8-way SLI and Crossfire Power Supply (PSU) Roundup

[DMB2000uk]

This has to be the best review ive seen for a while, great job guys! Its really in-depth and covers everything i can think of and more. I cant understand why i didn't read it when i first saw it was up

As far as the Antecs 550W being a limiting factor, if you aren't going to use SLi or Xfire then you shouldnt really have a problem with maxing it out any time soon (I know that this review is for Uber rigs, and you didnt manage to max it out! ).

Power efficeincy is going to be a major player in my next rig, and i had already stumbled accross antec for PSU's so this is reassuring to find out about stability.

Dan

PS. I know that the DX10 cards would kill it, but what is there left that you can put in the rig to top 550W? lol.

[Apoptosis]

I know that the DX10 cards would kill it, but what is there left that you can put in the rig to top 550W? lol.

Mushkin suggested using more water coolers and at one point I had TWO Corsair Nautilus 500's running on high, with two retail boxed heat sink fans, a 120mm case fan, 2 80mm case fans, 4GB of memory, 2 ATI Radeon X1900's in XFire, the AGEIA PhysX card running, the DVD player running, the hard drive running and I sat back and thought to myself two water coolers is not realistic, so I removed one ;)

[pcrobot]

Great review!

I was hoping the AeroCool would do better. I'll be keeping the POwerstream in mind for my next upgrade though.

Remember that the OCZ PowerStream series is slated to end here shorty as it will be replaced by the GameXstream series according to OCZ. Since the PowerStream doesn't have Active PFC they can't sell it overseas and it's not efficient at all. Actually if you look at the OCZ website they don't even mention efficiency on the power stream series because it's so bad. I had to pull teeth with OCZ to give me the full load efficiency rating for this article! I'm going to personally stick to power supplies that use Active PFC on all my future builds. That's what I learned from writing this article. Thanks for the kind comments and glad you liked the article!

I missed that.

I checked out the site... they have your review there.

Great job!

[DMB2000uk]

I guess the only thing that you can possibly put into the mix would be a phase change cooler and overclock everything to the max

But as for reality stakes very few people do that. Would be a good way to blag one for the team though!

Dan

[HammerSandwich]

Regarding the Antec NeoHE 550W,

The only word of caution is that we were cranking out 485W during peak load, so while this unit has a little head room before its theoretical limit of 550W, we will not be able to add too much more hardware before this little soldier reaches its limits.

The testing procedure wasn't well documented, but the differences shown on the "efficiency" page indicate you plugged the PSU into a Seasonic Power Angel or similar device to measure the total power drawn from the AC outlet. So the 485W pulled by the Antec includes the PSU's inefficiency! If the Neo achieves 85% efficiency with this load, the PC's real DC load is 412W. Should the Neo be less than 85% efficient, the DC is less. The Antec has significantly more headroom than the above quotation states.

[Apoptosis]

Justin wrote up the testing procedure and that line, so I'll let him take that one.

[Apoptosis]

Looking at the ATI Certified page I found this power supply being certified...



OCZ doesn't even make a Tough Power Series!

[super nade]

Hi,

This is my first post in here. I have a few questions and a request.

Questions:-
------------
1.Why did you pick an AMD system over a Prescott? I believe a fully overclocked Prescott would be a real power hog, thereby putting a lot of stress on the 12V line.

2.How did you measure the voltages? Did you use a DMM and take one reading, or did you use some kind of data acquisition interface to get readings over say an hour? I plan to do a bit of testing myself, so I'd like to know what you guys are doing.

3.Did you check for voltage-ripple on a scope? I feel that could have been a useful to look at. (Just my personal opinion)

4.Edit*
Sorry, one last question:-
I saw that the test bench was open air. Don't you think the tests will be more stringent if heat is taken into account. I mean, the efficiency and stability may be adversely affected if the operating temperature in increased. Sorry if I misunderstood.


Request:
---------

Would it be possible for you to open up these units and post close up pics of the input and output capacitors? Please?

Thank you,

S-N[

[Apoptosis]

Hi,

This is my first post in here. I have a few questions and a request.

Questions:-
------------
1.Why did you pick an AMD system over a Prescott? I believe a fully overclocked Prescott would be a real power hog, thereby putting a lot of stress on the 12V line.

