PFC. Old PSUs with passive PFC (if any) are pretty crude by today's standards, just a pile of through-hole technology and analog components like (big) capacitors, coils and the like. Plus if they're from the last millennium they probably use old leaded solder, which may be toxic, but is much easier to work with.

crusher wrote on 2024-11-28, 10:53:

I'm not good in construction works and electronics so I was/am hoping for newly produced ones.

I know I'm replying a bit late here but here goes anyways.

I also had zero knowledge and skills when I started to mess around with electronics.
As it turns out, old ATX PSUs are actually the easiest place to start, as they often use a single-layer PCB and are very easy to solder to, as dionb mentioned. And those are the stuff that got me started. Within a year, I gained enough knowledge not only to fix them myself, but also help others. What's funny is that some of the people I though also had no prior electronics repair experience but quickly picked it up and became quite experienced at PSU repairs.

since retro PC mainly uses 5V and 3.3V rail, I wonder if we can supplement them by adding 12V to 5V and 12V to 3.3V converters.

Looking at that I feel like I made a good decision with using an FSB350-60 HHN in my CuMine build.
Just as comparison:

And that thing was 15€ after rebate. New, full price it's about 30€, so much cheaper.
Connectors are 20 pin ATX, P4 plug, 2x Molex, 3x SATA, 1x Floppy.
It also has all the protection features one might want.
Sure, it isn't anything fancy. Won't run a big GPU on it. But that isn't what it's for. The fact that it has 20A on the 5V on a 350W unit is commendable, and that it can push 336W over the 12v pair (96% of the total capacity) means even if you run something bigger (let's say a Nowrthwood 2.8c and a 8800 GT, which still only comes to about 200W, maybe 250W with the rest of the system) it will still be fine.