It's just that you can get good OEM/Clearence deals on SCSI HDD's, high
flop CPUs, mobos with 10 PCI/5 AGP/4 DIMM slots etc but nobody seems to
want to give deals on Antec PSU's ( I checked all the usual haunts: newegg,
ecost, techbargains etc). Vendor lock in?
Consider that technological depreciation is far faster for
any of those products. Once there aren't many modern
systems that can use a 500W ATX PSU, whatever stock of those
remains will also likely be cleared out. Until that
happens, there is no reason they'd mark them down if there
is no better alternative to displace their product segment.
They do occasionally go on sales though and through some
pricing engines you might find one for closer to $60.
There are occasionally deals on older PSU though, a couple
years ago I picked up some very nice server grade Lite-On
and Delta PSU at deep discount. They aren't ATX12V though,
but at the time I had some sytems built with Athlons that
needed PSU with beefy 5V rails and the value couldn't be
beat. Point being, getting deals on these kinds of parts is
more of an keep-an-eye-open-and-buy-on-the-spot scenario,
rather than deciding one day that you need it and buying
immediately from lowest cost vendor at that moment.
There's also a significant price jump between 400-450W PSU
and 500W, you might've saved $20-30 by going with one simply
because they're more common... they're not worth the
disproportionately higher price unless you did happen to
need that many watts which is doubtful. Any of them are
miles ahead of the typical generic though.