2.How did you measure the voltages? Did you use a DMM and take one reading, or did you use some kind of data acquisition interface to get readings over say an hour? I plan to do a bit of testing myself, so I'd like to know what you guys are doing.

3.Did you check for voltage-ripple on a scope? I feel that could have been a useful to look at. (Just my personal opinion)

Request:
---------

Would it be possible for you to open up these units and post close up pics of the input and output capacitors? Please?

Thank you,

S-N[/list]

Welcome to the forums and to the site. We picked the processors we used for two reasons... AMD's AM2 Processors and Intel's 9XX series are the latest processors from both companies. Why look at Prescott, which I agree is a power hungry processor, when 75W Extreme Edition Conroe's are right around the corner? In terms of voltages we used our DMM and also some software applications to monitor voltages for hours to check for any weird things going on. While scopes are fun to use (used one in college quite often) we don't have access to a calibrated one, so didn't use one. As for opening up units we used to do that in the past here and ended up with companies threating to sue us (skyhawk) and one of our long time supporters Corsair was unhappy that I opened their Nautilus 500 unit. Since i can't afford to buy all the hardware reviewed here I must respect the wishes of companies and no longer open products that are "sealed". If something is bogus we will open stuff up and show you, but some companies will never again send product if we open parts up. I hope you respect this as I am being honest.

[kenc51]

Power efficeincy is going to be a major player in my next rig, and i had already stumbled accross antec for PSU's so this is reassuring to find out about stability.

Dan

Thanks to EU regulations all PSU's must have active PFC so we're sorted this side of the water ;P

Also all components must be ROHS certified now......so good for the enviroment

[Zenphic]

Looking at the ATI Certified page I found this power supply being certified...



OCZ doesn't even make a Tough Power Series!

LOL the things we see on the Internet these days....

[Illuminati]

Regarding the Antec NeoHE 550W,

The only word of caution is that we were cranking out 485W during peak load, so while this unit has a little head room before its theoretical limit of 550W, we will not be able to add too much more hardware before this little soldier reaches its limits.

The testing procedure wasn't well documented, but the differences shown on the "efficiency" page indicate you plugged the PSU into a Seasonic Power Angel or similar device to measure the total power drawn from the AC outlet. So the 485W pulled by the Antec includes the PSU's inefficiency! If the Neo achieves 85% efficiency with this load, the PC's real DC load is 412W. Should the Neo be less than 85% efficient, the DC is less. The Antec has significantly more headroom than the above quotation states.

I'm sorry I didn't better document the testing procedure. The next update we do to the article (probably when we add some more PSUs to the mix), I'll be sure to add some more info in the testing procedure section. As for the statement from the article you quoted, you are correct. We did measure the usage (Watts) from the AC wall outlet which would include the power consumption by the PSU's inefficiencies. We need to correct this statement and thanks for pointing it out!

Nate, can you edit or remove that statement for me? I won't be able to get to it for a while.

[HammerSandwich]

Thanks for the extra info.

[Pengwin]

good reivew, WOOT NEOHE PWNS!!! (i have a NeoHE 500w)


did u use a multimeter for the review?

[Illuminati]

did u use a multimeter for the review?

Of course.

[Apoptosis]

did u use a multimeter for the review?

in an above post I said we used a DMM... I just realized that not everyone knows what DMM stands for... digital multi meter

Cheers

[Arctucas]

Can we expect to see a future review of highend PSUs e.g. PC P&C?

[Apoptosis]

While we have never worked with PC P&C on the past we are always open in working with more companies.

Also... When reading this review keep in mind that the Intel specs for DC output require an 11.40V minimum and 12.60V maximum on a +12V rail and 4.75V min and 5.25V max on the +5V rail.

[Pengwin]

I think PC P&C products are over rated, i mean they 510w PSU is good but for their price u can grab a Fortron 700w.

If i was made of money i would consider PC P&C

[Skippman]

I noticed you reviewed the OCZ GameXStream 700W, do you think the 600W version of the same PSU will be built to the same quality standards? I'm wondering if I can't get away with running just a 600W PSU and save myself $40.