PC Power & Cooling - Visiting a Legend
by Christoph Katzer on January 23, 2009 8:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
If you're a PC enthusiast and care about power supplies, you'll definitely be familiar with the name PC Power & Cooling. The company has been around a long time now and is responsible for many innovations in the power supply industry, particularly in the USA. In May 2007, Doug Dodson, the founder and owner of PC Power & Cooling, sold his company to the OCZ Technology Group; with that move, the brand also entered the European Union. What many users don't know is that PC Power & Cooling has been around 24 years, bringing inventions to market like no other company in this field. They were building power supplies when most of today's enthusiasts weren't even born.
After this year's CES, we took the chance to drive down to San Diego where PC Power & Cooling has resided for the past 17 years. We met up with Doug Dodson, the CTO of the OCZ Technology Group, and James Dickensen, the Quality Engineer in charge of Quality and Testing. If you are a reviewer like us and received a PC Power & Cooling unit before, you might have seen his name on the Chroma report that came with the unit.
James Dickensen in his lab; you can see that he does more than sharpening pencils in here.
Today PC Power & Cooling helps OCZ with RMA, testing, and development, but OCZ continues to do much of this on their own for OCZ branded products. OCZ has a product development team that develops for both OCZ and PC Power, and Doug's role in this is more consulting based now. The differences between the two companies is still large, since PC Power was always and still is a high-end power supply vendor that cares less about prices and focuses primarily on components and best quality merchandise. OCZ as a brand caters mostly to other parts of the market where the price wars are more taxing.
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erple2 - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
I thought that the 120mm fans in a PSU were better for airflow too. However, I then read http://www.pcpower.com/technology/myths/#m6">http://www.pcpower.com/technology/myths/#m6 and thought about it a bit. Granted, their justification is certainly pushing their product over competing solutions, but their methodology makes more sense to me. Proper airflow and cooling is dictated by design, not the use of a 120mm fan.I don't know about you, but my 750 silencer uses an 80mm fan, and I have never heard it before. My system isn't particularly heavy-duty, but it draws about 325W at what I consider full tilt:
E6750
Geforce 8800 GTX
P35
2x harddrives
2x DVD drives
4x2 gig RAM
I'm not sure what you are basing your 120/140mm fan bias on (experience or just what "feels right"). Curiously, Anandtech recommends the 750 over other 120/140mm designs for heavier duty builds. There has to be SOMETHING to the 80mm fan speed "issue".
rgidsatech - Monday, January 26, 2009 - link
I've have been buying supplies from PC Power & Cooling back when "286" was the hot CPU. The power supplies were expensive, but worth it. We built PC's for industrial control systems, and back then used DOS, PC-MOS, and MDOS, with the latest 286's. 512k or 640k of ram and 40MEG HD's !! Last month we got a call from a company for service, and found one of these MDOS systems (with 2meg ram) still running. The problem was actually no space on the drive, caused by so many bad sectors, but it still worked! The PC Power and cooling supply was still working, even the fan worked. I wanted to keep it as a museum piece, but they wanted it back!OddJensen - Monday, January 26, 2009 - link
PCP&C have excellent supplies, but I guess as long as you have good OEMS and tell them to do it right, any brand can be good. PCP&C have good competition from others these days. Also, I disagree with their views on modular cabling and such.Beenthere - Sunday, January 25, 2009 - link
I've used quite a few PSUs over the past 20 years. PCPCs stuff is the best performing and most reliable PSUs I've ever seen, used or tested.Kudos to PCPC for sticking to quality when most companies are only interested in the highest profit and volume products they can peddle to naive consumers.
mindless1 - Sunday, January 25, 2009 - link
"They were building power supplies when most of today's enthusiasts weren't even born."I doubt most of today's enthusiasts are under 24 yo, particularly those who know much about PSU. Maybe video card enthusiasts.
Beno - Saturday, January 24, 2009 - link
their PSUs are top quality. but to kill my curiosity, how come their power supplies are only 80plus certified? i mean you see other manufacturers have 80plus bronze and silver certifications which means 85+ efficiency, i felt that pc power is mediocre comparing to the other PSU companies.JEDIYoda - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
There is more to a PSU than being 80+ certified!Just because a PSU is 80+ or more certified does not mean you have a quality PSU in anyway shape or form!
It also does not mean in a year you won`t be sending the PSU back....
Peace!!
OCZJess - Tuesday, January 27, 2009 - link
Hi Beno,First I wanted to identify myself as a employee of OCZ (PC Power). I will help kill your curiosity :P
Currently all available PC Power units were submitted to 80plus before the graduated rating system came about, when they only had a 'pass/fail' system. We haven't felt the need to resubmit the units for re-certification, but a quick google search will show you that numerous 3rd party reviews have found units, such as the Silencer 750, to go as high as 87%!
In addition, I'd like to add that these units were designed over 3 years ago when nobody was even thinking about efficiency...except, well, PC Power & Cooling :) And they still remain leaders of the pack.
sonci - Saturday, January 24, 2009 - link
Hem, when I see these old PSU, it seems that has been a downgrade to our days, I`m not speaking about efficiency, but build quality.Pure shiny inox, not crapy recycle carbon, I wonder what would have been the price of these beasts..
sonci - Saturday, January 24, 2009 - link
Its a bit alike with audio equipment, you cant find a new ampl to match an old Marantz or Rotel..