We made several tests with this power supply as described in the article Hardware Secrets Power Supply Test Methodology.
We tested this power supply under five different loads patterns, trying to pull around 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100% of its maximum capacity (under “% Max Load” we list the actual percentage that was used), watching how the reviewed unit behaved under each load.
If you add all the powers listed for each test you may find a value different from what posted under “Total” below. Since each output can have a slight variation (e.g. +5 V output working at 5.10 V) the actual total amount of power being delivered is slightly different from the calculated value. On “Total” row we are using the real amount of power being delivered, as measured by our load tester.
+12V2 is the second +12V input from our load tester and during our tests it was connected to the power supply EPS12V connector, which is the only thing connected to the unit’s +12V2 rail. So this time +12V1 and +12V2 inputs from our load tester where really connected to the +12V1 and +12V2 rails from the reviewed power supply.
Input | Test 1 | Test 2 | Test 3 | Test 4 | Test 5 |
+12V1 | 4 A (48 W) | 9 A (108 W) | 13 A (156 W) | 17.5 A (210 W) | 20 A (240 W) |
+12V2 | 4 A (48 W) | 9 A (108 W) | 13 A (156 W) | 17.5 A (210 W) | 20 A (240 W) |
+5V | 1 A (5 W) | 2 A (10 W) | 4 A (20 W) | 6 A (30 W) | 12 A (60 W) |
+3.3 V | 1 A (3.3 W) | 2 A (6.6 W) | 4 A (13.2 W) | 6 A (19.8 W) | 12 A (39.6 W) |
+5VSB | 1 A (5 W) | 1 A (5 W) | 1.5 A (7.5 W) | 2 A (10 W) | 2.5 A (12.5 W) |
-12 V | 0.5 A (6 W) | 0.5 A (6 W) | 0.5 A (6 W) | 0.5 A (6 W) | 0.5 A (6 W) |
Total | 115.5 W | 242.5 W | 356.3 W | 480.4 W | 593.8 W |
% Max Load | 19.3% | 40.4% | 59.4% | 80.1% | 99.0% |
Room Temp. | 47.3º C | 47.3º C | 47.4º C | 48.1º C | 47.3º C |
PSU Temp. | 53.4º C | 52.9º C | 53.2º C | 54.9º C | 56.1º C |
Load Test | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass |
Voltage Stability | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass |
Ripple and Noise | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass |
AC Power | 141 W | 287 W | 428 W | 586 W | 752 W |
Efficiency | 81.9% | 84.5% | 83.2% | 82.0% | 79.0% |
Final Result | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass |
This power supply can really deliver 600 W of power at a room temperature of over 45º C, which is great.
The problem when we tried to pull 600 W from this unit was that when the power supply was hot, it wouldn’t turn on with a load around 600 W, a typical behavior of a protection kicking in. We know it wasn’t the over temperature protection (OTP) because the power supply would turn on with any other load pattern below 100% when it was hot. It looked like over power protection (OPP) but the monitoring integrated circuit used (PS223) doesn’t support this protection, even though Solytech lists OPP as a feature present on this power supply. What was stranger was that this protection was active only when we turned on the power supply with our 100% load already selected, if we turned on our power supply with a different load and then selected our 100% load the power supply would work just fine.
As you can see efficiency was above 80% on all tests but when pulled 600 W from this unit, when efficiency dropped to 79%. Efficiency when we pulled around 40% of the power supply maximum labeled capacity (240 W) was very nice at 84.5%.
Voltage stability, on the other hand, was the highlight of this product, with all outputs between 3% of their nominal voltage in almost all tests, which is excellent (ATX standard allows voltages to be up to 5% from their nominal values – 10% in the case of the -12 V output).
Noise level on +12 V outputs was higher than the noise level found on good power supplies, but still inside ATX specs. Noise level at +5 V and at +3.3 V was low. Below you can see noise level for the test number five.
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Figure 15: Noise level at +12V1 with power supply delivering 600 W (78.2 mV).
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Figure 16: Noise level at +12V2 with power supply delivering 600 W (84 mV).
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Figure 17: Noise level at +5 V with power supply delivering 600 W (20.6 mV).
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Figure 18: Noise level at +3.3 V with power supply delivering 600 W (15 mV).
Let’s now see if we could pull even more power from this unit and our tests of the power supply protections.
