The reason why I don't consider the sub-1000 watt as big is because the larger watt PSUs seem to cost exponentially more money than the ones that are cheaper in terms of price:watt output.
It's not about "cheap", it's about the output. Probably less than 1% of power users would need something this big. My system is an overclocked i7 930, 12GB of ram, 2-1TB hd's, 3 ssd's, a gtx970 SC, lg blu ray burner. It has never drawn more than 350W from the outlet. under normal circumstances it's about 150W for web browsing, or just general work. Goes up to 250W with most games. So I agree with jabber, it's not a "sane" psu for the vast majority of users.
Indeed, some of us aren't in our teens/20's any more and want quality, reliability and VFM, not just moar power! Plus a lot of us are moving to 'smaller boxes'. The term 'PC enthusiast' these days doesn't just mean flames/dragons on the case and lot of LEDs. It's not the turn of the century anymore.
Right, some of us are beyond our 20s and have more disposable income and like to build more robust overclocked, quad CF/SLI systems that require bigger/better PSUs. This review is helpful to those people.
Fortunately, the "majority of users" don't matter in enthusiast-level reviews. Titan X, 295X2, 5960X, etc. "Most people" don't need more than a random, budget 500W PSU. Those PSUs are a dime a dozen.
1. Go to Amazon/Newegg. 2. Sort by highest rating. 3. Purchase the first one under $60.
nobody is saying to stop these reviews of extreme psu's , just add some that the majority of the enthusiasts can make practical use of. The last several psu reviews on this site have been for extreme psu's like this, they are ignoring a huge segment of the market. The last several reviews have been for a 1200W unit, 2000W unit, 1050W unit, 1500W unit.
Some people really don't have a clue what 'enthusiast' means. It doesn't necessarily mean build the biggest and most expensive. Some of us have more subtle tastes.
You are an idiot, please do not give people purchasing advice on computer hardware ever again. Not all sub 1kw psus are created equal, and in fact Andyson has made some sub Par ones themselves lately.
Grow up. Most of us realize that every single game is playable with high settings without ever touching SLI/CF and that using SLI/CF just adds a ton of problems. It's actually mainly the younger people who want these useless things while the rest of us aren't living with our parents anymore and have a mortgage and other hobbies like cars.
It is absolutely a valid comment to point out that AAT's reviews have been very out-of-touch with the community. Personally I rarely read an AAT review these days for this exact reason. The only reason I even clicked this review is because I was curious if Andyson makes decent PSUs at all.
Worth pointing out is this PSU, and many others in the 850W+ category, features two EPS 4+4 pin connectors. What's this good for? Dual CPU motherboards, which in today's market means dual LGA-2011(-3) Xeons. Workstations are the target, not your gaming machine.
Some high end gaming boards use more than a single 8 pin EPS connector. MY MSI MPower MAX 1150 board has an 8 and a 4 pin in the CPU area; and a 6 pin PCI connector just above the first slot for if you're maxing out the x16 slots.
It's a modular design so they can go bucket list on extra cables; from the markings on the side of the PSU itself you could plug a 6th PCIe cable in there if you bought one from a 3rd party.
Even if you installed two Xeon E5-2687W v3 processors, that's only 320 watts of TDP, so you would need to have some other power hog in the system to justify an 850W+ power supply.
I hope they make a 600w version almost identical to this. I have nothing against teapo caps, my old PC power and cooling unit is littered with them (pre-ocz pcp&c) and it's been running solid for 8 years. It was sent in for warranty at 4.5 years because I overloaded it on my coin miners, but the repair indicated it was just a fuse.
Back to the point, this thing looks really good on paper for the price and I'd pay half as much for half the output since my gaming pc maxes out at 500 watts at the wall. At 80% load a 600 watt unit would be over 90% efficient and near silent at high ambient temps.
My cases have no window, so asthetics? Lets just say I care more about the clean braided cables and no flashy colors.
If we click on Case/Cooling/PSU section on Anandtech & look for all of the PSU reviews, there has been a notable dearth of "normal" PSUs being reviewed. In fact, of the last 6 listed spanning some months, the lowest one was 650W, along with a 850.
I understand that mfgs supply their "best" and we are supposed to reason that the same tech trickles down to lower end models, but the end-user (us) also have said we want to see those reviews of the low-end models. We want to see where mfgs cheap out on lower-end components in the 450-550W range rather than the 1000-2000W behemoths. We want to know the best graphics card we can get to run on the lowest amount of power in single GPU setups. We want to know which ones we can buy online that are good value for the money in our single GPU setups.
