This is the first PSU I've seen using flat ribbons for the 24pin ATX cable. Is it able to alleviate the stiffness that normally makes the sleeved monster such a pain to route behind things?
Silverstone makes a set of flexible flat ribbon cables that are of a shorter length for use with their fully modular power supplies. Silverstone PP05-E 0.98 ft. Flat Flexible Short Cable Set for SilverStone Modular PSUs. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Do they sell individual cables, IIRC my PSU is a Silverstone and it is modular; but all my smaller cables are the flat type. Only the 24pin legacy cable is the fat sleeved style.
It has its own set of benefits, but also has some drawbacks.
Overall, I think individual strands are the easiest to work with, but only if they neatly come out of the PSU. Otherwise, the ribbon is moderately easier to work with than sleeved.
I dig that flat ribbon, specially with today's cases that have plenty of cable holes... I still don't get why individually sleeved strand cables got so popular, they look ok if you have combs in them to keep them very straight but with or without they're still bulkier and harder to hide.
We moved away from PATA cables for a reason and the current craze over single strand braids basically leaves them looking like fancy PATA cables (that you can't fold as easily as the old thin PATA cables).
The move away from PATA cables was because of ease of installation, rather than how poorly they could be routed. In fact, PATA cables were a lot easier to work with. Done right, they were far less restricting to airflow than spliced and bundled cables.
The move away from PATA had pretty much zero to do with aesthetics or installation ease. It's purely an engineering reason why we moved from a slow parallel bus to a fast serial bus. Those other reasons are purely side benefits.
you say that, but at that point in storage technology, the disks were barely saturating 66Mbps and it took intel, nvidia and VIA quite a while to implement SATA as a native feature in their chipsets.
That was my point, we used to splice and play origami with PATA cables to avoid that big chunky flat cable look that the fancy braided cables now end up replicating...
As a layman, this was a cool review to read. It's often hard to figure out exactly what makes one psu different from another with similar marketing "specs". It's assumed that many are based on a handful of oem's designs, but it can be a challenge to dig that deep. This review presents much of that info up front. No digging necessary. Cool beans.
The 12V rail sag is a bit more than I would like. And the fact that its only rated for 40C is really a bummer. Its very common for the inside of a PC case to hit 45-50C, especially in the summer with a few GPU's inside it. Some cases do let you put the PUS in upside down so it sucks in cool air (my own does) but many do not.
How do you know what this means unless you have a few other power supplies as a baseline to draw a comparison. For instance if you had what you considered is the best test results for a power supply, and one or two other the test results might make more sense. You always show comparisons for processors and video cards.
Great review. I really appreciate that you test these less capable units. Reading this helps me to realise why those 1200 watt PSUs are so good. To see what happens when the cooling isn't sufficient.
Also that this psu seems like it would be good for systems that might generally sit at around 2-400watts and occasionally pulls 5-600+ on a more epic game.
Nice review. The PSU looks pretty decent up to around 500 watts and, realistically, that's about the maximum draw of most gaming computers even those running two GPUs (presuming about 100 watts for the CPU and then another 125-ish for each video card, plus some extra wattage for drives and other bits) so it's more than enough. As I've never found a reason to run more than one mid-range graphics card, I personally can't see buying anything rated over 450 watts. The price is a little too high, but aside from that, its good enough.
Anything lower than 'gold' is junk. This thing is a budget brand 'bronze', blech, no thanks. That's why it's only a 3 year warranty, low quality components. It doesn't even look that great, enthusiast like snazzy, especially modders with window cases. Punching sheet metal with a honeycomb pattern has been around for years already, *yawn*.
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DanNeely - Tuesday, July 28, 2015 - link
This is the first PSU I've seen using flat ribbons for the 24pin ATX cable. Is it able to alleviate the stiffness that normally makes the sleeved monster such a pain to route behind things?piasabird - Tuesday, July 28, 2015 - link
Silverstone makes a set of flexible flat ribbon cables that are of a shorter length for use with their fully modular power supplies. Silverstone PP05-E 0.98 ft. Flat Flexible Short Cable Set for SilverStone Modular PSUs. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...DanNeely - Tuesday, July 28, 2015 - link
Do they sell individual cables, IIRC my PSU is a Silverstone and it is modular; but all my smaller cables are the flat type. Only the 24pin legacy cable is the fat sleeved style.Cellar Door - Thursday, July 30, 2015 - link
Thank you Sir!meacupla - Tuesday, July 28, 2015 - link
It has its own set of benefits, but also has some drawbacks.Overall, I think individual strands are the easiest to work with, but only if they neatly come out of the PSU. Otherwise, the ribbon is moderately easier to work with than sleeved.
