Super Flower Amazon 650W Power Supply
by Christoph Katzer on October 16, 2008 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Conclusion
From what we saw during testing, the Super Flower Amazon PSU appears to be a very good product. Of course, since this looks like a preproduction unit we can't say for sure how it will compare with actual retail models made on the standard factory lines. Super Flower says the unit we received should be representative of stock units, and if so that's great; we will make sure to get our hands on a retail unit for comparison once they begin shipping.
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In terms of feature set, there's nothing truly remarkable with the Amazon series. It's a typical power supply with no funny gimmicks; the only really noteworthy feature is the 140mm fan. It provides very good voltage distribution, good efficiency, and very silent operation. The build quality is very good as well, even though we don't like to see large amounts of glue all over the place. The length of the housing might be a little long for a 650W power supply, but that's because Super Flower uses the same topology for all of the power supplies in this series. They selected high-quality components, and the result is a very good power supply. The number of connectors is good for a 650W unit, allowing users to power up to two of the most powerful GPUs currently on the market. Cable lengths are also decent, with 50cm ATX connectors and PEG connectors at 50cm and 65cm.
The overall performance is very good, surpassing much of the competition that has been around for a while. Voltage regulation was good on the six important 12V rails. The 3.3V provides a constant high voltage of up to 3.47V while the 5V rail is almost the opposite with somewhat low results under higher loads. The efficiency reaches up to 87% with 230VAC and up to 85% with 120VAC.
The temperatures inside of the power supply were very low, reaching only 50°C with normal ambient room temperature. The fan spins at a very sedate 600RPM most of the time, and only starts turning faster at more than 80% load. The temperature does begin to rise at higher loads, and it would have been nice if Super Flower allowed the fan to spin a bit faster at maximum load -- obviously there's still plenty of room left in terms of noise output. As it stands, the Amazon 650W only puts out an exceptional 18dB(A) at up to 550W, making this the quietest actively cooled power supply we have seen to date. If you are like most users and you have a PC that never requires more than 500W, you will never hear this PSU.
The only real question we have is pricing. We will have to wait until Super Flower begins shipping these units to get a price quote.
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Choppedliver - Tuesday, October 21, 2008 - link
Did I miss something or did the reviewer not tell us how much this thing costs and where you can get it?Christoph Katzer - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - link
"The only real question we have is pricing. We will have to wait until Super Flower begins shipping these units to get a price quote."In the time you wrote that totally unnecessary post you could have found it on the last page.
Choppedliver - Sunday, October 26, 2008 - link
Obviously I missed it, which is why I said "Did I miss something"And for your information dickwad, I looked on all the pages, just missed that last sentence. It is possible. I goofed. Don't be such a little bitch about it.
I thought pricing info would be on the first page where it says "Prices"... silly me, I thought that would be prices for this product reviewed, when in fact it's just revenue generating advertisements ( which I DID click on because I did THINK those were the prices for this product... your welcome. Send those few dollars to the JWAP Foundation. ( Journalists Who Aren't Pussies )
Let me rescend my apology. I read the article. Right below where it says
Date: October 16th, 2008
Topic: Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Manufacturer: Super Flower Inc.
Author: Christoph Katzer
It then says:
Prices
- TECHONWEB $122.91
- HP Small/Medium Business $29.89
- Dell $99.99
- Dell SMB $39.99
- HP Small/Medium Business $40.35
- Dell $99.99
Silly me, Im thinking this is a great deal! It doesnt say anywhere on this first page that this is a "not yet shipping" product.
Why would you? Its obvious that the advertisements are strategically placed to generate clicks through trickery.
Spacecomber - Thursday, October 16, 2008 - link
"Several years back their units were a lot more common and you could find them in online shops around the globe, but their presence has been fading. However, we have reviewed a few other brands that were built by Super Flower."For those whose memory isn't all that great, and who are too lazy to go back through the previous P/S reviews, could you remind us which other power supplies that have been reviewed were built by SuperFlower?
Christoph Katzer - Thursday, October 16, 2008 - link
Kingwin for example: http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.a...">http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.a...You can recognize other SuperFlowers by their distinctive heatsink design and the cable management with the special connectors. Some Topower builds have the same cm-connectors though, since it's actually their patent but until now only Tagan used them (afaik).
Souka - Thursday, October 16, 2008 - link
Only thing I see good about this PSU is the fan and resulting noise (lack of) from it.Voltages are too far out of alignment, and the ripple isn't great.
symbul - Monday, October 20, 2008 - link
You are KIDDING about the ripple, right? I mean, a max 7.87 mV (if accurate in the retail version) is a great spec. Even the 650W Antec Signature (which is the best 650W out there) can't do that...Spivonious - Thursday, October 16, 2008 - link
That 12V graph looks pretty shaky. What does that mean in terms of the voltage/power delivered?Spacecomber - Thursday, October 16, 2008 - link
I was looking through the comments to see if anyone had any insight on how to read that graph, too, since it looked to me like what I would assume to be rather "rippled", especially at full power.On another topic, with no production units available and therefore no firm pricing, this kind of preview is interesting, but it is not as helpful as a review of something that I can actually buy and therefore determine an actual value for. Certainly, we haven't run out of available power supplies to review at this point, have we?
HOOfan 1 - Thursday, October 16, 2008 - link
below 8mV of ripple...is extremely low. So low I am not sure I believe it.