Super Flower Leadex III 650 W

[crmaris]

The Super Flower Leadex III with 650 W performs very well in all areas: load regulation, ripple suppression, efficiency, and transient response. On top of that, it is one of the quietest PSUs money can buy today and has two EPS connectors for power hungry CPUs and mainboards.

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[Ferrum Master]

Leftover soldering balls should make as a thick negative for a power supply part... Or it is actually your fault? You disassemble first using air blower and thus small remains are left everywhere and I am scolding the maker who is actually unguilty? The rough brush cleaning markings also? There are solder balls everywhere.




And it seems you like to take pictures after the section. That's why it left me thinking, who to blame.

 

[crmaris]

No, we don't use hot air for disassembly, but a Pace station. We don't use any brushes either.

Not all PSUs have great soldering quality and I also have a problem when I see something wrong there. Nonetheless, those soldering jobs don't seem to be an issue even in the long run, based on my experience so far. So I try to cut some slack in the manufacturers when it comes to small defects. Now if the business side of the PCB is a mess, I won't overlook that of course in my final assessment.

In this unit, I mention this, in case you didn't notice it "Soldering quality is not the best I have seen from Super Flower. However, it won't create any reliability or performance issues." If I did this, I wouldn't mention the above, would I? And I believe I should be an amateur, to say the least, if I desoldered stuff, messed up with the PCB and then mentioned that the soldering quality is not good. This is quite hard given that I work as a telecommunications engineer for 25 years now

The second photo is of the power cables holes. We need to remove those cables to perform part analysis and photo shooting and given that they are quite thick, we leave some traces on the PCB.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Well... I guess we have to make clear about what we are talking. I was asking, just to be sure. It wasn't meant as nitpicking your professional abilities. Just thought that as who in the world stares at those PCB pictures and will start to ask something about them... I am lazy, so could have done something like that too.

It is not a soldering problem. Actually it is decent, soldering problems would be cold joints, cracks, missed points. That's during reflow or wave soldering phase, we have mixed THT and SMD so it is both. And it ends there - soldering.

In my 17 year experience as repair technician in many electronics areas I've encountered many problems caused by solder balls, as they tend to travel due to heat expansion, flux melts and vibrations. But it ain't a soldering issue here. It is inspection phase(quality control - QC) and then washing/cleaning, it seems they do only mechanical brushing afterwards, we see the the scratched solder pads. It is a pure quality control issue. Like anything you buy from china - first thing to do is to take it apart and fix. That hand soldered cap has so much leftover solder it takes 0.1mm particle to to form a short cut.

PSU ain't the part where you can ignore quality issues like that, as it can render out dead your system in a bang... literally. So I am not forgiving issues like that all.

Not mentioning that QC phase wishes a lot of improvement due to soldering balls in negatives at the summary is a must, just because for the manufacturer to start scratching his head and pay attention to it. Optimistic? Yea... but at least we tried.

 

[Joss]

Thanks for the review.
I quite like the 3 fan modes and quite dislike the capacitors on the cables.

You wrote:

This power supply is supported by a semi-passive operation with three operating modes: 0, 1, and 3

did you mean "0,1 and 2" ?

 

[dirtyferret]

In this unit, I mention this, in case you didn't notice it "Soldering quality is not the best I have seen from Super Flower. However, it won't create any reliability or performance issues."

Was the unit built by Superflower or one of their outsource partners?

 

[Redwoodz]

Great review, very informative.

 

[Scatter]

The EMI issue you mentioned... is that a real issue?

I am looking for a quiet PSU for my HTPC build. The HTPC will also be used to play High res audio and is positioned close to my tv and HIFI set.

 

[efikkan]

It's nice to see several good options for quiet, efficient and decently priced PSUs.
My default recommendation these days are the Seasonic Focus plus, a fantastic buy for its price. But I wouldn't recommend anyone to go any lower than this class of PSUs, even for a value build, a poor PSU is a recipe for trouble.
For premium or workstation builds I would look at the Seasonic Prime Titanium, which is more efficient and quiet. I've not seen anything yet beat it, or found anything negative about it, except that it costs about ~70% more than the Focus plus.