E.Fyll, I hope you can ask for some 450-600W units to review, or even better, buy some of the best-sellers online & let us know the results. That would be the most informative & useful to me as I buy one for my new system
I have to second this - I can't imagine many people running more than two graphics cards (which is what you'd need to make a 600 or 850W supply inadequate).
Also, I don't get the trickle down argument. "this 1kW PSU looks good, so I'm going to buy the 600W model because it has the same sticker" <- said no one, ever
I'd actually like to see a few from even lower down the power level. Eg my nas box is normally sub-50W. On Newegg the smallest 80+ platinum PSU is $84 for 400W; gold is either $62 for 360W, or $50 + an adapter to mount an SFX PSU in an ATX case; bronze would get me 300W for $37; going all the way down to just 80+, I could get 300W for $39 (which obviously doesn't make any sense) or 220W for $57 in the even smaller Flex ATX form factor.
Assuming I stick with good brands I don't anticipate any power quality problems; but which would actually be most efficient at that low a power level. Only the 80+ 220W actually has an efficiency guarantee at that low a load. Only 80+ titanium is speced at 10% load; but from past history probably won't trickle down to tiny units for a while; and at least initially will probably be so expensive that it only makes sense if you're living somewhere with really high electric prices (Hawaii, Germany, etc) or trying to go off the grid completely.
I'll probably be replacing my current NAS at the end of the year; and I'd really like some data here to help guide my build vs buy decision.
I would go with just 80+ broze for a low power nas box. Even if you are 10% less efficient at such a low wattage you are only talking about 5 extra watts of power thats like .005kw/h of extra electricty vs a platinum unit. Just get a high quality top brand of a 300 watt 80+ bronze for 35-50 dollars. You can;t go wrong with seasonic i believe they have a nice 300 watt bronze unit. the newer SeaSonic SSP-300SE is a very nice choice for 36.99. Going to be pretty hard to find less than 300 watts and 37 dollars is already very cheap.
> Even though there are plenty of >1kW consumer power supply units available today, it is well known that these represent a very small portion of the actual market, as the power requirements of a typical home or office PC are far lower than that.
and before that, in the SilverStone NJ520 review:
> Are you tired of reading reviews of high output power supply units? It's true that 99% of personal computers out there do not require something capable of outputting more than 500-550 Watts, and even that may be overkill for quite a few people.
YES WE ARE. And that was 9 months ago...
"Normal" PSUs are on the order of $50, so even if you're not getting low-wattage PSUs from the manufacturers, order a SeaSonic SS-300ET for $35 from Newegg, stick it (and a few similar ones) in the test bench, and show the graphs!
You see, the problem is that good <550 Watts PSUs are very rare. In the order of $50, you will get something that works OK and that's about it. Will it really matter if the ripple is 90mV instead of 75mV, or if the average efficiency is 95% instead of 95.3%?
Besides,manufacturers do not easily supply samples of such products. I've already discussed the reasons why not many times over. The few good low power units that exist, I am trying to source them. Silver stone sent in a 450 watt unit and we might be getting somewhere with Andyson too.
And no, I cannot just buy the samples. Especially from newegg.
"When it comes to high performance >1 kW computer power supplies, almost every reputable OEM has released at least one design to serve as their flagship. This is not necessarily because the companies expect high revenue because they are well aware that this segment of the market is very small and overly saturated. They do this because the flagship serves as a symbol of the company's capabilities and competence, enhancing their profile on all fronts in order to produce that halo product, hoping the performance of the high end results in trickle-down sales."
But that doesn't justify it. The bottom line is that I read Anandtech reviews because I want to be educated about potential purchases. However, I'll never purchase a 1000+W PSU. That's just wasteful.
I want relevant reviews and Anandtech needs to demands relevant PSU review units.
Andyson didn't just suffer because of Hiper. Remember Ultra power supplies? First modular units made, now house brand of Tiger Direct? Andyson. Many failures, old designs, horrible voltage regulation, never meeting load specs....that's a lot of Andyson PSUs made for the vendors they supply to. While it could be that vendors want Andyson to make cheap units, I wouldn't touch one, even one that rates well. You can do better with other choices.
Thank you for updating your testing methodology to reflect the continued decline in the amount of power available on the legacy (3.3/5v) rails in more modern designs.