Impulses - Tuesday, July 28, 2015 - link
I dig that flat ribbon, specially with today's cases that have plenty of cable holes... I still don't get why individually sleeved strand cables got so popular, they look ok if you have combs in them to keep them very straight but with or without they're still bulkier and harder to hide.We moved away from PATA cables for a reason and the current craze over single strand braids basically leaves them looking like fancy PATA cables (that you can't fold as easily as the old thin PATA cables).
meacupla - Tuesday, July 28, 2015 - link
The move away from PATA cables was because of ease of installation, rather than how poorly they could be routed.In fact, PATA cables were a lot easier to work with. Done right, they were far less restricting to airflow than spliced and bundled cables.
extide - Tuesday, July 28, 2015 - link
The move away from PATA had pretty much zero to do with aesthetics or installation ease. It's purely an engineering reason why we moved from a slow parallel bus to a fast serial bus. Those other reasons are purely side benefits.meacupla - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - link
you say that, but at that point in storage technology, the disks were barely saturating 66Mbps and it took intel, nvidia and VIA quite a while to implement SATA as a native feature in their chipsets.Impulses - Thursday, July 30, 2015 - link
That was my point, we used to splice and play origami with PATA cables to avoid that big chunky flat cable look that the fancy braided cables now end up replicating...ImSpartacus - Tuesday, July 28, 2015 - link
As a layman, this was a cool review to read. It's often hard to figure out exactly what makes one psu different from another with similar marketing "specs". It's assumed that many are based on a handful of oem's designs, but it can be a challenge to dig that deep. This review presents much of that info up front. No digging necessary. Cool beans.Stuka87 - Tuesday, July 28, 2015 - link
The 12V rail sag is a bit more than I would like. And the fact that its only rated for 40C is really a bummer. Its very common for the inside of a PC case to hit 45-50C, especially in the summer with a few GPU's inside it. Some cases do let you put the PUS in upside down so it sucks in cool air (my own does) but many do not.MamiyaOtaru - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - link
cases that don't put the PSU at the bottom are an anachronism IMHOAndrewJacksonZA - Tuesday, July 28, 2015 - link
Were these tests done at 110V or 220V?E.Fyll - Tuesday, July 28, 2015 - link
230V/50Hz. It is noted in the pipeline that includes the details of all the equipment and procedures.piasabird - Tuesday, July 28, 2015 - link
How do you know what this means unless you have a few other power supplies as a baseline to draw a comparison. For instance if you had what you considered is the best test results for a power supply, and one or two other the test results might make more sense. You always show comparisons for processors and video cards.Oxford Guy - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - link
An entire article just for one PSU?doggface - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - link
Have you been here before. They do this all the time???Oxford Guy - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - link
It's one thing for a little site to devote an entire article to a bronze PSU and another thing for a big one to do so.Quake - Monday, August 3, 2015 - link
Eh... Anandtech was founded in 1997 and it's one of the biggest enthusiast website. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AnandTechdoggface - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - link
Great review. I really appreciate that you test these less capable units. Reading this helps me to realise why those 1200 watt PSUs are so good. To see what happens when the cooling isn't sufficient.Also that this psu seems like it would be good for systems that might generally sit at around 2-400watts and occasionally pulls 5-600+ on a more epic game.
BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - link
Nice review. The PSU looks pretty decent up to around 500 watts and, realistically, that's about the maximum draw of most gaming computers even those running two GPUs (presuming about 100 watts for the CPU and then another 125-ish for each video card, plus some extra wattage for drives and other bits) so it's more than enough. As I've never found a reason to run more than one mid-range graphics card, I personally can't see buying anything rated over 450 watts. The price is a little too high, but aside from that, its good enough.Oxford Guy - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - link
"I personally can't see buying anything rated over 450 watts."In that case you can get a platinum PSU on sale (rebate) for less than the price of this one.
cykodrone - Saturday, August 22, 2015 - link
Anything lower than 'gold' is junk. This thing is a budget brand 'bronze', blech, no thanks. That's why it's only a 3 year warranty, low quality components. It doesn't even look that great, enthusiast like snazzy, especially modders with window cases. Punching sheet metal with a honeycomb pattern has been around for years already, *yawn*.