Product Comparison: Cable Lengths



When it comes to ATX cables lengths, we find different approaches from the manufacturers. As we can see, Akasa equips its PowerMax with 75cm cable harnesses - sufficient for even the largest cases. Next in line are Enermax and Silverstone with up to 60cm harnesses. The average length of 50cm is reached by Antec and Kingwin. Ultra, OCZ and Thermaltake power supplies only have 45 to 50cm harnesses on disposal. This seems quite short but it depends on the case you will use. For most cases, a 50cm harness will be more than enough, and in some cases shorter cables would even be desirable - that's why Silverstone also sells a short cable harness package (not tested or shown).



Having a 1000W power supply means you likely bought it to power up many hard disks, two or more high-end graphics cards, a quad-core processor (or perhaps dual socket octal-core) - perhaps all of these combined. Here we have different approaches from the manufacturers. Ultra and Thermaltake deliver the best choice of cables with their cable management, since they include six PEG harnesses and allow the users to select which ones are most useful. The downside is that you are only able to connect four at the same time, but who needs six PEG connectors? If you're moving to an all-SATA setup, it's also good to be able to ditch unnecessary Molex connectors.

Enermax has the best connectivity since the user will be able to connect up to five PEG connectors at the same time. With the Galaxy, you will have three 6-pin and two 8-pin PEG connectors available. Akasa has only four 6-pin connectors like the OCZ ProXStream but at least you can change two of the connectors to 8-pin PEG connectors. Antec and Silverstone will work with any dual graphics cards user with the two 6-pin and two 6/8-pin PEG connectors - or quad GPUs provided each GPU only needs a single PEG connector.

Product Comparison: Loading Charts Product Comparison: DC Outputs
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  • brian_riendeau - Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - link

    Depending on what site you check, I think you would find that very few 1000+ watt PSUs can sustain that output under load in real world conditions 100v to 120v. I am somewhat skeptical of that fact that 8 PSUs got tested here, and not a single one was labelled as a failure to provide on the rated specs.
  • buzznut - Thursday, December 13, 2007 - link

    So we have a line-up of 430 watt supplies, a comparison of 750-850 watt models, one of 1000 watts, and the "extreme" Power supplies at 1200W+.

    Anyone else notice the little gap there?

    What about the 500-700 range, arguably the most popular with system builders right now? I can't even fathom why you would choose to ignore this segment.

    Do ya think you could cover the more relevant enthusiest segment since this site is viewed by many enthusiests every day? I mean the ones that don't have $300 to blow on a power supply when a 650 watt one will do the job. Or ones that don't receive their equipment for free because they review hardware...

    I buy a lot of equipment every year but I am not wealthy. I get tired of reviewers who tell me about the latest 700 dolla video card or other stuff I'll never be able to afford.
  • MadAd - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - link

    Nice touch adding in the Euro prices, a welcome change, infact a first in over 8 years of readership i think.


    Just a quick point, i think the import duty allowances on purchases abroad are very low, so flying to the US is fine for a holiday, but unless you are prepared to break the law and claim it as your pc you took out or something, then you would have to pay duty and vat as if youd had it shipped. Add to that any warranty claims may be null or awkward to service then it may not be the bargain it could be.
  • Christoph Katzer - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - link

    Wasn't really meant you would need to book a flight to go the States to buy a PSU... Of course there are import taxes (19-19,4% for France and Germany).
  • PolymerTim - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - link

    Is there a power supply roundup coming out any time soon for something like 400W-700W. I've been reading through the PS forums lately and it seems like a lot of the recommended PS fall somewhere around the 450W-650W range and this seems to be missing from the roundups. I realize there were a lot of individual reviews in this range not too long ago, but there are several new options in this range in the last few months that I think deserve a review a bit more than yet another "ultra high" or "extreme" roundup. Just for illustration, I posted the date and title of every anandtech PS roundup since the new PS test methods came out 5 months ago. See the gap? We have 3 roundups between 730W-1300W and 1 roundup at 400W-450W.

    12-11 Power Supply Roundup: Eight 1000W for the Extreme Users
    11-22 Power Supply Roundup: 730W to 900W
    11-06 400-450W PSU Roundup
    10-22 Ultra High-End PSU Roundup (1200W to 1300W)

    Of course, many PS in this range were reviewed, but never in a roundup compared to other similar PS.

    09-14 Seasonic S12II: 330W to 500W of Silence
    09-11 Enermax Infiniti 650W
    09-03 Zippy Serene (GP2-5600V)
    08-27 Silver Power Blue Lightning 600W
    08-08 Silverstone Decathlon DA650: A modular alternative
    07-30 The Enermax Liberty - Getting long in the tooth, but still worth a look
    07-24 Gigabyte's New Odin GT 800W Power Supply
    07-18 PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad CF-Edition
    07-13 The Single 12V Rail SilverStone Olympia OP650
  • Christoph Katzer - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - link

    Yeah this year still 600-650 watts...
  • halcyon - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - link

    How about also another type of article:

    How to build a computer that does 90% of what people need (sans games) and runs on less than 30W?

    800-1000W is insane and people should come around to understanding that.
  • strikeback03 - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - link

    I'm pretty sure even most laptops don't draw that little power. Not sure on the newer C2D processors, but I know the older Dothan Pentium M processors had a TDP in the 20-25W range. Add the rest of a system and you likely won't spend much time below 30W.

    Or check out some carputer setups. Using VIA mini-ITX motherboards with integrated processors and graphics and they still typically use 90-160W power supplies.
  • JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - link

    At idle, most of the moderate notebooks (14-15" chassis) sit at around 25W. Load, they'll get up to around 60W with IGP and 100W with something like an 8700M GT. 8800M GTX will probably push that closer to 125W (give or take 10W).
  • jonnyGURU - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - link

    I'm game (no pun intended.)

    I built a machine with all on board components, a mobile AMD chip and solid state drives and it still required over 200W to run. Mind you it had a 7950 graphics card, but still.....

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