Ultra High-End PSU Roundup
by Christoph Katzer on October 22, 2007 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
PCP&C 1200W Loads
DC Outputs
At the DC outputs we see the normal drop with increasing load. Outputs stay within a 1% deviation up to 600W. With increasing loads the output is still within 3% of the target value, and we only see it slowly falling out of spec at the applied overload.
Ripple & Noise Results
The 12V rail showed not more than 12mV which is a very sweet result.
| PCP&C Turbo Cool 1200W Load Values | ||||
| PSU Load | 3.3V | 5V | 12V1 | Wattage All Rails |
| 10% | 1.77A | 2.21A | 8.45A | 122W |
| 20% | 3.54A | 4.42A | 16.90A | 243W |
| 50% | 8.85A | 11.06A | 42.25A | 596W |
| 80% | 14.16A | 17.70A | 67.61A | 935W |
| 100% | 17.70A | 22.12A | 84.51A | 1150W |
| 110% | 19.47A | 24.33A | 92.96A | 1255W |
DC Outputs
At the DC outputs we see the normal drop with increasing load. Outputs stay within a 1% deviation up to 600W. With increasing loads the output is still within 3% of the target value, and we only see it slowly falling out of spec at the applied overload.
Ripple & Noise Results
The 12V rail showed not more than 12mV which is a very sweet result.
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redly1 - Monday, October 22, 2007 - link
I'm just trying to imagine the flames that ensue when something goes bad on the motherboard.Anyone ever burn up a classic Athlon by forgetting to put the heatsink on? Imagine doing that with a 1.3kW supply? Yikes
billa16 - Tuesday, October 23, 2007 - link
I did that on a k7@950. I was trying to oc it(hardmod with a pencil). Nothing happend the first 2 times(just a few secs). After that it's stopped working. No sparks/flames and stuff like that. Don't belive anything U read/see on the internet.This type of power supply's have protections. If something is damaged so bad that would cause flames the protection kicks in. The worst fire scenario with this type of PSU will be a flash when the fuse burns out.
Sorry for my poor english.
DigitalFreak - Monday, October 22, 2007 - link
Still amazes me how many people fall for the marketing hype...Traciatim - Monday, October 22, 2007 - link
Instead of just giving specs and doing an overview of the efficiency, why not design a machine that actually needs these over say a 600-700Watt PSU and show watt you would need to do do actually use one of these.I have a pretty small machine, and it regularly pulls 120Watts out of the wall, 200Watts if I Get everything ramped up. I'm also using a P4, not a Core2Duo so it's not going to be as efficient.
The ONLY point that I can see to have one of these is simply to waste money on uneeded equipment that could be better spent one something performance based and to say that 'My PSU is bigger than your PSU'.
retrospooty - Monday, October 22, 2007 - link
Ya, these 1000+ watt PSU's are marketed to enthusiests, and are supposed to be for heavily overclocked quad core CPU's (meaning cascade, dry ICE or liquid nitrogen cooling kind of overclocks) with overclocked high end SLI or crossfire rigs, and plenty of hard drives and other peripherals added as well. We are talking $3000 or higher systems - WAY overkill probably even for that purpose.JarredWalton - Monday, October 22, 2007 - link
You can see the most power-hungry system I've personally tested http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=30...">right here - which uses standard ATX components and a Topower PSU. That's a lot more system than most people run, obviously, but if maximum efficiency is achieved in the 40-80% load range, and if that particular PSU was around 80% efficient, it was outputting around 600W of power at maximum load.Toss in TriFire HD 2900 XT and you could add another 100W to that, maybe. If you were to get an overclocked Xeon platform with dual quad-core CPUs plus CrossFire/TriFire, you could actually reach the point where 1300W was "required". LOL
ORB chasers and "professional benchmarkers" running at insane overclocks (i.e. 5000 MHz quad-core) deal with exponential power requirement increases as well. The solution is either to use multiple PSUs or else get one of these uber-powerful designs. So these appear to be for around 0.01% of the market, I guess?
Michael91ah - Monday, October 22, 2007 - link
Glad to see the statistics for these 3 units. I really like the Cooler Master's curve on the acoustics. That noise makes a big difference for me when choosing a power supply.