Fractal Design is a reputable Swedish manufacturer of PC components. The company started off as a PC case manufacturer and quickly became known for their sleek, quality, and innovative case designs. Having an established presence as a designer of advanced PC cases, Fractal Design is reservedly but steadily diversifying into other segments of the market, such as power and cooling. Aside from numerous of their cases, we reviewed some of their first liquid cooling solutions when the company was diversifying into that part of the market.

Meanwhile, although Fractal Design has not been completely inactive when it comes to the power supply unit (PSU) market, they have not released new products in several years. The last new product in the company’s PSU product line-up, the 80Plus Gold certified Edison series, was four years ago. However, that four year drought is finally coming to an end, as the company is releasing a completely new series, the Ion+, which is meant to be the technological pinnacle of their PSU lineup.

Overall, Fractal Design is aiming rather high with their new Ion+ PSUs; the official specifications list some rather impressive quality and electrical figures, including 80Plus Platinum efficiency levels. And, as we'll see in our review, they have the real-world performance to back up those lofty claims.

Interestingly however, rather than going for ultra high wattage power supplies as some other PSU vendors do, the company has sized their PSUs more conservatively, releasing just four units that are rated from 560W up to 860W. Considering that an 860 Watt PSU is enough power for a dual GPU gaming/workstation system, the company can still cover almost the entire market, with the infrequent exception of users requiring a PSU for quad GPU or other power-hungry systems.

Even then, 860 Watts is going to border on overkill for most of today's single-CPU/single-GPU systems. So for our first review of an Ion+ PSU, we're going to take things down one step to their 760 Watt model, the Ion+ 760P.

Packaging and Bundle

Fractal Design loves simple, functional designs, and the very box of the Ion+ PSU is a testament to that philosophy. The artwork on the box is very simple, with a picture of the PSU itself on a white background. However, there are many details regarding the performance and specifications of the PSU on the sides and rear of the box. The box itself is very sturdy, with extra packaging foam surrounding the PSU itself, providing ample shipping protection.

The bundled items are few but useful. Fractal Design supplies a standard AC power cable, four black mounting screws, a couple of cable straps and a typical user’s guide.

The Ion+ series is fully modular, meaning that every cable can be detached, including the 24-pin ATX cable. The modular cables are "flat" type, ribbon cables, with the sole exception being the main 24-pin ATX cable. It is noteworthy that Fractal Design is using highly flexible multi-stranded wires, which the company calls “UltraFlex” cables, allowing for easier cable management.

External Appearance

A quick look at the Fractal Design Ion+ 760P PSU reveals a sleek design and a unique chassis that is not quite like most other ATX PSUs. Officially, the PSU isn't quite ATX compliant either; it adheres to everything except the ATX size specification, where the chassis is a longer 150 mm deep, a necessary adjustment in order to fit a 140 mm cooling fan. The chassis of the PSU is coated with a satin black paint, which is excellently applied and highly resistant to smears and fingerprint marks.

Fractal Design split the standard sticker with the electrical specifications and certifications of the PSU into two parts, placing the sticker with the basic electrical specifications on the rear side of the PSU and making it visible from the rear of the PC case. The rear side is, in terms of aesthetics, interesting, as the designer ditched the standard honeycomb or circular vents and implemented a Morse code dot-like pattern design. Other than that, we can also spot a regular on/off switch and the AC cable receptacle.

The bottom and top sides of the PSU are entirely clean and smooth. Fractal Design went with a parallel wire fan finger guard, as it is supposed to reduce aerodynamic noise a little bit in comparison to standard circular guards. The sides of the PSU are almost entirely clean as well, with only a small version of the company’s logo printed on each side.

The front side is perhaps the most interesting part of the PSU. It houses the eleven connectors for the modular cables, with a very subtle legend painted in between the two series of connectors. All of the connectors are black but are keyed, meaning that no cable can be inserted into the wrong connector. There is also a “Zero RPM” switch that turns the unit’s hybrid cooling mode on or off. By default, the Ion+ PSU will not start the fan at all until temperatures require it to do so, but users can opt to force the fan to stay on at all times should they wish to do so. Note that this will not affect the thermal circuitry of the PSU, which will still adjust the fan’s speed according to the operating conditions.