1. Voltage regulation under load 2. Ripple suppression 3. Long term reliability
I would ignore the 80 Plus as it's mostly marketing.
Good power supplies are made by Delta (OEM), Super Flower (their Leadex platform is pretty good), Seasonic, and I would argue some of the Flextronics designs are pretty good too. Brand is mostly for warranty support - it's the OEM that really counts.
At the 10-15 cent per kWh electric rates common in most of the US the price premium for a platinum PSU only pays off over a gold one if you're running 24/7 at full load; and even that takes several years. If you only game a few hours/day and leave your PC at idle/off the rest of the time you might as well go with a sanely sized cheaper one. If you're unfortunate enough to be paying several times that then even casual gaming will push the payback period to a reasonablish timeframe.
Unless you want your PSU operating in its fanless mode as the high end semi fanless psu's dont kick then fan on till around 30% load. 30% of 1500 is 450 watts of fanless operation while a 500 watt supply only has 150 watts of fanless operation. Some people care about noise.
80 PLUS actually means very little for real world efficiency. They usually send their best units to ECOS. It's real world efficiency that counts under load and often the ones with the stickers are overrated.
As far as the costs - it's only a few dollars per year because we're talking single digits. The purchase price vastly overshadows that. I'd go with voltage, ripple, and reliability any day over advertised efficiency.
Also, the efficiency is directly correlated to the heat produced by the PSU, and that is inversely related to both the quietness and the speed of your computer, which are qualities everyone cares about.
I only click on these PSU reviews to read the comments about irrelevantly powerful PSUs. Maybe AT will listen eventually. But the sponsors are to blame as well...I would think a review on lower wattage units would have greater impact on sales.
I've been waiting for a nice 600-800 watt 80+ titanium unit to come out.
There are some good reasons to get larger power supplies now that they have semi fanless mode. Now most psu's have no fan mode that works up to about 30% of the PSU's output. So if you have a 1000 watt unit you can draw up to 300 watts before the fans need to kick on. Almost all single GPU systems nowadays stay under 300 watts at most normal loads. Sure you could just get a 500 watt PSU but the fans come on at 150 watts or more so you end up with more fan noise. Surely an i7-7960x 8 core skylake overclocked to the maximum efficient overclock of 4.2ghz (if the oc power response curve is the same as haswell after 4.2ghz on the 8 core power use rises sharply 14nm could possibly make it 4.3 or 4.4ghz before power use risies sharply) and a nice EVGA classified GTX 980ti will only draw 250-280 watts on most normal workloads and gaming and someone that is an absolute freak about having the quietest powerful pc possible will want a 80+ plat or even titanium 1kw unit to make sure their psu rarely spins up a fan.
I will be sparing no expense on my skylake-e build and will be picking every component with noise as a top priority as my pc is in my bedroom and I am looking for a 1kw or higher 80+ titanium unit. Currently I think 1500 watt is the lowest titanium available which gives you 450 watts of fanless operation. I will be going all air cooled as I prefer the dead silence of noctua fans over the hum of water pumps. I go the route of maximizing case fans in every available spot usually like 12 fans which allows you to use the ULNA adapters to keep the max PWM speed below audible levels and the sheer huge quantity of them makes up for the loss of airflow from reduced rpm's. It's less efficient money wise but with all the right parts picked the only time the pc can be remotely heard is when gaming and the graphics card kick on tho even this noise can be drastically reduced with a triple slot artic accelro extreme IV with the front and back heatspreaders and 3 front fans and 2 rear fans and the best performing liquid metal ultra tim applied to it.
Since it will have been 6.5 years since I built a PC I am able to spend way more money than usual when I'm building a PC as I got a nice little egg saved. And I think a lot of people will be in similar situations because of how slow CPU performance upgrades have been. And for people like us going to these extreme lengths for top performing quiet PC's we need the huge unites so we can stay in fanless mode.
It's not so much the wattage its the size. A lot of us don't need legacy stuff like DVD drives, 4+ HDDs or Tri-SLi for gaming. So we are building smaller PCs. The days of the wardrobe PC are over. Wives and Gf's don't like huge black monoliths that light up like xmas trees. So the issue with the high wattages units are they don't go in smaller cases so easily. Up to 800W should be a standard sized unit no issue. I would have thought a smaller unit could be made up to 600W.
