So... still on the lookout for a good deal on a 1200w unit, I found this Rosewill Capstone G Series at NewEgg for $100 after $10 rebate.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182361&cm_re=rosewill_1200w-_-17-182-361-_-Product
This at least appears to be very similar to the Quark Plat Series, with the exception of course of the 2% difference in power efficiency, but was wondering if anyone on this thread had used this series (in any wattage). In addition, the Capstone seems to be semi-modular, but with only the 24-pin connector permanently connected, so probably no issue there. Otherwise, seems to have the same # of cables/connectors as the Quark. This still puts me 1 molex cable short, but hopefully can find a work-around for that.
If i do my math right, the incremental electricity cost for Gold vs Plat is only $2/month, so ROI wise, this would be a no-brainer vs the $180 (or even $160) Quark version. But, wondering if there are any other differences that I am not catching.
IMHO, it's not worth "saving pennies" on PSUs, because your entire investment, ie. mobo, gpus, ram, cpu, etc., could be harmed in many ways due to a sub-standard PSU. Be careful on so called Platinum PSU selling at "attractive" pricing -- there are too many scams out there.
Standardizing on a good PSU brand will save you power bill, stability of rigs, consolidated warranty to some extent, etc, over time.
The more expensive PSUs, esp Platinum ones from EVGA, Corsair, Rosewill are well above 100 for Gold or 200 bucks for Platinums, for a reason - its simply using quality & better components resulting good performance and efficient power consumption for the rigs. I standardized on EVGAs because of the build and reputation, and also the 10-year warranty.
To save on overall rig costs, find a reliable and cost-efficient supplier of RAM and GPUs instead, because these items are bought in multiple quantities therefore the savings realised are much meaningful.
To go even further, study the supply chain for the RAMs and GPUs, and buy direct from distributor if you are buying in bulk, rather than buying from Newegg or Amazon.
Thanks Citronick, I appreciate your insight on this issue. I understand and agree with what you said about sticking with the reputable brands. In fact, my 2 mining PSUs are both Rosewill Quark (1kw and 1.2kw), both of which I like very much, hence looking at another Rosewill for rig #3, just Gold vs Platinum. By all appearances on NewEgg, this Capstone appeared to be inline quality wise with the Quarks as both had 4-star reviews. However, the difference became evident between the 2 in reading the in-depth reviews that Phil linked to. If it was just the 2% difference between Gold and Plat, I would buy that Gold right now, but the build quality appears to be noticeably worse, even though from same brand, which is why I opted not to buy it. I will probably just wait until that 1200w Quark drops in price again and stick with that.
As to your comments about RAM and GPUs, I'm not sure it can help much in my specific case. Firstly, I am not in the market for multiple sticks of RAM (at least not past the 2 i will need for rig #3), so there would be no possibility for volume discounts there. However, I do have a question about quantity of RAM needed for mining. Both of my rigs so far have 16GB of RAM (2x8GB). Is this overkill? Could I get by with 2x4GB instead? I would primarily be GPU mining ETH/XMR/ZEC and CPU mining XMR, so maybe this is an area I can save in?
As for bulk discounts on GPUs, I doubt that 6 would qualify me for this. I'm under the impression that I would need to be more in the 15-20 range for a distributor to even talk to me, and that's not going to happen any time soon. I think i will be good at 3 rigs for now, unless of course crypto prices go crazily high in the near future. Of course, I said the same thing after planing rig #2, so who knows