PSU Inside

The first I noticed is that you get a real green PCB with this PSU, not some cheap yellow carton crap. Another interesting thing here is that the heatsinks are rather small, yet the PSU does not get too warm. This shows how efficient the whole unit operates.

Test Equipment

• The PSU is connected to an APC SmartUPS which supplies clean 220V input.
• AC current is measured using a Peaktech 4010 desktop RS232 multimeter with 0.02A accuracy.
• To measure DC output voltages of the PSU we use a Keithley 2700 6.5 digit data acquisition system.
• Power Factor is measured using a generic Power Efficiency Meter.
• Measurements for Ripple Voltage were obtained using a 100 MHz Tektronix TDS224 Digital Storage Oscilloscope.

Fan noise measurements are performed with an IEC Type 2 Sound level meter and this setup.
It consists of three high-power resistors and a Socket A motherboard. The motherboard creates a small load which makes sure the PSU turns on (some PSUs require a minimum load). Since there is no hardware installed in the motherboard, its power draw is negligible. The three resistors create a static load of 320W (120W @ 12V + 50W @ 5V + 150W @ 12V) - a typical high-performance system. This setup is also used to determine the power conversion efficiency of the PSU.