Just wanted to mention, that I have a Hiper "Type-R 580w Modular" PSU, that has been running with absolutely no flaws for 6 years and three builds now.
Since I see Anandtech being one review sites with emphasis on SSF type computers, I find it odd that they review these massive 1000W+ PSUs.
Where are the SFX PSUs from silverstone? 450W and 600W in such a compact size is pretty amazing, and even those can be overkill in the cases they are designed to go in.
Just wanted to voice my opinion for having reviews of reasonable power supplies. Proper power supply reviews are few and far in between, even less so for the reasonable sized ones in the 450-750W range.
I had a Lepa 500W Gold rated PSU with 41A on the +12v rail that could not support my GTX 970 upgrade despite it meeting all the system requirements. Had to pick up a 750W EVGA (Seasonic OEM) gold rated to replace it but I can't find proper reviews of any of these "normal" units.
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jabber - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Excellent...another PSU...I would never need to buy. Once again can we have some 'sane' PSU reviews?CrazyElf - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
The reason why I don't consider the sub-1000 watt as big is because the larger watt PSUs seem to cost exponentially more money than the ones that are cheaper in terms of price:watt output.That being said, never skimp and buy cheap PSUs.
Margalus - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
It's not about "cheap", it's about the output. Probably less than 1% of power users would need something this big. My system is an overclocked i7 930, 12GB of ram, 2-1TB hd's, 3 ssd's, a gtx970 SC, lg blu ray burner. It has never drawn more than 350W from the outlet. under normal circumstances it's about 150W for web browsing, or just general work. Goes up to 250W with most games. So I agree with jabber, it's not a "sane" psu for the vast majority of users.jabber - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Indeed, some of us aren't in our teens/20's any more and want quality, reliability and VFM, not just moar power! Plus a lot of us are moving to 'smaller boxes'. The term 'PC enthusiast' these days doesn't just mean flames/dragons on the case and lot of LEDs. It's not the turn of the century anymore.nathanddrews - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Right, some of us are beyond our 20s and have more disposable income and like to build more robust overclocked, quad CF/SLI systems that require bigger/better PSUs. This review is helpful to those people.Fortunately, the "majority of users" don't matter in enthusiast-level reviews. Titan X, 295X2, 5960X, etc. "Most people" don't need more than a random, budget 500W PSU. Those PSUs are a dime a dozen.
1. Go to Amazon/Newegg.
2. Sort by highest rating.
3. Purchase the first one under $60.
Margalus - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
nobody is saying to stop these reviews of extreme psu's , just add some that the majority of the enthusiasts can make practical use of. The last several psu reviews on this site have been for extreme psu's like this, they are ignoring a huge segment of the market. The last several reviews have been for a 1200W unit, 2000W unit, 1050W unit, 1500W unit.jabber - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
Some people really don't have a clue what 'enthusiast' means. It doesn't necessarily mean build the biggest and most expensive. Some of us have more subtle tastes.cruzinforit - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
You are an idiot, please do not give people purchasing advice on computer hardware ever again. Not all sub 1kw psus are created equal, and in fact Andyson has made some sub Par ones themselves lately.See here
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReview...
JonnyDough - Tuesday, April 28, 2015 - link
That was awfully snide. Work on manners?Dansolo - Wednesday, April 29, 2015 - link
Grow up. Most of us realize that every single game is playable with high settings without ever touching SLI/CF and that using SLI/CF just adds a ton of problems. It's actually mainly the younger people who want these useless things while the rest of us aren't living with our parents anymore and have a mortgage and other hobbies like cars.It is absolutely a valid comment to point out that AAT's reviews have been very out-of-touch with the community. Personally I rarely read an AAT review these days for this exact reason. The only reason I even clicked this review is because I was curious if Andyson makes decent PSUs at all.
joex4444 - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Worth pointing out is this PSU, and many others in the 850W+ category, features two EPS 4+4 pin connectors. What's this good for? Dual CPU motherboards, which in today's market means dual LGA-2011(-3) Xeons. Workstations are the target, not your gaming machine.DanNeely - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Some high end gaming boards use more than a single 8 pin EPS connector. MY MSI MPower MAX 1150 board has an 8 and a 4 pin in the CPU area; and a 6 pin PCI connector just above the first slot for if you're maxing out the x16 slots.It's a modular design so they can go bucket list on extra cables; from the markings on the side of the PSU itself you could plug a 6th PCIe cable in there if you bought one from a 3rd party.
