I was super excited for a Rosewill product with this kind of quality thats *fully modular*, right up until I saw the price point. A Corsair CX750M is about $85 and frequently goes on sale for less or includes $10-15 rebates. Granted it's only 80+ Bronze rated, but the practical differences between a Bronze and a Platinum unit are very small, if not totally meaningless for most people, and certainly isn't worth a $45+ price premium.
Honestly, I think Rosewill missed the mark with these pushing for that Platinum rating.
They're part of a line, and while the cheap high end is a somewhat limited market, they've got the lower end parts covered, and up until the top if they hit their pricing targets they'll be selling their platinums against other companies' golds and so on down the chain.
You need to compare these PSUs (pricewise) to other platinum power supplies. If that is out of your budget you can always buy a bronze rated Rosewill if so inclined.
Yes Chevy has been compared to porche for a long time. Corvette and camero come to mind. Price per horse power has put the corvette ahead of more expensive porches. And at those costs, built quality in both are as good as porche but with far lower maintanen costs (and fewer trips to the shop).
I think the original comment still stands. On paper these drives have some differences, but in real world application the cheaper psu operates at near or same performance as the premium psu.
So one can brag about owning a porche, but next to a stingray their gonna be smoked and left realizing the only bonus to their more expensive hardware is image. As for me, I'll happily save money and make a porche driver frown.
ZR1 (hell even the Z06) has a better 0-60 and 0-100, same times around test tracks, better insurance rating, better maintenance time lines (and a whole lot cheaper), and gets better gas milage.
The ZR1 is faster, quicker, and can corner better than any Porsche at the same price point. It might take Americans a lot longer to figure out how to make a true sports car out of an aging muscle car, but the Corvette is there.
Let me also point out the new style Corvettes (99 and newer) have won 6 LeMans in the past 12 years. That track has corners, and Porsche does compete int he same class. That's a pretty good track record, and one that hasn't been broken yet.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Rosewill Silent Night is among the finest power supplies ever manufactured. Of course, it was manufactured by SuperFlower, the only company I'd put on par with Seasonic in terms of quality. You are probably referring to some other line of Rosewill. Fanless and runs my 6-core i7, 970GTX, and five hard drives without the slightest voltage drop.
Then not only are you missing out, you are also missing the point. Rosewill is not the one you should avoid, but rather, the OEM of the internals is the one to avoid. A lot of PSUs sold use one of several OEM models, and the ones used now are pretty good.
Infamous is not an indicator of something bad. It just means that it's a noted product. That could be for it's stellar performance or simply what it's known for.
infamous: well known for some bad quality or deed.
The author used the word incorrectly, but apparently a percentage of the readership won't know the difference so ... the downward spiral of the English language continues!
Oh, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the Seasonic model. The original word was "influential", I did not really felt that it was suitable and I replaced it during my second pass. Apparently, I messed up while editing the text by either not deleting the word completely and the auto-correct function completing the new word as "infamous" or by just subconsciously getting influenced by the "in" prefix of the original word. Anyhow, of course the correct word is "famous".
I have the 1000 watt model, and it is a beautiful PSU, simple, powerful, and silent. The only issue is the cables are rediculously stiff, even in my full atx case, it took quite a bit of force to manipulate them down so they wouldnt butt against the case. No other model has ever had such stiff cables in my experience.
What's so great about these PSUs ? That platinum raiting means nothing... I was looking at the 750W one, if you compare it to lets say the Super Flower Leadex 750W Gold (or EVGA Supernova for the US market) it has the same price, in tests the SF has almost the same eficiency and way better regulation and better ripple control. (both are 130$ on newegg)
One thing that is really important to me to see in a PSU review is whether it will work with a non-sinewave UPS or if the active PFC will shut it down. I have a significant investment in older UPS units and need compatible PSUs.
Not only whether the Active PFC will cause problems, but also for us europeans whether the components such as the capacitors on the PSU can withstand the higher peak to peak voltage created by modified sine UPSes as compared to the peak to peak voltage of a real sine wave.
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Mushkins - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
I was super excited for a Rosewill product with this kind of quality thats *fully modular*, right up until I saw the price point. A Corsair CX750M is about $85 and frequently goes on sale for less or includes $10-15 rebates. Granted it's only 80+ Bronze rated, but the practical differences between a Bronze and a Platinum unit are very small, if not totally meaningless for most people, and certainly isn't worth a $45+ price premium.Honestly, I think Rosewill missed the mark with these pushing for that Platinum rating.
xthetenth - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
They're part of a line, and while the cheap high end is a somewhat limited market, they've got the lower end parts covered, and up until the top if they hit their pricing targets they'll be selling their platinums against other companies' golds and so on down the chain.bigboxes - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
You need to compare these PSUs (pricewise) to other platinum power supplies. If that is out of your budget you can always buy a bronze rated Rosewill if so inclined.zero2dash - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
You're comparing a budget model PSU to a non-budget model PSU. Do you also compare Chevy to Porsche? McDonald's dollar menu to Five Guys?You should instead be comparing this PSU to Corsair HXi and AXi if you want apples to apples.
wolfemane - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
Yes Chevy has been compared to porche for a long time. Corvette and camero come to mind. Price per horse power has put the corvette ahead of more expensive porches. And at those costs, built quality in both are as good as porche but with far lower maintanen costs (and fewer trips to the shop).I think the original comment still stands. On paper these drives have some differences, but in real world application the cheaper psu operates at near or same performance as the premium psu.
