2003 Power Supply Roundup Part II: Better Faster Cheaper
by Kristopher Kubicki on July 31, 2003 1:58 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
We took the time to put our power supplies under a multimeter to determine the extreme values of each power supply
We came under a little scrutiny in our last review because we used hard drives to perform our “stress testing.” Well all you EE folks can eat your hearts out because we built our own resistance platform out of junk found around our lab and the local university basement. After several power supplies and ECS motherboards later, we came up with something capable of putting our power supplies under 300W of load (60W on the +3.3V, 100W on the +5.0V, and 140W on the +12V rail).
Below is a table of the Voltages we recorded while the system was under load. Using a multimeter we measured the power supplies from the ATX cable. The highest and lowest values demonstrated were recorded.
Measured Voltages
|
|
+3.3V Low |
+3.3V High |
+5V Low |
+5V High |
+12V Low |
+12V High |
|
Allied AL-A400ATX |
3.260 |
3.280 |
4.965 |
5.005 |
11.780 |
11.880 |
|
Antec TrueControl 550 |
3.275 |
3.320 |
4.970 |
5.015 |
11.880 |
11.990 |
|
Antec TruePower 330 |
3.280 |
3.315 |
4.980 |
5.030 |
11.920 |
11.995 |
|
Enermax EG465AX-VE FCA 460W |
3.295 |
3.330 |
4.980 |
5.040 |
11.960 |
12.020 |
|
Enermax EG651P-VE FMA 550W |
3.300 |
3.325 |
4.985 |
5.045 |
11.965 |
12.030 |
|
Enhance ENS-0246 460W |
3.290 |
3.320 |
4.950 |
5.040 |
11.895 |
11.980 |
|
Fortron FSP400-60PFN |
3.280 |
3.320 |
4.985 |
5.025 |
11.895 |
12.000 |
|
Kingwin KWI-450WABK |
3.300 |
3.340 |
4.985 |
5.040 |
11.990 |
12.220 |
|
PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 475 |
3.295 |
3.310 |
4.990 |
5.005 |
11.990 |
12.050 |
|
Sparkle FSP350-60PN |
3.275 |
3.320 |
4.980 |
5.035 |
11.925 |
11.995 |
|
ThermalTake PurePower 480W |
3.280 |
3.335 |
4.945 |
4.995 |
11.860 |
11.970 |
|
TTGI/SuperFlower 520SS 4Fan |
3.300 |
3.355 |
5.005 |
5.080 |
11.995 |
12.235 |
|
TTGI/SuperFlower 420SS |
3.305 |
3.350 |
4.990 |
5.045 |
11.990 |
12.225 |
|
TTGI/SuperFlower 350SS |
3.295 |
3.365 |
4.995 |
5.040 |
11.995 |
12.195 |
|
TurboLink 420W |
3.250 |
3.295 |
5.010 |
5.035 |
11.790 |
11.895 |
|
Vantec Ion 400W |
3.270 |
3.320 |
4.925 |
5.040 |
11.880 |
11.940 |
|
Vantec Stealth 520W |
3.260 |
3.335 |
4.925 |
5.045 |
11.890 |
11.945 |
|
Zalman ZM400A-APF |
3.285 |
3.320 |
4.985 |
5.035 |
11.895 |
11.990 |
Our table confirms the reverse of the previous interference test. Again, the sturdier constructed power supplies ended up performing with the tigheset specifications. The TurboCool 475 performed incredibly well; even with our high expectations we could not believe the performance. It is our guess that the PC Power & Cooling engineers really know what they are doing.
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Anonymous User - Friday, August 1, 2003 - link
1. No amp measurements were listed, a serious deficiency because without them there is no way to know how well each PS met its amp specs, and many brands are known to fall short.2. No overload testing results for shorts, excessive power draw, excessive temperature.
3. Ripple is not just slow voltage variation also short term variation, such as for each AC cycle (60 Hz for the incoming AC, about 60,000 Hz for the output DC). I would have liked to see how the latter correlated with the memory noise test results.
4. I hope you were careful when you tested the PS heatsink temperatures because some heatsinks are live with high voltage.
Anonymous User - Thursday, July 31, 2003 - link
Well for the observent people who can differentiate between orange and blue, its not an issue. Also waiting a full second before clicking it reveals the location on both the bottom left and the mouse cursor. but i can see how it does get annoying.Anonymous User - Thursday, July 31, 2003 - link
yeah those in page advertisements are REALLY annoying...those have got to go. i never know when i'm going to link to another anandtech article or to an ad...i guess that's the point but it's still unacceptableAnonymous User - Thursday, July 31, 2003 - link
I would like to see the review include a Heroichi Electronic power supply, I hear they are very good but I haven't used one.Anonymous User - Thursday, July 31, 2003 - link
Some of your "In Page Advertising" links seem to be missing closing links tags or something so that it results in having a <link> in the middle or end of a sentence. Ex. "We had a lot of troubles with Vantec’s last power supply, the Stealth. We found an error in the production label<link>, which quickly led to a change in all the labeling on all Stealth power supplies."KristopherKubicki - Thursday, July 31, 2003 - link
#3 and #4, thank you for spotting these errors. I have updated and fixed them.Cheers,
Kristopher
Anonymous User - Thursday, July 31, 2003 - link
I hope the ripple for the PC Power & Cooling 3V wasn't 2.295.. Possibly 3.296??? 1 volt drop is unacceptable.Anonymous User - Thursday, July 31, 2003 - link
The REAL price of the pc power&coolinghttp://www.directron.com/pcpower.htmlAnonymous User - Thursday, July 31, 2003 - link
a little more content per page in some cases would be nice too......but good to see content on the site at all...and seemingly more regularly too...
Anonymous User - Thursday, July 31, 2003 - link
woah guys, the tables need some work...