KAlmquist - Sunday, April 26, 2015 - link
Even if you installed two Xeon E5-2687W v3 processors, that's only 320 watts of TDP, so you would need to have some other power hog in the system to justify an 850W+ power supply.Samus - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
I hope they make a 600w version almost identical to this. I have nothing against teapo caps, my old PC power and cooling unit is littered with them (pre-ocz pcp&c) and it's been running solid for 8 years. It was sent in for warranty at 4.5 years because I overloaded it on my coin miners, but the repair indicated it was just a fuse.Back to the point, this thing looks really good on paper for the price and I'd pay half as much for half the output since my gaming pc maxes out at 500 watts at the wall. At 80% load a 600 watt unit would be over 90% efficient and near silent at high ambient temps.
My cases have no window, so asthetics? Lets just say I care more about the clean braided cables and no flashy colors.
romrunning - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
If we click on Case/Cooling/PSU section on Anandtech & look for all of the PSU reviews, there has been a notable dearth of "normal" PSUs being reviewed. In fact, of the last 6 listed spanning some months, the lowest one was 650W, along with a 850.I understand that mfgs supply their "best" and we are supposed to reason that the same tech trickles down to lower end models, but the end-user (us) also have said we want to see those reviews of the low-end models. We want to see where mfgs cheap out on lower-end components in the 450-550W range rather than the 1000-2000W behemoths. We want to know the best graphics card we can get to run on the lowest amount of power in single GPU setups. We want to know which ones we can buy online that are good value for the money in our single GPU setups.
E.Fyll, I hope you can ask for some 450-600W units to review, or even better, buy some of the best-sellers online & let us know the results. That would be the most informative & useful to me as I buy one for my new system
chlamchowder - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
I have to second this - I can't imagine many people running more than two graphics cards (which is what you'd need to make a 600 or 850W supply inadequate).Also, I don't get the trickle down argument.
"this 1kW PSU looks good, so I'm going to buy the 600W model because it has the same sticker" <- said no one, ever
Samus - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
It's funny you mention that becAuse my gaming PC has a gtx970 Sli setup with a Xeon e3-1230 and 3 drives...still tops out at 500w at the wall in occtDanNeely - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
I'd actually like to see a few from even lower down the power level. Eg my nas box is normally sub-50W. On Newegg the smallest 80+ platinum PSU is $84 for 400W; gold is either $62 for 360W, or $50 + an adapter to mount an SFX PSU in an ATX case; bronze would get me 300W for $37; going all the way down to just 80+, I could get 300W for $39 (which obviously doesn't make any sense) or 220W for $57 in the even smaller Flex ATX form factor.Assuming I stick with good brands I don't anticipate any power quality problems; but which would actually be most efficient at that low a power level. Only the 80+ 220W actually has an efficiency guarantee at that low a load. Only 80+ titanium is speced at 10% load; but from past history probably won't trickle down to tiny units for a while; and at least initially will probably be so expensive that it only makes sense if you're living somewhere with really high electric prices (Hawaii, Germany, etc) or trying to go off the grid completely.
I'll probably be replacing my current NAS at the end of the year; and I'd really like some data here to help guide my build vs buy decision.
Laststop311 - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
I would go with just 80+ broze for a low power nas box. Even if you are 10% less efficient at such a low wattage you are only talking about 5 extra watts of power thats like .005kw/h of extra electricty vs a platinum unit. Just get a high quality top brand of a 300 watt 80+ bronze for 35-50 dollars. You can;t go wrong with seasonic i believe they have a nice 300 watt bronze unit. the newer SeaSonic SSP-300SE is a very nice choice for 36.99. Going to be pretty hard to find less than 300 watts and 37 dollars is already very cheap.TurboTastic - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
I quote the author as of 6 months ago:> Even though there are plenty of >1kW consumer power supply units available today, it is well known that these represent a very small portion of the actual market, as the power requirements of a typical home or office PC are far lower than that.
and before that, in the SilverStone NJ520 review:
> Are you tired of reading reviews of high output power supply units? It's true that 99% of personal computers out there do not require something capable of outputting more than 500-550 Watts, and even that may be overkill for quite a few people.
YES WE ARE. And that was 9 months ago...
"Normal" PSUs are on the order of $50, so even if you're not getting low-wattage PSUs from the manufacturers, order a SeaSonic SS-300ET for $35 from Newegg, stick it (and a few similar ones) in the test bench, and show the graphs!
