As we mentioned on other articles and reviews, the first place we like to take a look when opening a power supply to have a hint about its quality is its filtering stage. The recommend components for this stage are two ferrite coils (the two coils with a black rubber protection on the pictures below), two ceramic capacitors (Y capacitors, usually blue), one metalized polyester capacitor (X capacitor, yellow component on the pictures below) and one MOV (Metal-Oxide Varistor, yellow component with black rubber protection on Figure 10). Very low-end power supplies use fewer components than that, usually removing the MOV and the first coil.

The transient filtering stage from this power supply is flawless. The big metallic piece that looks like an ordinary AC connector is in fact a complete line filter. This is the first time we’ve seen a PC power supply using such component. This power supply has one extra ferrite coil and two extra X capacitors but no Y capacitors. We wouldn’t worry about this for two reasons, first the presence of the line filter, which has these components inside, and secondly because after the rectification bridge this power supply has one more X capacitor and two Y capacitors.

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Figure 6: Transient filtering stage (part 1).

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Figure 7: Transient filtering stage (part 2).

Now let’s have a more detailed discussion on the components used on EliteXStream 1000 W.