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It was only one day after we released the Enermax Pro82+ and Modu82+ review that we received an e-mail from Silverstone Taiwan telling us we were wrong about the assumption that Enermax offers the quietest power supplies at the moment. Silverstone told us about their new Decathlon DA700 that is supposed to be even quieter. Our reply was naturally that Silverstone could only prove this matter by sending us a sample for review. A few days later, we had the DA700 delivered and we started testing immediately. We could tell immediately that Silverstone actually beat out Enermax, but let's get to know the power supply a little better first.
We have already tested several Silverstone PSUs, and until now they could never reach the highest efficiency levels. The build quality was and is superb and nothing to be worried about, but efficiency always tended to trail competitors - granted only by a few percent, but when you're spending a large chunk of change why not go for the best?
Silverstone is producing this unit with Impervio as the ODM, and we would have said it would be a cold day in hell before those companies would have anything to do with each other. However, with this new Decathlon Silverstone is trying a different approach from what we have previously. This unit is a fully modular power supply, which means that the user can detach all of the cables. This may not make sense at first, but this gives Silverstone at least one advantage over competitors. The company is now able to offer cable packages of different lengths. If you are running an HTPC, you will often find that cables on typical PSUs are far too long for this kind of small form factor case. Silverstone now offers a package with very short cables that can easily be used in place of the longer ones. No more bulky, long 24-pin ATX cable taking up space!
The label gives minimal information, which we are used to from Silverstone. The rail specification is rather obfuscated, requiring several perusals and the use of a calculator before you actually understand what you're reading. We have no idea why Silverstone makes it so complicated, but that's how the company does it, dating back to their beginnings. The 3.3V and 5V rails offer 24A and 30A with a combined power of 180W. That's average, similar to what we see with most other power supplies today. The DA700 comes with a single 12V rail rated for up to 58A which is almost 700W already. Obviously, that load is not possible with the combined power of all three main rails; doing the necessary math, if you put a load of 180W on the 3.3V and 5V rails, that leaves 520W for the 12V rail, or 43A.
Read more...Not too long ago, we tested a 600W power supply from Xigmatek, and Xigmatek wanted us to look at one of their higher end models as well. As there is no need for a 1500W power supply we passed on their most powerful model and went with the 1200 and 1000W versions instead. For most users, these two high power units will be overkill, but a small group of overclockers, multiple high-end graphics card users, or people with a Skulltrail system may have need for something like one of the units tested today.
Xigmatek are more famous for their coolers, where they offer very low prices and high performance. However, they are working to expand their PSU presence. As the capacitors and coils show on the picture below, these units come from CWT - just like the previously tested 600W unit. We have also tested a Thermaltake 1000W unit that delivered good performance and was also built by CWT.
Xigmatek wants its power supplies to have a unique appearance to help them stand out from other companies. All of the shrink hoses and heatsinks inside are covered in orange, which looks pretty cool and contrasts with the green of the PCB. The housing is quite long for a normal ATX power supply, but the 1000W+ understandably needs more space than usual. The total length is 8”/20cm, which will cause problems with smaller PC cases. The weight also needs to be considered, as there have been some issues reported where the whole rear of the case has bent and distorted because of the weight of heavy power supplies. User’s with a thin plate, aluminum chassis should take this may experience difficulties.
The label has a strange layout, similar to what we saw with Thermaltake. There are two sides each with two 12V rails and one smaller voltage rail. We will see later on why this is the case and what makes these two units so special amongst 1kW+ units. The numbers on the labels look similar and only the max output differs between these two units. Both have four 12V rails with 36A and 30A and a 3.3V and 5V rail each with 30A. Xigmatek states that the 1000W unit’s 12V output should not exceed 82A. The 1200W version has a maximum output of 99A on the 12V rails. That’s a hell lot of power that can be drawn from these rails.
There are quite a few manufacturers on the market selling "gaming" PCs. In our last system review, we looked at a midrange gaming option. This time, we are using a fully decked-out solution from iBUYPOWER. iBUYPOWER.com is a California based company that offers a large variety of systems, including notebooks and liquid-cooled desktops. Let's look at the company and the ordering experience first, and then we will examine one of the fastest systems they offer.
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<font size="2">Today we are going to test 11 fan models from such respected manufacturers as GlacialTech, Cooler Master, Noctua, Scythe, SilverStone and Zalman that measure 120 x 25/32/38 mm.<br />
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<a href="http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/display/fan-roundup.html">Read more</a></font>
OCZ's latest product is their EliteXStream power supply series, first introduced at CES this year. Shortly after the show, we had the chance to have a look at two production samples rated at 800W and 1000W. This new series is the first result of the OCZ and PC Power & Cooling merger following the acquisition last year. The EliteXStream series launches as the new top-end brand from OCZ, providing a high quality experience that we will see later. The target market is higher-end enthusiasts that have a need for greater connectivity and top quality. One look inside tells us what ODM is at the heart of the design, which dimmed our expectations a bit, but we ended up surprised by the performance these two power supplies delivered.
The two power supplies in this series come with similar specs, differing by just 200W of output. The difference lies in the important 12V rail which is slightly better equipped at the 1000W version. The smaller version provides 62A and the big brother ups the ante to 80A. If you have a need for the extra power, the 1000W should more than suffice; only extreme setups really require anywhere near that much power. Regardless, both power supplies come with the same number of connectors.
