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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Totally - Saturday, January 24, 2009 - link
and it felt like a total guilt trip, I have a Silencer 750 Quad, 2yrs old going on 3, and it's even seen quite a few of it's comrades come and go. My only complaint is that they built the things too damn good, not that I'm alluding to anything.Mr Roboto - Saturday, January 24, 2009 - link
I'm surprised to see no comments yet. Anyways I always go for a blend of performance, quality and price. PCP&C fits that perfectly. In fact I'm currently using a Silencer 750 that I don't even notice is there. To me that's what it's all about. I don't need to hear it or see it and If I do it's because something is wrong.Totally - Saturday, January 24, 2009 - link
post anything AMD/Intel related and they'll queue up faster than the homeless at a soup kitchen.JarredWalton - Saturday, January 24, 2009 - link
I picked up the Silencer 750 Quad last year from Newegg when it was on sale for $100... haven't regretted that decision *at all*! In fact, the same PSU is still available for $90 after MIR at Newegg (although I'd prefer the $100 without MIR personally).Theguynextdoor - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
About 4 1/2 years ago I was in the market for a quality PSU for an affordable price After a month of research I *really* wanted a PC P+C. Then OCZ entered the PSU market with their first three PSu's The original Powerstream 420, 520 and 600. I read the reviews everyone said they were fantastic and eventually found out they were made by PC Power. Found a 420w on sale for $3.This PSU has outlasted every part I have ever thrown at it. I was skeptical at first with it being two 80mm fans. I now understand it doens't matter. It is quiet (even more so then my 1200rpm 120mm scythe's, only my 800rpm's are quieter).
This is my favorite part of my computer. Because it's the only one I never have to seem to replace. I haven't even peeled off the sticker that allows access to the three screws that ups the power to individual rails.
I know not all of OCZ's PSU's are of this quality anymore (they probably have it outsourced from other companies now). But their PC P+C built ones are definitly quality. Couldn't be happier.