ImSpartacus - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
I agree.I couldn't care less about giant PSUs.
I want to see reviews of ~500W PSUs because that's the kind of PSU that I would buy.
E.Fyll - Monday, April 27, 2015 - link
You see, the problem is that good <550 Watts PSUs are very rare. In the order of $50, you will get something that works OK and that's about it. Will it really matter if the ripple is 90mV instead of 75mV, or if the average efficiency is 95% instead of 95.3%?Besides,manufacturers do not easily supply samples of such products. I've already discussed the reasons why not many times over. The few good low power units that exist, I am trying to source them. Silver stone sent in a 450 watt unit and we might be getting somewhere with Andyson too.
And no, I cannot just buy the samples. Especially from newegg.
The0ne - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
They won't listen lol, it's like they're being paid to do the article...wait a minute, I may be on to something!ImSpartacus - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
Yeah, the author says it up front:"When it comes to high performance >1 kW computer power supplies, almost every reputable OEM has released at least one design to serve as their flagship. This is not necessarily because the companies expect high revenue because they are well aware that this segment of the market is very small and overly saturated. They do this because the flagship serves as a symbol of the company's capabilities and competence, enhancing their profile on all fronts in order to produce that halo product, hoping the performance of the high end results in trickle-down sales."
But that doesn't justify it. The bottom line is that I read Anandtech reviews because I want to be educated about potential purchases. However, I'll never purchase a 1000+W PSU. That's just wasteful.
I want relevant reviews and Anandtech needs to demands relevant PSU review units.
JonnyDough - Tuesday, April 28, 2015 - link
Agreed. I own 10 computers, 8 of which are gaming PCs. None have more than a 750w PSU in them, and none will ever need to.computex128 - Wednesday, April 29, 2015 - link
Drop the insanity and buy a dual-GPU card like the rest of us certifiably sane folk :PLoneWolf15 - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Andyson didn't just suffer because of Hiper.Remember Ultra power supplies? First modular units made, now house brand of Tiger Direct? Andyson. Many failures, old designs, horrible voltage regulation, never meeting load specs....that's a lot of Andyson PSUs made for the vendors they supply to. While it could be that vendors want Andyson to make cheap units, I wouldn't touch one, even one that rates well. You can do better with other choices.
DanNeely - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Thank you for updating your testing methodology to reflect the continued decline in the amount of power available on the legacy (3.3/5v) rails in more modern designs.Laststop311 - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
Because legacy systems used lower voltage more. Nowadays everything is 12 volts.CrazyElf - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
The most important things to consider are:1. Voltage regulation under load
2. Ripple suppression
3. Long term reliability
I would ignore the 80 Plus as it's mostly marketing.
Good power supplies are made by Delta (OEM), Super Flower (their Leadex platform is pretty good), Seasonic, and I would argue some of the Flextronics designs are pretty good too. Brand is mostly for warranty support - it's the OEM that really counts.
TurboTastic - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
80 Plus isn't marketing if you're paying the electric bill!DanNeely - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
At the 10-15 cent per kWh electric rates common in most of the US the price premium for a platinum PSU only pays off over a gold one if you're running 24/7 at full load; and even that takes several years. If you only game a few hours/day and leave your PC at idle/off the rest of the time you might as well go with a sanely sized cheaper one. If you're unfortunate enough to be paying several times that then even casual gaming will push the payback period to a reasonablish timeframe.Laststop311 - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
Unless you want your PSU operating in its fanless mode as the high end semi fanless psu's dont kick then fan on till around 30% load. 30% of 1500 is 450 watts of fanless operation while a 500 watt supply only has 150 watts of fanless operation. Some people care about noise.CrazyElf - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
80 PLUS actually means very little for real world efficiency. They usually send their best units to ECOS. It's real world efficiency that counts under load and often the ones with the stickers are overrated.As far as the costs - it's only a few dollars per year because we're talking single digits. The purchase price vastly overshadows that. I'd go with voltage, ripple, and reliability any day over advertised efficiency.
meacupla - Sunday, April 26, 2015 - link
I haven't really seen any 80+ Bronze or higher PSU suffer from voltage, ripple or reliability issues.Usually the makers skimp on the fan first.
I prefer 80+ Gold/Platinum, because I can count on makers to stuff the very best they have into those units, which means happy ears and reliability.