Internal Design

Fractal Design rebranded the cooling fan of the PSU, and we could not identify the original manufacturer. Regardless, we can tell that it is a 140 mm fan with a fluid dynamic bearing (FDB) engine. It has a maximum rotational speed of about 1800 RPM. Fractal Design also claims that they greatly optimized the fan’s design by adding a counter-balance magnet to reduce axial tension on the bearing and tweaked the design of the blades to reduce the fan’s noise.

The OEM behind the creation of the Fractal Design Ion+ 760P PSU is Sirfa (also known as High Power), a manufacturer known for their mid-range designs. This, however, is not a platform that we have seen before. Fractal Design’s involvement on the design of the PSU is very apparent, as Sirfa rarely uses good heatsinks, especially on their higher efficiency products. The heatsinks of the Ion+ 760P are strikingly advanced, especially considering the lower-than-average amount of heat generated by the PSU thanks to its high efficiency and overall lower power output.

The input filtering stage is textbook in design and consists of four Y capacitors, two X capacitors, two filtering inductors, and one surge-suppressing MOV. The unit has two input conversion bridges that can be found on their own small heatsink. The enclosed APFC coil and two Rubycon 400V/470μF capacitors stand right between the heatsinks that hold the APFC and primary inversion circuit parts.

The primary inversion circuit is relatively simple, with two MOSFETs forming a standard LLC resonant half-bridge topology. The unit then generates a single 12V line via the MOSFETs that are attached to the bottom side of the PCB. The slim silver heatsinks on top of the PCB assist on the cooling of the secondary side MOSFETs, which are also dissipating part of their losses via the chassis of the PSU. A secondary vertical PCB holds the DC to DC conversion circuits that generate the 3.3V and 5V lines. Finally, the generated power is transferred to the PCB that holds the cable connectors via a soldered bar, minimizing losses.

Cold Test Results

For the testing of PSUs, we are using high precision electronic loads with a maximum power draw of 2700 Watts, a Rigol DS5042M  40 MHz oscilloscope, an Extech 380803 power analyzer, two high precision UNI-T UT-325 digital thermometers, an Extech HD600 SPL meter, a self-designed hotbox and various other bits and parts. For a thorough explanation of our testing methodology and more details on our equipment, please refer to our How We Test PSUs - 2014 Pipeline post.

The energy conversion efficiency of the new Ion+ 760P at room temperature is excellent, even for an 80Plus Platinum certified product. Considering the 80Plus Platinum certification requirements for either 230 VAC or 115 VAC input, the Ion+ 760P significantly surpasses the minimum required efficiency at any given load. It reaches up to 94.4% efficiency at 50% load with an input voltage of 230 VAC, which drops to 92.6% if the input voltage is 115 VAC. The average nominal load (20%-100%) efficiency is 93.1% and 91.3% with an input voltage of 230 VAC and 115 VAC respectively. Considering that 80Plus certification testing takes place at temperatures lower than the current ambient temperature of our testing environment (room temperature is defined as 25 °C and that is used for 80Plus certification tests, while our room temperature was over 27 °C at the time of our testing), the efficiency of the Ion+ 760P is well above the minimum 80Plus Platinum requirements.

We tested the Ion+ 760P with the semi-fanless mode activated, where the fan is programmed not to start until necessary. Despite the relatively high room temperature, the fan of the PSU did not start before the load exceeded 300 Watts, which is comparatively speaking a very high tripping point for semi-fanless designs. After that point, the fan started and continued to increase its speed alongside with the load and yet barely reached up to 40% of its maximum speed at full load, with our instruments reading 38 dB(A). The operating temperature of the Ion+ 760P is very low for a unit with this kind of output, barely reaching over 55 °C under maximum load.

