Hardware 600 - 700W PSU Review Round-Up

weird.. but efficiency is about all I've seen gained between quality supplies.. the ripple doesn't seem to effect the operation (cause crashing ect..)- maybe at extreme oc's but not many go there

 

http://www.canardpc.com/dossier-36-alimentations_atx_2009.html
What do you think of their methodology, isn't that a bit too "deep" ?
(despite it's in French )

 

Yeah, I don't think you've really caught his (tonyd223's) main point though. It's not that people who buy the mag don't want you to see it, rather that they (we) are beginning to wonder why we pay for something when when we know full well it will be available for free in one months time. The vast majority of this stuff isn't like the main or business news where it's all time-critical - a good case/psu last month will still be a good one this month.

I look at my PC shelf with probably over £200+ worth of CPC issues, then at the fact that if I want to look something up I usually do it online, (even though I own the mag) and I often wonder what's the point too.

I think the only real reasons I still buy it are:
- I'm beginning to like the look of them all stacked up, (shiny!).
- Habit.
- I like reading on the karzi.

Honestly, I think habit is now the biggest reason...

 

Shame about you guys not getting any corsair PSU's. I have the HX620w and have to say it really kicks ass (pardon my language ;-) ). I also have the HX850w but am still braiding it so we'll see how it does! I just wonder why corsair are insecure about their PSU's when they get awards from almost all review sites for their efficiency and design.

 

Where GCSE French fails, Hyperwords provides!

 

Hey hey, don't blame the writers! It's what Be Quiet wanted to provide us and we've already got a dozen PSUs to get. There's only so much we can do The original review for the mag was written a while ago and they must have been very, very recently available because we only met with be quiet just last Thursday.

 

Alimentation, who mean "power supply" here, become "food" (another meaning), this is always funny with translator

 

you would get a i750 + 5850 dvd drive and 2 hds running on a 500 watt psu. Just be higher load than is welcome. (75-80%)

Alot of people buy huge watts and never use close to it

Even 600-700 watt is at crossfire level

 

Fair enough Bindi, I didn't mean it to sound overly grumpy

A bit odd of them, I wonder why they're pushing the SIlent range on you when the DPPro were received extremely well by everyone as far as I can tell? Like I say I've loved mine from the getgo, sooooo quiet, I would have thought they'd be making a huge fanfare about them.

That is unless they don't want them to be caught up in a big group review and want you to do a nice gleaming review of the P8 DPPs on their own.

 

Perfect article! so last night, I go to switch on my comp and nothing.. I angrily press the button several more times.. I then smell that electric burning smell (solder) and quickly unplug the machine >:- [ Luckily I am in the midst of building a new comp and so today I swapped my new PSU into my old comp to get it working. I power-up, browse to bit-tech and low and behold.. a new article on PSUs ! ! !

I have actually bought the majority of parts for my new build based on reviews on bit-tech : ] The PSU I have is the Corsair CX400. I have been wondering if this is going to be powerful enough for my build..?? any advice would be great:

Asus m4a79xtd evo, Phenom II x2 550 BE, 4 GB Ram PC312800, Poworcolor HD 4870 512MB, 1 x Spinpoint F3 1TB, 1 x DVD-ROM. And thats it. I would like to do some OC-ing as well obviously...

 

Perfect article! so last night, I go to switch on my comp and nothing.. I angrily press the button several more times.. I then smell that electric burning smell (solder) and quickly unplug the machine >:- [ Luckily I am in the midst of building a new comp and so today I swapped my new PSU into my old comp to get it working. I power-up, browse to bit-tech and low and behold.. a new article on PSUs ! ! !

I have actually bought the majority of parts for my new build based on reviews on bit-tech : ] The PSU I have is the Corsair CX400. I have been wondering if this is going to be powerful enough for my build..?? any advice would be great:

Asus m4a79xtd evo, Phenom II x2 550 BE, 4 GB Ram PC312800, Poworcolor HD 4870 512MB, 1 x Spinpoint F3 1TB, 1 x DVD-ROM. And thats it. I would like to do some OC-ing as well obviously... [NEW DUDE]

 

I for one welcome our new click-counting masters

And these results in a table would have sufficed.

 

So Corsair one of the biggest names won't let you review their PSUs against the competition, I'm not going to read to much into that but...

Why didn't you review one anyway? Surely you can get your hands on one... I'd be a little shocked if there wasn't a few in reach of the Dennis group somewhere.

Does Corsair advertise a lot within the group? I don't know as I stopped buying your printed products now you give most of the content away for free.

 

That's no excuse, I don't see anyone here asking you to tell them the dB output of each PSU as measured in an Anechoic chamber.

At the end of the day we want to be able to sit next to our PC and not have it being too intrusive for day to day use, what is required is a comparative measurement of the noise emitted by the PSUs to allow us to go out and purchase the equipment that will best meet this criteria. We don't need to know the sound pressure output specifically to do this

Here is some methodology from spcr

No reason why you cant put a bit more effort into point 3) than you have been currently, no reason that you cant compare A to B to C using a microphone either, because comparative measurements using the noise level from 1 PSU as a baseline are all we are really interested in.

edit: made a whoopsie on the quote marks...

 

Noise is subjective - If I reviewed the PSU's most will get perfect as I can't hear them. At all.

 

Interesting article, glad I read it, as normally I go by brand for PSUs, and I'd always considered Tagan to be a really good brand.

Any more information on why Corsair don't like your testing? I've got a Corsair PSU myself and I like it at lot (bit of ripple on the 12V though). Come on Corsair, if you believe in your products then put them forward for testing, the only reason I bought mine was that I'd seen a good review on B-T, now it looks like I'll be shying away.

(As for noise, one word, watercooling

 

Toka it's just so incredibly subjective without quantifiable results. We work in the centre of London in a building of several hundred people - quiet is like space, at a premium. We do take note of it and include the noise in the features score - plus we make note of particularly good or bad fans or buzzing noises in the text.

Even if you do describe it all it takes is someone else to say "no this is noisier/quieter than you say in my blahblahblah setup, your reviews are ****". If SPC can do them well, then great! I encourage visiting there, it's only a click away (as long as you come back later)

 

It's not in the features table... unless you mean fan speed Automatic / N

 

Not in the table - that's just for reference. In the features score out of 10, of every PSU.

 

Corsair's PSU-es are effectively rebranded SeaSonic ones, so just use the equivalent SS PSU for the review factor.