TurboTastic - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Also, the efficiency is directly correlated to the heat produced by the PSU, and that is inversely related to both the quietness and the speed of your computer, which are qualities everyone cares about.der - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
A Wise man once said: "A Great gaming computer comes with a great Power Supply/PSU".etamin - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
I only click on these PSU reviews to read the comments about irrelevantly powerful PSUs. Maybe AT will listen eventually. But the sponsors are to blame as well...I would think a review on lower wattage units would have greater impact on sales.Mickatroid - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
LOL, I am here for the comments too. The claws are out, loving it.Laststop311 - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
I've been waiting for a nice 600-800 watt 80+ titanium unit to come out.There are some good reasons to get larger power supplies now that they have semi fanless mode. Now most psu's have no fan mode that works up to about 30% of the PSU's output. So if you have a 1000 watt unit you can draw up to 300 watts before the fans need to kick on. Almost all single GPU systems nowadays stay under 300 watts at most normal loads. Sure you could just get a 500 watt PSU but the fans come on at 150 watts or more so you end up with more fan noise. Surely an i7-7960x 8 core skylake overclocked to the maximum efficient overclock of 4.2ghz (if the oc power response curve is the same as haswell after 4.2ghz on the 8 core power use rises sharply 14nm could possibly make it 4.3 or 4.4ghz before power use risies sharply) and a nice EVGA classified GTX 980ti will only draw 250-280 watts on most normal workloads and gaming and someone that is an absolute freak about having the quietest powerful pc possible will want a 80+ plat or even titanium 1kw unit to make sure their psu rarely spins up a fan.
I will be sparing no expense on my skylake-e build and will be picking every component with noise as a top priority as my pc is in my bedroom and I am looking for a 1kw or higher 80+ titanium unit. Currently I think 1500 watt is the lowest titanium available which gives you 450 watts of fanless operation. I will be going all air cooled as I prefer the dead silence of noctua fans over the hum of water pumps. I go the route of maximizing case fans in every available spot usually like 12 fans which allows you to use the ULNA adapters to keep the max PWM speed below audible levels and the sheer huge quantity of them makes up for the loss of airflow from reduced rpm's. It's less efficient money wise but with all the right parts picked the only time the pc can be remotely heard is when gaming and the graphics card kick on tho even this noise can be drastically reduced with a triple slot artic accelro extreme IV with the front and back heatspreaders and 3 front fans and 2 rear fans and the best performing liquid metal ultra tim applied to it.
Since it will have been 6.5 years since I built a PC I am able to spend way more money than usual when I'm building a PC as I got a nice little egg saved. And I think a lot of people will be in similar situations because of how slow CPU performance upgrades have been. And for people like us going to these extreme lengths for top performing quiet PC's we need the huge unites so we can stay in fanless mode.
jabber - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
It's not so much the wattage its the size. A lot of us don't need legacy stuff like DVD drives, 4+ HDDs or Tri-SLi for gaming. So we are building smaller PCs. The days of the wardrobe PC are over. Wives and Gf's don't like huge black monoliths that light up like xmas trees. So the issue with the high wattages units are they don't go in smaller cases so easily. Up to 800W should be a standard sized unit no issue. I would have thought a smaller unit could be made up to 600W.KAlmquist - Sunday, April 26, 2015 - link
You should consider buying a fanless PSU.kevith - Sunday, April 26, 2015 - link
Just wanted to mention, that I have a Hiper "Type-R 580w Modular" PSU, that has been running with absolutely no flaws for 6 years and three builds now.meacupla - Sunday, April 26, 2015 - link
Since I see Anandtech being one review sites with emphasis on SSF type computers, I find it odd that they review these massive 1000W+ PSUs.Where are the SFX PSUs from silverstone? 450W and 600W in such a compact size is pretty amazing, and even those can be overkill in the cases they are designed to go in.
sweeper765 - Monday, April 27, 2015 - link
Here for the comments as well. I don't even read these useless psu reviews. Would never use such a monstrosity even if given for free!blzd - Saturday, May 16, 2015 - link
Just wanted to voice my opinion for having reviews of reasonable power supplies. Proper power supply reviews are few and far in between, even less so for the reasonable sized ones in the 450-750W range.I had a Lepa 500W Gold rated PSU with 41A on the +12v rail that could not support my GTX 970 upgrade despite it meeting all the system requirements. Had to pick up a 750W EVGA (Seasonic OEM) gold rated to replace it but I can't find proper reviews of any of these "normal" units.