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The two power supplies in this series come with similar specs, differing by just 200W of output. The difference lies in the important 12V rail which is slightly better equipped at the 1000W version. The smaller version provides 62A and the big brother ups the ante to 80A. If you have a need for the extra power, the 1000W should more than suffice; only extreme setups really require anywhere near that much power. Regardless, both power supplies come with the same number of connectors.
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We are going to introduce to you a family of processor cooling solutions from APACK Company known under ZEROtherm brand. Among 5 models participating in our today’s roundup you will meet a new ultimate performance leader !
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Amacrox might be not a familiar name to everyone, but the company just expanded its business over in Europe and should soon spread to the US as well. Most people in the PSU market know that Amacrox is actually a brand of the FSP group, which is the third largest power supply manufacturer worldwide. With Amacrox, the people at FSP wanted to create a brand that is actually "hip", whereas FSP is the more conservative brand. We already tested the Freestyle 750W in one of our roundups last year and found it performed quite well… until it failed. That certainly mars the impression, so we're here to look at a different PSU to find out if Amacrox can convey their message better this time..
With the Calmer 560, Amacrox has a fanless power supply with a 400W output. In 2006, we saw the Calmer and found it had very good efficiency and stable rails. Today we will be looking at the advanced model and hope that it can stick up to its predecessor. The Calmer 560 comes rated at 400W, but it has a peak output of 560W; hence the name. We will see in our tests if we can run safely at higher outputs and if the power supply can still deliver stable outputs at that level. The target market of this power supply is surely not enthusiasts with high-end graphics cards or SLI, but with 400W one can fire up most midrange systems with a dual-core CPU, a few hard drives, and a graphics cards with a single 6-pin PEG connector. Those looking to build a truly silent system should definitely have a look at this unit and our test results.
We test an additional 10% above the highest load to see how the units perform with overload, both at room temperature and in a more stressful situation. To keep things somewhat reasonable we keep the ambient temperature at 50°C during the stress overload testing. Experience shows that many units can stand the overload at room temperature but will show problems with higher temperature and overload together. Only the best units will manage this without problems.
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With the Calmer 560, Amacrox has a fanless power supply with a 400W output. In 2006, we saw the Calmer and found it had very good efficiency and stable rails. Today we will be looking at the advanced model and hope that it can stick up to its predecessor. The Calmer 560 comes rated at 400W, but it has a peak output of 560W; hence the name. We will see in our tests if we can run safely at higher outputs and if the power supply can still deliver stable outputs at that level. The target market of this power supply is surely not enthusiasts with high-end graphics cards or SLI, but with 400W one can fire up most midrange systems with a dual-core CPU, a few hard drives, and a graphics cards with a single 6-pin PEG connector. Those looking to build a truly silent system should definitely have a look at this unit and our test results.
We test an additional 10% above the highest load to see how the units perform with overload, both at room temperature and in a more stressful situation. To keep things somewhat reasonable we keep the ambient temperature at 50°C during the stress overload testing. Experience shows that many units can stand the overload at room temperature but will show problems with higher temperature and overload together. Only the best units will manage this without problems.
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This is the story of heatpipe direct touch technology finding its way into the VGA cooling segment. We are going to introduce to you two alternative solutions for high-performance graphics accelerators that may change your vision of what proper graphics card cooling actually is.
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This part of our roundup will be devoted to power supply units with capacity ranging from 450W to 850W. We will check out 7 models from AcBel, Gigabyte, Zalman and Corsair. All the details on their performance and functionality in our extensive article !
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Sometimes it’s the little quirks in life that sneak up on you and change the way you look at the world. The past couple weeks have done that in testing all this new high end gear. Sure, we’ve had our problems testing bleeding edge stuff before, but in putting all of this from CrossFireX through 9800 GX2 Quad SLI to the test, we’ve gotten ourselves lost in some other dimension of existence. It’s the only explanation really. Like Holmes would have said … whatever remains, however improbable … But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Skulltrail (the D5400XS Intel board we’re using that runs both CrossFire and SLI) rivals Frankenstein’s monster. From the 2x LGA775 sockets, FB-DIMMs, and NVIDIA nForce 100 PCIe chips, it’s not for the feint of heart. We’ve been determined to test on a single platform to compare CrossFire and SLI and trying to work out some kinks has given us a little trouble. AMD and NVIDIA and Intel have all worked with us to try and make things go more smoothly (thanks everyone), but there are still some things that we just can’t explain going on.
After loads of nearly useless testing and many conversations with different people, we set out on a trail of mystical discovery that has unlocked secrets of the universe here-to-fore untold. We’ll get to that in a bit, but first we’ve got to stop and take a look at what we are covering today.
Quad SLI. NVIDIA would like us to tell you it’s the new hotness. Certainly, without even opening a page of this review you should all know that this is the top of the top of the line and nothing is faster right now. But we do need to answer a few key questions about this $1200 setup: how does it scale from two GPUs to four, how does scaling compare to CrossFireX, and what kind of performance and value does this solution actually offer.
Honestly, we also have to acknowledge from our previous review of the 9800 GX2 that a single card is enough to run almost any game at maximum settings … that is, with the glaring exception of Crysis. Can Quad SLI change that? From what we saw in our CrossFireX testing from AMD, we would have thought not. However, NVIDIA has managed to get Crysis to scale across all four GPUs despite the interframe dependencies that make it so difficult. Is it enough to run Crysis at a decent resolution with all the eye candy turned on ?