4 way power suply shootout on AT

[Adul]

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1774

Incredibly, the power supplies on modern PC?s have been fairly slow to develop new technology. Often, diehard gamers will replace a motherboard, processor, ram, maybe even hard drive several times within the course of a year. On the other hard, other essential items such as the case and power supply become afterthoughts or items purchased only when completely necessary, like when a particular chipset (or two) deems it essential to increase the output wattage in order to support the processor core.

Over the course of a year, we have seen a lot of changes in the PC case market. Several companies are adopting aluminum and thin steel solutions as opposed to the bulky, heavy, thermal nightmares of several years ago. Recently, we have seen a few companies push real hard to refine the power supply market to the point where it is at today. Today we have four of the leading power supply manufactures put head to head with their best product lines.

 

[CurtCold]

"ThermalTake's Purepower ended up providing fairly decent performance, but not a lot of features. "


What features should the consumer be looking for? As long as it works, and is stable who cares?

Does your PSU have...?

Aluminum Construction ?
Mesh ATX cable sheath ?
Thermal/Manual fan control ?
Copper Component Shielding
Dedicated Line Circuitry ?
Motherboard Monitoring ?

Wow... Advances are nice, but alot of this stuff is prolly just marketing BS

 

[Adul]

The ripple is the variation in voltage over a particular rail. Like we mentioned on the previous page, too much fluxuation in voltage can lead to damaged hardware. A surprising fact we dug up during this review was that the majority of damaged RAM returned to memory manufacturers is destoryed by fluctuations in the voltage.

 

[Adul]

i would like to see PC power and cooling and sparkle thrown into the mix has well has some EL cheapo power supplies.

 

[308nato]

I have used a couple of Enlight 420w units recently. They have no features

per se, but the voltages are definitely high and tight under the most strenuous of circumstances. I have been impressed by the performance v cost. These things are Heavy.

Just my .02



New Egg pic

 

[Auric]

The short list of actual manufacturers and the many brands each are sold under would be useful also.

 

[CurtCold]

Originally posted by: Adul
i would like to see PC power and cooling and sparkle thrown into the mix has well has some EL cheapo power supplies.

Well if you would like to see it might I suggest THIS? Def should have been more PSU's tested, as well as generic, also about the names each are sold under, that def should be included.

 

[WyteWatt]

Wow i am glad i bought a Antec Truepower series power supply! Plus the Antec Truepower series power supplies can make any case fans a lot quieter!

I can't wait to see that new Antec power supply tested thats mostly for overclockers! Its really cool how you can change all kind of options on it but it is expersive

 

[Whohangs]

Great work! I would've liked to see a Sparkle power supply tested also.

 

[Tab]

Does sparkle make any power supply's over 350-watts?

Oh, I would like to know, what the best power supply is. I mean, on paper the ideal power supply has this many watts on the 12v line etc..only fluxes .2 blah blah...etc

 

[Adul]

Originally posted by: Tabb
Does sparkle make any power supply's over 350-watts?

Oh, I would like to know, what the best power supply is. I mean, on paper the ideal power supply has this many watts on the 12v line etc..only fluxes .2 blah blah...etc

they make a 600 watter i believe.


PC power and Cooling are very nice power supplies, but cost more

 

[jeffrey]

PCPowerandCooling's power supplies look vulnerable when comparing the voltage output of the 12v rail to the more powerful ones reviewed at Anandtech.

I was thinking about the 400watt silencer for $140 from PCPowerandCooling, but now I'm thinking of the Enermax EG465 Active PFC. 33A on the 12v rail rules.

 

[FishTankX]

Was anyone else shocked about the 12V figure on the enermax compared with all the others? It's like, almost double theirs.

 

[Lalakai]

would it be possible/feasible to run a voltage stabilize on the system??? In our color darkroom, we use a stabilizer so that we don't get variances in light outputs, so why not apply the principal to pc's??? Or, if you really want to be picky, run a full blown UPS directly feeding into the system so that the converter pulls a consistant power from the battery, avoiding the peaks and dips that most AC units produce.

But this is a very worthwhile topic and one that i'm currently exploring as a possible cause of my freeze-ups; i may be pulling too much power to feed the multiple fans. My temp never exceeds 43 C, but the system will still lock up during heavy use (Athalon 1.2, W98, 256 DIMM and Kyro 2). gonna have to tag this thread lol

 

[jeffrey]

Originally posted by: FishTankX
Was anyone else shocked about the 12V figure on the enermax compared with all the others? It's like, almost double theirs.

It was enough for me to switch which power supply I thought I wanted!

 

[chizow]

I went the safe route and upgraded my 400W Antec to a 480W TrueBlue (20% off at Micro Center)

Chiz

 

[bozo1]

would it be possible/feasible to run a voltage stabilize on the system???

I don't think the problem is AC voltage fluctuations but fluctuations on the DC output of the supply.

 

[majewski9]

I dont care what anyone says sparkle is the best there is.