Known “Flaws” in Our Methodology

Here are some of the things people may criticize on our methodology, but even with the criticism we are very confident that we are using a good methodology:

• The use of a cardboard box as a “heat box” instead of a professional thermal chamber to increase the room temperature. We think our solution does the trick, but if you want you can donate a thermal chamber to us… As we mentioned, we are studying other alternatives and suggestions are more than welcome.
• The load distribution on power supplies with multiple rails. As we mentioned, our load tester has only two +12V inputs and several power supplies have more than two +12V rails. You may criticize the way we decided to distribute load in such cases, but keep in mind that every professional has his (or hers) own opinion. You are entitled to have your own opinion on this subject but that doesn’t mean that our methodology is flawed. The most important thing here is that we will always disclosure how we connected the power supply to our load tester and the detailed configuration of each load test.
• We won’t test the power supply installed on a typical PC. We will test it exclusively with our load tester. We think this is the best approach.
• We won’t measure acoustic noise level. We may post comments about the noise level of a particular power supply under a particular scenario but as a regular user, with no scientific methodology (e.g. “this power supply was very quiet even when delivering its maximum power capacity”). Measuring acoustic noise is very complicated, especially when we have other items generating noise near the product being reviewed, like the load tester.
• We are not using any AC conditioner or simulator. Some websites go to the extent of simulating spikes on the AC line to see how the power supply reacts. We think that is too much for us.

By the way if you want to compare our methodology to the one used by other leading reviewing websites, here are the links to their methodology:

• AnandTech
• DriverHeaven
• Extreme Overclocking
• HardOCP
• HardwareLogic
• JonnyGURU
• SPCR
• The Tech Report
• Tom’s Hardware Guide (they haven’t published power supply reviews in the past 2 years)
• X-bit labs

If you know about any other website that uses a load tester to test power supplies please let us know so we can add it on the list above. This list is short because, like we always say, 99% of power supply reviews are wrong.

Total or partial reproduction of the contents of this site, as well as that of the texts available for downloading, be this in the electronic media, in print, or any other form of distribution, is expressly forbidden. Those who do not comply with these copyright laws will be indicted and punished according to the International Copyrights Law.

We do not take responsibility for material damage of any kind caused by the use of information contained in Hardware Secrets.