A few weeks ago, we had our first contact with 1ST Player (or 1STPLayer), a Chinese manufacturer of PC components and peripherals. Although the company is not yet known to the US/EU, they have impressive manufacturing capabilities and produce a great variety of products. And, having successfully made a name for themselves in their homeland, they are actively working on expanding their chain of products into North America and Europe.

Although the company is mostly producing gaming peripherals, ranging from keyboards to chairs, they also produce power and cooling products. They currently market six different power supply series, even going as far as a series specifically designed for cryptocurrency mining machines. But for today's review we'll be sticking to something more useful and consumer relevant, which is taking a look at the SteamPunk 80+ Gold 750W PSU, a power supply designed for advanced users and gamers.

The SteamPunk series essentially consists of two units, one 650W and one 750W, both of which are based on the same platform. There actually are four units in the series but that is because both are also available in white. As its name suggests, the SteamPunk 80+ Gold 750W PSU has an 80Plus Gold efficiency certification and a fully modular cable design. It is meant to be a product balanced between quality, performance, and cost. We will see how well it fares in this review.

Packaging and Bundle

1STPlayer supplies the Steampunk Gold 750W PSU in a typical cardboard box that provides adequate shipping protection. The artwork on the box is basic but more than adequate for a product that will be primarily marketed online.

The bundle of the Steampunk Gold PSU is relatively rich for a product of its class. 1STPlayer supplies wire cable ties, Velcro cable straps, four black thumbscrews, a basic manual, and a typical AC power cable.

The Steampunk Gold PSU is a fully modular design, meaning that no cables are hardwired to the chassis. All of the cables are made of all black wires and black connectors. They are supplied in a roll bag, along with even more cable management wires.

External Appearance

The chassis of the SteamPunk 80+ Gold 750W is 160 mm deep, making it a bit longer than ATX-compliant PSUs (140 mm) but still short enough to fill into the vast majority of cases (save perhaps from a few proprietary designs). Note that all designs using a >130 mm fan are longer than 140 mm, otherwise the fan cannot possibly fit inside the unit. Aesthetically, the designer did try to make the SteamPunk PSU appealing, yet not extravagant. It is an all-black design, down to the cables and connectors, with the designer applying a custom web-themed fan grill and painting the series logo on the sides of the chassis. There is no lighting, with 1STPlayer focusing on the safe bet of a subtle appearance.

The rear side of the PSU is typical, with just a simple AC cable receptacle and an on/off switch to be found next to the perforated rear side of the PSU. A large sticker with the certifications and basic electrical specifications of the PSU covers most of the top.

Modular connectors cover most of the PSU’s front surface. A basic legend and artwork is painted directly onto the chassis, which is both aesthetically better and more durable than the stickers we usually find there. The connectors are keyed, ensuring that it is not possible to insert the wrong cable into the wrong receptacle. 

Internal Design

A standard black 140 mm fan without LEDs is responsible for the cooling needs of the Steampunk 750W PSU. Yate Loon supplies the fan, a very well-known manufacturer whose products are frequently found in PC PSUs. The D14SH-12 fan has a typical sleeve bearing engine and a maximum rotational speed of 2800 RPM, which is extremely high for a 140 mm fan.

The internal design of the Steampunk 750W PSU is not of a platform coming from any of the known OEMs. That is because the business group that includes 1STPlayer owns a development/manufacturing company as well (called Helly Technology), meaning that they essentially design and fabricate their own platforms. That is very interesting to us, as we get to see how a new design gets to perform against the platforms developed by the known giants in the business. The heatsinks are sizable for a PSU of this power output and claimed efficiency, leaving us wondering why the designer installed such a powerful cooling fan.

1STPlayer carefully claims that the main capacitor, and that capacitor only, is a top-quality Japanese product. Indeed, the APFC capacitor is a 450V/470μF electrolytic capacitor made by Rubycon, perhaps the most reputable of all consumer-grade capacitor manufacturers on the planet. The rest of the capacitors however, electrolytic and polymer alike, are supplied by ChengX and AsiaX. These are medium quality capacitors and not on par with manufacturers like Rubycon or Nippon Chemi-Con, but they are not of poor quality either. At this point we should note that ChengX is suffering from very poor reputation due to numerous counterfeit products that are circulating on the market.

In terms of design, the engineer(s) who made this platform kept everything relatively simple and very clean. The layout is tidy, with good component spacing and a clean assembly job. There are two input bridge rectifiers sandwiches together on their own small heatsink, followed by a typical APFC circuit. The main inversion circuitry is a half-bridge design with an LLC resonant converter, a fairly typical topology for a modern PSU. The secondary side consists of four MOSFETs that generate a single 12V line. DC to DC converters generate the 3.3V and 5V lines from the main 12V line. The secondary PCB that hosts the cable connectors is directly connected to the main PCB, without any wires, minimizing losses and improving the thermal performance of the PSU.

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.

Interestingly, the 1STPlayer Steampunk 750W PSU easily meets the 80Plus Gold certification standard when powered from either a 230 VAC or 115 VAC source. As a matter of fact, it almost complies with the 80Plus Platinum certification, surpassing its requirements for the most of the chart. It only suffers from a quickly diminishing efficiency at loads greater than 90%, dropping its efficiency down to 88.3% under maximum load, which prevented the unit from getting an 80Plus Platinum certification. In fact we're a bit surprised that the manufacturer didn't use this platform to make an 80Plus Platinum unit as well. 1STPlayer could have easily used the same platform and dialed down the maximum rated power output of the unit slightly, which would have allowed them to market a slightly less powerful PSU but with an 80Plus Platinum certification.

