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AnandTech Power Supply Test Methodology

Date: July 12th, 2007
Topic: Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Manufacturer: Various
Author: Christoph Katzer

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Danger - High Voltage!

The readers of AnandTech have waited a long time for us to do real power supply reviews. The waiting has come to an end and we hope you will find the results to be worthwhile. In the near future we will begin publishing power supply reviews on a regular basis, with the goal of providing the detailed analysis and benchmarking results our readers have come to expect.

We know the AnandTech audience expects a high level of professionalism, and it took a while to put together the right equipment in order to provide that for PSU testing. To kick things off, we want to talk about each part of the equipment and how it will help us with the reviews. With a proper understanding of the equipment and testing methodology, we hope you will see what will make the AnandTech power supply reviews so special.

Why It is so Difficult to Test Power Supplies

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49 Comments - Last by tynopik, 858 days ago

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No pics by gersson, 863 days ago

just a red 'X'

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RE: No pics by gersson, 863 days ago

nevermind -- working already :-)

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Gold Star award for this article! by imaheadcase, 863 days ago

I kid! :P

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Please, test some budget power supplies by BladeVenom, 863 days ago

quote:
The bottom line is, a normal PC is just not enough to fully load a high-end power supply, and therefore it cannot be properly tested and surely not approved by such a configuration.

Then test power supplies that are in the range that most people actually need. Also test some budget ones. Let's see which ones are good for the money, and which ones are fire hazards.

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RE: Please, test some budget power supplies by xsilver, 863 days ago

what is meant is that the idea of having a psu is NOT to load it to 100% capacity.
and the problem being that it is very difficult to get a stable and repeatable psu testing setup.

I highly recommend that industrial manufacturers be pointed out just like in xbit labs reviews. That way we will know that antec has 3 or more suppliers providing psu's and be able to tell the seasonics from the other crud ;)

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RE: Please, test some budget power supplies by Wesleyrpg, 862 days ago

hmm i wonder if thats why some people rave about Antec and some people like me curse them! I'd have to say Antec have the worst failure rate by far, probably at about 75% in the first year, where i can buy a $22 550W Generic (Honli) and only have about a 25% failure rate, maybe thats related to the power supplys released into australia by antec.

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Fire! Fire! by Adul, 863 days ago

I'd love to see a power supply catch fire :). Maybe one of the cheaper ones will break enough for this.

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RE: Fire! Fire! by Martimus, 862 days ago

I had a Antec NeoPower PSU spew black smoke. It was not fun. Also fried my motherboard. It was less than 6 months old too, and I wasn't using it at anywhere near it's supposed capacity.

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RE: Fire! Fire! by CrystalBay, 862 days ago

I would also like to see a short video of substandard PSU's lighting up...

I'm sure many enthusiasts have had Dram's start flaming or smoke. But I have never had a PSU actually catch flame out....

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Excellent by WW2Planes1, 863 days ago

Great looking setup. (I love the sound isolating box). I Finally feel like I'll actually learn something from a power supply review.

I agree with BladeVenom, I really hope to see some midrange/budget PSUs as well as the higher end ones.

One other thing that would be nice to see in reviews (not just the power supply ones), is longer term reliability. Most things (and especially computer components), aren't really built with longevity in mind, and with certain critical components (power supplies, hard drives, etc) it would be nice to know if certain companies build longer lasting products than others. I understand the difficulties involved with something like that, so I don't really expect to see it, but it would be nice.

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