Hot Test Results

Although Sirfa (High Power) is normally known to have mediocre electrical quality figures, Fractal Design certainly improved the base design of this platform dramatically. The maximum ripple on the 12V line under full load and thermal stress is just 18 mV, way below the 120 mV design limit, and a figure that we only see on top-tier products. Voltage ripple is equally low on the secondary 3.3V and 5V voltage lines as well. Severely cross-loading the PSU will cause the ripple to increase a bit but the figures always stay very low. Voltage regulation is also exceptional, with the PSU holding the 12V line at just 0.3% across the load range. The secondary voltage lines are a little less strictly regulated, reaching 0.5-0.7%, which figures remain exceptional even for a top-tier product.

Fractal Design rates the Ion+ 760P at 50 °C, meaning that it is able to output its full power output when the ambient temperature is up to 50 °C. Efficiency testing takes place at 25 °C and it degrades as the temperature increases, meaning that most units will not meet their certification requirements while we are testing them into our hot box. The Ion+ 760P is a very rare exception, with the PSU meeting the 80Plus Platinum certification limits even while operating with an ambient temperature of > 45 °C. The unit’s efficiency barely degraded at all despite the massive increased of the ambient temperature, indicating outstanding resistance to thermal stress.

The high ambient temperature triggered the fan to start almost immediately after the unit was powered on inside out hotbox. This time the fan’s cooling profile was significantly more aggressive, speeding the fan up significantly more as the load increased, and even forced the fan to reach its maximum speed when the load was above 650 Watts. On the other hand, the internal temperature of the PSU was comparatively very low at any given load level, which hints why this particular model resisted thermal degradation so severely.

Conclusion

Fractal Design is known for being patient and deliberate with their product releases, and the new Ion+ series are a paradigm of the company’s philosophy. The company did not release any new PSU families in years, allowing for the 80Plus Platinum efficiency-level platforms to mature and their retail price to drop to affordable levels, and only then set about releasing four new units to cover the bulk of of the advanced PC retail market. None of the units is overly powerful in terms of raw power output – with the best unit of the series doing just 860 Watts – indicating that Fractal Design does not care about having a halo product (or something for the cryptocurrency miners) amongst their line-up, but rather they are putting together products that actually entice regular users and are suitable for the mass market.

Electrically, the Ion+ 760P positively surprised us. As soon as we noticed that it is a design originating from Sirfa (High Power), we believed that most of the electrical figures would end up being mediocre, as Sirfa usually designs products that are competitive in terms of value, not performance. The Ion+ 760P is an entirely different story, delivering outstanding power quality across the entire load range and under any operating conditions, easily competing toe-to-toe with any other top-tier unit that we've reviewed so far. Furthermore, not only it is very efficient under normal circumstances, but it's able to maintain its exceptional energy conversion efficiency figures even when the ambient temperature gets very high.

The high efficiency of the Ion+ 760P allows the unit to maintain very low operating temperatures under all load conditions. This obviously has a positive impact on the longevity of the unit, but also allows for the PSU to operate without having to rely on the cooling fan too much. Under normal operating conditions, the fan of the unit will not even start until the PSU faces a significantly high electrical load. It is likely that users with a middle-class, energy efficient CPU and an equivalent gaming GPU may never get to hear the fan spinning, especially if located at colder climates. Otherwise, if the internal temperature of the unit is very high, the fan will quickly accelerate, sacrificing acoustics in order to ensure the longevity and performance of the unit, but such behavior should never occur in typical PCs.

Overall, the new Ion+ 760P unit is an exceptionally well balanced PSU, delivering excellent power quality figures while still operating quietly. With the company backing up the unit with a 10-year warranty, we feel that the MSRP of $119.9 is fair for such a quality 760 Watt PSU. With just a bit of luck (and a working free market), we expect the competition to bring retail pricing quite a bit lower than that, making the Ion+ 760P PSU a formidable competitive product that definitely deserves to be in the shortlist of anyone seeking to purchase a high-end PSU.