Overall 1STPlayer kept everything as simple as possible, and they did not implement any advanced thermal control schemes, such as semi-fanless operation. The fan is dead quiet at low loads but will start becoming noticeable when the unit is at about 50% of its rated capacity. Noise levels keep climbing after that, reaching 46.1 dB(A) under maximum load, a high figure for most users. That said, it would not be sensible to run the PSU at a maximum load for prolonged periods of time, so the noise levels during regular use should always be within comfortable levels so long as the unit is installed inside a well-ventilated case.

Hot Test Results

In the following tables we can see that the 1STPlayer Steampunk 750W delivers relatively good power quality. The maximum voltage ripple on the 12V line is 30 mV, an unimpressive figure nowadays, but just 25% of the ATX design guide's recommended 120 mV limit. The regulation of the 12V line is exceptional as well, at 0.8% across the entire nominal load range. 1STPlayer paid less attention to the minor 3.3V/5V lines, the output quality of which is significantly worse. The ripple on the 3.3V/5V lines reaches 16mV/22mV respectively with a recommended maximum at 50 mV, and the regulation is at nearly 2.5% for both lines. These figures are definitely acceptable but not on par with the exceptional performance of the primary 12V line.

Operation in high ambient temperatures greatly affects the performance of the Steampunk Gold 750W PSU, especially at higher loads. The average nominal load range (20%-100%) efficiency drops by 1.2% regardless of the input voltage, going down to an average of 91.4% (230 VAC) / 89.9% (115 VAC). There is little change at lower loads but at loads greater than 80% the efficiency drops sharply, suggesting that the components of the PSU are getting stressed under these conditions. Thermal stress would be our first guess but the internal temperatures of the PSU actually are low, therefore we suspect that certain components are reaching their design limit.

As mentioned above, the internal temperatures of the 1STPlayer Steampunk 750W PSU are relatively low for a unit operating inside our hotbox. The thermal controller is aggressively increasing the speed of the fan under these operating conditions, trying to maintain as low as temperatures as possible, sacrificing silence in order to ensure reliability. With such a powerful fan, the cooling headroom is vast, but the noise levels become unbearable for typical users at loads higher than 200 Watts. The cooling fan’s speed seems to peak when the unit is at maximum load, where the sound pressure level nearly reaches 59 dB(A).

Conclusion

The release of the new Steampunk series from 1STPlayer is interesting in several ways, perhaps most of all because it introduces a new OEM into the American and European markets. There are only a few known PSU OEMs in the market today – and they have been established for decades – making it very difficult for any newcomer to manufacture and market a profitable product. 1STPlayer’s development and manufacturing teams obviously are experienced, as the Steampunk PSU that we reviewed today was clearly developed by a very competent team of engineers. It is apparent that they gained most of their experience while establishing a foothold within the Chinese/Asian markets, as this is the first time that we have encountered any of their designs.

In terms of performance, the 1STPlayer Steampunk 80+ Gold 750W PSU does very well overall. The performance aspect that stands out the most is its unexpectedly high efficiency at low and medium loads, which reaches figures that would have easily met 80Plus Platinum requirements if the efficiency did not plummet at very high loads. As we mentioned before, that was a missed opportunity on behalf of the company, as they could have simply reduced the maximum output rating a little and qualified for 80Plus Platinum certification instead. The power quality also is good for an advanced modern PSU, with excellent figures coming from the 12V line. We received less impressive readings from the minor 3.3V/5V lines, yet their performance remains acceptable for a product of this class.

One disadvantage that the Steampunk 80+ Gold 750W PSU has is the powerful cooling fan and aggressive thermal profile. Clearly, the company opted to favor reliability over acoustics, programming the thermal control circuitry to maintain relatively low temperatures. That comes at the expense of noise, and the Yate Loon cooling fan will easily reach clearly audible levels when the PSU is heavily loaded. It is quiet when the system is idling though, so that should work well for the majority of users; it's just something to watch out for if you're planning a system that is going to be under a high and sustained load day-in and day-out.

When it comes to quality, the Steampunk 80+ Gold 750W PSU is acceptable for a product seeking to combine value and high performance. The primary parts are all premium products coming from known manufacturers, the platform is well designed, and the assembly job is exceptional. Our primary concerns lie with the sleeve bearing fan and the mediocre secondary capacitors. 1STPlayer covers the Steampunk 80+ Gold 750W PSU with a 7 year warranty, meaning that the MTBF ratings of all these parts should be at least near that time frame, but we have no reliable data on the failure rates that (genuine) ChengX/AsiaX capacitors actually have. As 1STPlayer is a company that is trying to expand overseas, it would be downright foolish for them to jeopardize their reputation with their very first products, therefore they obviously are confident regarding the quality of their product.  

If anything, the real disadvantage that the Steampunk 80+ Gold 750W currently has is rather mundane: availability. At the time of this review, the PSU is readily available only in Asian markets. This is obviously because global shipping has been greatly affected by the coronavirus pandemic, but it makes it very difficult for us to reach a solid conclusion without knowing the retail price of the product, as the price tag ultimately is the decisive appraisal factor for almost every product on the planet. If 1STPlayer manages to retail the Steampunk 80+ Gold 750W at a meaningfully lower price than competitive products, it would severely damage their opposition. Otherwise, we believe that it is unlikely for consumers to move from established and familiar to them manufacturers without a serious incentive, as the Steampunk 80+ Gold 750W is a very good PSU but does not technologically stand out when compared to what the competition has to offer.