please make sure you buy quality PSUs the maker doesnt matter, the OEM doesnt matter. a quality psu matters !
Actually, the problem here is that the average FreeNAS user has no way to identify "a quality PSU," especially when buying one online, sight unseen, for a new build.
The maker/OEM does matter in this business. It isn't an absolute. Look at automobile reliability. I notice that Toyota isn't
on this list of 10-worst-cars. The Prius C is at the
top of the list, though. I can draw some inferences that Toyota tends to produce a better quality car, while Ford tends to produce a crappier car. Not absolutes, but does contribute. I'd say at least half the supplies I've seen fail over the past ten years trace back to Fortron. Fortron is the manufacturer who actually makes supplies sold under the Antec, Thermaltake, Sparkle Power, etc., labels.
The problem is that ANY manufacturer CAN make a great supply, and those manufacturers can also make crappy supplies. The reality of the PC parts marketplace is that end users usually aren't willing to pay the price premium for extreme endurance supplies built with milspec components, so the question becomes "which corners did they cut" and "are those corners safe to cut."
There's lots of discussions of the various details on PSU's, but to actually know, rather than guess, you need to rip the damn things apart.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2297245 for example is an entertaining thread.
So we don't really care what MIGHT work. Anything MIGHT work. When looking at the options for something solid to suggest to users, I wanted something that came as close to "uncompromising quality" as I could find. As far as I can tell, the Seasonics suggested are that.