X-bit labs

Started by: commentator | Date 01/31/05

Comments: 8 | Last Comment:  07/17/06

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1. Thanks for the good test!

BeQuiet and OCZ are both made by Topower Electronic Ltd.

Still OCZ's smaller PSU is of better quality.

In the future, it would be interesting to get a mix of other manufacturers in the mix, not just different brand names.

For example :

- Herolchi (Hec)
- Enermax (Enermax)
- CWT (Antec, Channel Well, Yeong Yang)
- Topower (OCZ, BeQuiet, Vantec, Tagan)
- FSP (Fortron, AOpen, Nexus, Zalman, Sparkle, SPI; Verax, Conrad)
- Seasonic (Seasonic)
- Zippy (Zippy Emacs, PC Power & Cooling)

Zippy, FSP and Seasonic are amongst the most interesting, as their PSUs are generally of very high quality, regardless of whose brand name they are sold under.

2. I second the above comments. The newer Seasonic units would be particularly useful to test given their prices. Other less known OEM veterans like Seventeam would be interesting, too.

3. My Antec TruePower True430P started failing on my almost immediately. It would consistently reset my system at random intervals.

I replaced it with a Vantec Stealth 470W. Best power supply I've ever purchased. Since then I've purchased a few Vantec power supplies. They're the highest quality products out there.

They happen to feature an auxiliary power connector that you can use to power all accessories on your system. When you shutdown your system it will also power off the displays, speakers, controllers, etc... Quite nice.

X-bit should review Vantec power supplies, or at least try to include one in this roundup.

4. The new power efficiency and factor 'testing' method is flawed. According to the SilentPC review article[1], OCZ-470ADJ only gets 70-78% efficiency instead of 72-88% as shown in your article. That is far from the 'minor differences' explained in the testing methodology article. All power supplies articles must test actual power factor and efficiency values to ensure the integrity of the results. After all, nobody wants to get an overheating computer because of some exaggerated claim of power efficiency. Furthermore, to ensure manufacturer isn't trying to pull questionable figures (eg: quoting efficiency based on 240V AC input when the PS is sold to 120V regions), xbitlabs should also include a variable AC power supply in the testbed.

[1] http://www.silentpcreview.com/Sections+index-req-printpage-artid-173.html

We have autotransformer with an output voltage range of 0...250V AC (input voltage is 220V AC) so testing PSUs at 110V AC is not a problem. I will test some power supplies at 110V AC tomorrow and if there will be any *significant* difference in efficiency or power factor compared to 220V AC, such measurements will be performed for all PSUs.

BTW, SPCR reviewers use slightly strange equipment (especially load tester -- using bank of resistors and a lot of switches instead of few inexpensive MOSFETs is like using abacus instead of electronic calculator) so I'm not sure about accuracy of their measurements.

5. looking for power supply160watt for gateway

look at shuttle psu

6. The most detailed testing I have ever seen thank you for such dedication to your work.
I have now bookmarked this site and will be a regular visitor.

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