What do you guys think of these power supplies?

[BrianG]

Originally Posted by mistercrash

Years ago I had a Rivergate 30 amp power supply. At that time it was said they were the best for our use in the hobby. They're a bit pricey compared to others you can find on the web but I have never heard of anyone who used them not absolutely love them.

http://www.rivergatedist.com/PowerSupply.htm

BrianG maybe you can chime in on them if you know about them.

I don't personally have experience with them, but they look really nice. And the capability to set them to 14.2v is really nice too. As you know, a little extra voltage reduces the current required for a given power draw (10A @ 12v is the same as 8.45A @ 14.2v).

If I was gonna get one, I'd get the 90A model: http://www.rivergatedist.com/bulldog_90.htm It would be nice to have one supply at the track to feed several chargers at once. One large PS is gonna be more efficient than several smaller ones usually. Actually, it would be nice for the larger tracks to have a couple of these on-hand.

This comment in that linked page is funny: "if you need more power than this buy a welder".

Looks aren't everything, but you can get a pretty good indication of whether the supply will handle what it is spec'd at from looking at the guts. Large capacity filter caps, large gauge wire on the transformer/coils, large heatsink (even at 80% eff, the heatsink will need to dissipate some power and you can extrapolate some data merely by size), and transistors/FETs that will deliver (according to datasheet). Of course, a company could use adequate looking parts and not deliver the performance, but it wouldn't make much sense to go to the expense of using beefy parts and cheap out at the end.