X-bit labs

Powerful Power Supply Units Roundup (page 10)

Category: Other

by Oleg Artamonov

[ 01/28/2005 | 05:24 PM ]

The unit is no less pleasing inside than it is on the outside. The size of the heatsinks impresses again, but their ribbing is as massive as their base, unlike with the BeQuiet model.

I can’t find any flaws here – everything is neat and nice. Well, you can demand that from a PSU of that class!

Yet another curious feature of OCZ’s power supplies – besides the manual adjustment of the voltages – is the connector with LC filters. In fact, this is a normal Molex connector with two ceramic (0.1µF each) and two electrolytic (10µF each) capacitors soldered up to it; a ferrite ring is also put on the power cable leading to the connector. You can read our report on the purpose and efficiency of this solution in our article called "Wondrous Wires" by OCZ Technology. In brief, these connectors are capable of filtering out high-frequency noise; they are overall a useful, but not very necessary addition.

When I attached the oscilloscope to the ordinary, “non-filtered” connector of the PSU, I saw a high-frequency pulsation beside the ordinary pulsation at the double frequency of the PWM controller.

The picture is noticeably smoother when the oscilloscope is attached to the filtered connector, as the high-frequency constituent of the pulsation is successfully filtered out.

Well, the swing of the pulsation is always within the norm, so there’s actually no great need for the filters. But I admit that in some cases the radio-frequency interference can become a source of noise at the output of the audio card or the TV-tuner, for example, and the filters would be of some help then.