The Rosewill Quark Series Power Supply Review (750W, 850W, 1000W, 1200W)
by E. Fylladitakis on January 13, 2016 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Rosewill
- 80Plus Platinum
Conclusion
The Quark PSU series from Rosewill is an attempt to blend top tier performance with a lucrative price tag, alluring those that care only for raw power, good quality and not much else. Despite this being the best series the company offers, Rosewill is still trying to maintain their company profile and mainly compete in terms of value. To that end, extra features and aesthetic improvements are being dismissed, perhaps to a point that they should not have had. For example, the simple, color-coded modular cables are not common among units of this price range.
As far as quality goes, we would classify the Quark PSUs as "Very High", but it is no secret that we have seen better platforms in the past. Enhance is a reputable OEM that designs very good core platforms and, after seeing the assembly and performance of the Rosewill Quark PSUs, we cannot deny that the 13XX Platinum GT platform is very good. The 13XX Platinum platform that the 750W version is based on leaves nothing to be desired in terms of quality, but the power quality and efficiency fall slightly behind that of the GT version of the platform. We also have to voice our thoughts regarding the selection of internal components. Generally, Rosewill seems to be using very reputable suppliers, but the presence of brands with mediocre reputation (Unicon) troubles us. All of the major components in the samples that we received come from very reputable manufacturers (Matsushita, Panasonic, Nippon Chemi-Con, Nichicon, etc.), yet the erratic mix suggests that Rosewill is using the components of whichever manufacturer is available at the time with products that meet certain specifications. Hopefully, Rosewill will stick to high quality suppliers, at least for the major components. Regardless, all of the Quark series units come with a reassuring five-year warranty.
On the other hand, the overall performance of the Quark series PSUs is very good. They do tend to get hot when heavily stressed inside a very warm environment, but they still operate seamlessly and provide excellent power quality, with minimal voltage ripple and very good regulation for their power output. In terms of power quality and stability, the Quark series units can compare to most of the top tier units and designs of every manufacturer. When the units operate in room temperature, the noise level is very low and, with the exception of the 750W model, it remains reasonable even when the PSUs are very heavily stressed. However, the ball bearing fan, smaller heatsinks and, generally, different platform of the 750W model has a significantly different behavior, maintaining about the same operating temperatures but at the expense of a considerably higher noise level.
Nonetheless, the fundamental issue regarding the Quark series is not concerning the quality or the performance of the units. The quality and overall performance of the Quark PSUs is adequate for their intended market, while the five-year warranty is reassuring. Rosewill however has to compete against other manufacturers in terms of value as well, and the current retail pricing of the Quark series is problematic. With their retail price ranging from $210 for the 1200W model to $130 for the 750W model, some of the Quark PSUs are equally priced to products such as Seasonic's famous SS-1200XP3 ($200) and the Corsair AX760 ($140). Rosewill's current pricing scheme is, at the very least, confusing. For example, either due to stock levels or sales, the 1000W version of the Quark currently retails for $1 less than the 850W model, which is a less powerful design based on the same platform. The low retail price of the 1000W version is alluring, but it is obvious that the pricing of the rest of the units is in dire need of adjustments before the Quark series can have a strong competitive edge in the market.
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Dug - Friday, January 15, 2016 - link
I'd still rather own a Porschecatzambia - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link
BUT FORD IS BACK IN 2016 SO STEP OFF CHEVY!takeshi7 - Thursday, March 3, 2016 - link
the ZR1 MSRP is $120Kchlamchowder - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
A good question though, is whether a non-budget PSU is worth it. It'd probably take a very, very long time for power bill savings to make up for the additional cost of getting a more efficient PSU.For stability, lots of budget power supplies from reputable manufacturers have no problem at their max rated power outputs. And in most systems (single GPU particularly), actual power draw doesn't come close to what the power supply is rated for.
