be quiet! Straight Power 10 CM 800 W Review

Name: be quiet! Straight Power 10 CM 800 W
Brand: Be Quiet!

crmaris

on Oct 22nd, 2014,

in Power Supplies.

Manufacturer: Be Quiet!

Performance Rating, Performance per Dollar, Noise & Efficiency Rating »

Ripple Measurements

You will see the ripple levels we measured on the rails of the Straight Power 10 CM 800 W in the following table. The limits are, according to the ATX specification, 120 mV (+12V) and 50 mV (5V, 3.3V, and 5VSB).

Ripple Measurements - be quiet! E-10-CM 800W
Test	12 V	5 V	3.3 V	5VSB	Pass/Fail
10% Load	10.2 mV	10.2 mV	20.5 mV	11.0 mV	Pass
20% Load	10.6 mV	11.4 mV	20.0 mV	12.0 mV	Pass
30% Load	11.2 mV	12.1 mV	22.0 mV	13.4 mV	Pass
40% Load	11.7 mV	13.2 mV	20.8 mV	16.2 mV	Pass
50% Load	12.8 mV	13.9 mV	21.6 mV	17.8 mV	Pass
60% Load	15.8 mV	16.3 mV	22.8 mV	19.9 mV	Pass
70% Load	17.8 mV	17.9 mV	24.7 mV	22.0 mV	Pass
80% Load	25.8 mV	19.7 mV	26.5 mV	24.0 mV	Pass
90% Load	29.5 mV	22.4 mV	26.6 mV	27.2 mV	Pass
100% Load	40.7 mV	24.3 mV	27.0 mV	30.1 mV	Pass
110% Load	113.8 mV	27.0 mV	27.4 mV	34.0 mV	Pass
Crossload 1	13.7 mV	14.4 mV	20.9 mV	21.9 mV	Pass
Crossload 2	34.4 mV	24.3 mV	26.6 mV	37.5 mV	Pass

Ripple suppression was good overall; however, as you can see, ripple skyrocketed on the +12V rail once we pushed the unit beyond its limit, which simply means that 800 W are very close to what the platform can deliver. Anything above that mark will put a ton of strain on its components, so you had better avoid overloading this PSU. Ripple suppression on the minor rails was good enough, not superb. Please note that we won't deduct any performance points for the unit's lack of ripple suppression in our overpower test since such a load exceeds the unit's official specifications. PSU's have capacity ratings for a reason, and drawing more by ignoring the specification is not safe.

Ripple at Full Load

You can see the AC ripple and noise the main rails registered (+12V, 5V, 3.3V, and 5VSB) in the following oscilloscope screenshots. The bigger the fluctuations on the oscilloscope's screen, the bigger the ripple/noise. We set 0.01 V/Div (each vertical division/box equals 0.01 V) as the standard for all measurements.