So one can brag about owning a porche, but next to a stingray their gonna be smoked and left realizing the only bonus to their more expensive hardware is image. As for me, I'll happily save money and make a porche driver frown.
tuxRoller - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
You're right. A stingray would be left smoking on the railing if it tried to stay with a Porsche on a twisty track.devione - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
Really? The ZR1 is only 1+ second slower than a 911 GT2.devione - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
On the Nurburgring that is.catzambia - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link
I've run Nordschliefe in 5 minutes in my civicwolfemane - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
ZR1 - $70k911 GT2 - $120k
ZR1 (hell even the Z06) has a better 0-60 and 0-100, same times around test tracks, better insurance rating, better maintenance time lines (and a whole lot cheaper), and gets better gas milage.
The ZR1 is faster, quicker, and can corner better than any Porsche at the same price point. It might take Americans a lot longer to figure out how to make a true sports car out of an aging muscle car, but the Corvette is there.
Let me also point out the new style Corvettes (99 and newer) have won 6 LeMans in the past 12 years. That track has corners, and Porsche does compete int he same class. That's a pretty good track record, and one that hasn't been broken yet.
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.Sivar - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
The Rosewill Silent Night is among the finest power supplies ever manufactured.Of course, it was manufactured by SuperFlower, the only company I'd put on par with Seasonic in terms of quality. You are probably referring to some other line of Rosewill.
Fanless and runs my 6-core i7, 970GTX, and five hard drives without the slightest voltage drop.
TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
Then not only are you missing out, you are also missing the point. Rosewill is not the one you should avoid, but rather, the OEM of the internals is the one to avoid. A lot of PSUs sold use one of several OEM models, and the ones used now are pretty good.cosmotic - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
"Seasonic's infamous SS-1200XP3"Is there something wrong with the Seasonic? How is it infamous?
bigboxes - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
Infamous is not an indicator of something bad. It just means that it's a noted product. That could be for it's stellar performance or simply what it's known for.bji - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
You're wrong.infamous: well known for some bad quality or deed.
The author used the word incorrectly, but apparently a percentage of the readership won't know the difference so ... the downward spiral of the English language continues!
jbrizz - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
It was known for being badass, baby.E.Fyll - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
Oh, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the Seasonic model. The original word was "influential", I did not really felt that it was suitable and I replaced it during my second pass. Apparently, I messed up while editing the text by either not deleting the word completely and the auto-correct function completing the new word as "infamous" or by just subconsciously getting influenced by the "in" prefix of the original word. Anyhow, of course the correct word is "famous".Thank you for your notice, it has been fixed.
Oxford Guy - Friday, January 22, 2016 - link
Unlike their 1050 model which could be "heard from rooms away." Now that one was infamous.Voldenuit - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
Who names a PSU 'Quark'?'Lepton' would make more sense; electrons have no quarks.
TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - link
I have the 1000 watt model, and it is a beautiful PSU, simple, powerful, and silent. The only issue is the cables are rediculously stiff, even in my full atx case, it took quite a bit of force to manipulate them down so they wouldnt butt against the case. No other model has ever had such stiff cables in my experience.RaduZ - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
What's so great about these PSUs ? That platinum raiting means nothing... I was looking at the 750W one, if you compare it to lets say the Super Flower Leadex 750W Gold (or EVGA Supernova for the US market) it has the same price, in tests the SF has almost the same eficiency and way better regulation and better ripple control. (both are 130$ on newegg)kaborka - Monday, January 18, 2016 - link
One thing that is really important to me to see in a PSU review is whether it will work with a non-sinewave UPS or if the active PFC will shut it down. I have a significant investment in older UPS units and need compatible PSUs.shadowjk - Saturday, January 23, 2016 - link
Amen to that! This is very interesting to me too.Not only whether the Active PFC will cause problems, but also for us europeans whether the components such as the capacitors on the PSU can withstand the higher peak to peak voltage created by modified sine UPSes as compared to the peak to peak voltage of a real sine wave.
Oxford Guy - Friday, January 22, 2016 - link
"What surprised us was the acoustics performance of the 750W version, which is greatly inferior to that of the significantly more powerful units."It's not surprising. Ball bearing fans are noisier, especially models rated for that RPM. Single ball bearing fans are the worst.