wolfemane - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
In my older gaming rig, I currently have a budget EVGA 1000w PSU. It powers twin 290x's, i7-3770k (OC'ed all the way to 4.8ghz, ran SETI folding with 100% cpu/gpu utalization 10hours, 5 days a week for almost 6 months) 32gig trident ddr3-2400, 256gig solid state and twin 6gig seagate drives. CPU and GPU's are cooled by a custom water cooled system with 55w pump. Taking in all parts and their max power rating my system is rated around 975w. When I first built this, powered it up, and started playing my first games I seriously wondered how much I was actually pulling. I wasn't going to buy anything expensive to see, but at the wall kill-a-watt units can give an idea, so I got one. At idle the system bounced around from 150w to 250w. While playing a variety of games across the system requirements range, kill-a-watt was reporting anywhere from 400w all the way to 670w (stock system no overclocking). I then went through the series of benchmarks most gamers like to go through and the highest wattage I could get was with the HEAVEN benchmark at max settings over 4 hours. I saw outputs range from 650w~715w pretty consistently. Adding a 10% OC on both GPU's, and stabilizing the 3770k @ 4.8ghz I again benched. I remember seeing numbers from 900 - 1100w being reported by the kill-a-watt. Once I found a good stable point for the CPU, the system never failed throughout the month long series of tests and benchmarks.Now, how accurate is that? I don't know and I don't have any way of finding out.. BUT at $80, peaking at a supposed 1100w, and under constant heavy use over the last three years this budget PSU has handled just fine.
But my wife and I decided to take it a little further and see how much my system was draining us month to month in our power bill. So we shut down and unplugged my rig for a full month. No other routines changed.
I'm a pretty active gamer and I have two kids. My gaming rig is used ALL the time, much more than any other system in the house (including my wife's multipurpose htpc). We didn't change our habits any, and I utilized her power efficient system more than I usually do. But my gaming rig stayed for for 32 days. All in all, it lowered our power by a couple dollars at the most.
So, I can't see the argument in getting a far more expensive PSU in the name of efficiency to save money on power. For normal to heavy day to day us I just don't see it happening. MAYBE if my system was folding/mining 24/7 a more efficient PSU would be in order, but I really don't think I'd save all that much. Certainly not enough to cover the premium price.
Oh, and my apologies for misspelling Porsche in my previous post. No insult intended
Meaker10 - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
That's pretty normal, remember you are measuring at the wall which means your PSU at 1100W and assuming 80% efficiency is giving the system 880W and consuming 220W for itself. A platinum PSU at that point would use around 110W saving you 110W in power.wolfemane - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
its 80 Plus Gold, so 87% at load, 90% at 50% load. Platinum isn't that much greater.But it still stands that these premium platinum drives aren't really worth the $50+ premium (1000w model). The premium PSU will die long before you make up the energy costs. SO why spend the money on such units?
Thanks to corsair:
http://www.corsair.com/en-us/blog/2012/august/80-p...
In the end, you're not going to save yourself a whole lot. Certainly not enough to justify the $50+ premium. There are cheaper better brands out there that will do the same, if not better, than these.
This all leads to the original post that these Platinum PSU's most certainly can, and should, be compared to the budget versions.
KAlmquist - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
An 80+ Platinum unit will typically draw about 2.5% less power than an 80+ Gold rated unit, so these units would only make sense if they were priced very close to comparable 80+ Gold units. As you say, even the difference between 80+ Bronze and 80+ Platinum is not all that significant.DanNeely - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
From the list on the 80+ test page, it looks like a lot of the reason why the 750 is different from the others isn't that they decided to use a different design just for one model as seems implied in this article; but that Rosewill just didn't submit the 2 smaller members of the series for review. The 2015 quark series also includes 550W and 650W models that are presumably based on the same smaller platform as the 750. The 550's performance in official testing makes it look exceptionally attractive for systems that are rarely under high load since it manages 90% efficiency in the 10% load test.Flunk - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
It's going to be a hard sell trying to move premium power supplies under the Rosewill name. Their initial power supply products were so bad that the really tainted the brand. Power supplies are one thing I don't like to take chances on and it will be a long time before I even consider a Rosewill power supply.