 

[cucker tarlson]

performs slightly better than focus gold 650,super quiet,same efficiency,and costs slightly less.
good we have super flower available in EU cause it looks like a better buy than even the highly praised focus gold.
I wish they kept the led cables.

 

[crmaris]

Thanks for the review.
I quite like the 3 fan modes and quite dislike the capacitors on the cables.

You wrote:
did you mean "0,1 and 2" ?

yeap that was 2

The EMI issue you mentioned... is that a real issue?

I am looking for a quiet PSU for my HTPC build. The HTPC will also be used to play High res audio and is positioned close to my tv and HIFI set.

EMI can be a real headache and it has to do with so many factors. Normally you should avoid ground loops in such usage and you should also look for very low EMI PSUs, to have as clean power output as it gets.

Was the unit built by Superflower or one of their outsource partners?

I cannot be 100% sure but most likely is made by Super Flower's own production line.

 

[cucker tarlson]

never checked tpu's psu reviews,got so much to catch up with now that I see how good they are.

 

[efikkan]

EMI can be a real headache and it has to do with so many factors. Normally you should avoid ground loops in such usage and you should also look for very low EMI PSUs, to have as clean power output as it gets.

I do appreciate the EMI testing, but I would like some explanation to go along with it, to understand how good/bad the results are. I'm familiar with how annoying electromagnetic noise can be for audio equipment, but I haven't done any EMI testing myself.

So this peak at 162KHz, is it bad enough to cause noticeable disturbance of other equipment? Like a stereo/surround audio setup? Basic audio recording equipment and amplifiers? Or is this more like problematic in lab conditions?

When you test this, do you use any kind of filters etc. to give you clean power? In my experience, the power in most houses is pretty bad to begin with, at least bad enough that it's noticeable with a normal guitar amplifier. So I would like to get an understanding of how test results like this compare to the noise people already have.

 

[Scatter]

yeap that was 2



EMI can be a real headache and it has to do with so many factors. Normally you should avoid ground loops in such usage and you should also look for very low EMI PSUs, to have as clean power output as it gets.



I cannot be 100% sure but most likely is made by Super Flower's own production line.

Thanks for the reply Is there a PSU you can advise for my HTPC?

 

[sith'ari]

Great PSU at great price.
P.S. Excellent review by Aris ,like always !!!

 

[crmaris]

EMI it depends on the closeby devices. Normally every electronics device that has FETs should have an inline filter, which prevents both incoming and outgoing EMI. Simply put, if your amplifier's filtering is mediocre then even low to mid EMI emissions from the PSU could affect it. So I cannot really tell you if this specific PSU will have a problem or not with your setup. What I can say though is that any PSU that doesn't meet the limits, will probably cause trouble.

 

[kmetek]

I'm about to buy this PSU, won't regret it?

 

[thebluebumblebee]

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[Conradfwebster]

Would you recommend setting the Eco mode at 2 (auto with a slow ramp up of fan speed?) to avoid start up noise at full speed and wear on the bearings before oil has fully circulated around them?

 

[Stele]

Hi, late joiner to the discussion but I wanted to add my appreciation and compliments for a thorough review. I do want to clarify about those "capacitors" on the power cables - are they really capacitors? They look suspiciously like ferrite cores... Besides, they'd need 1 cap for each voltage line, connected to ground, which I imagine would have created a much bulkier/lumpier appearance.

 

[simsapopov]

Hey i have this PSU. Can it run 5600x with 6700xt , 2x8gb ram 3 SSD and a 4 rgb fans.

 

[sith'ari]

Hey i have this PSU. Can it run 5600x with 6700xt , 2x8gb ram 3 SSD and a 4 rgb fans.

With 6700XT having maximum power-spikes as high as 321watt , a 650watt PSU such as this shouldn't have any problems to handle such a system