Introduction

We would like to thank Caseking.de & Overclockers UK for supplying the review sample.



Centaurs or Centauros in Spanish are legendary creatures of the Greek mythology. Centaurs were a tribe of half-man, half-horse and their ancestor was Centaurus, a son of the Greek god Apollo. According to the myth even a small amount of wine drove them wild and this weakness forced Heracles to fight them. Surely it is a weird name for a PSU but we are always happy to meet names of the Greek mythology to remember ancient stories of this extraordinary civilization.

Xigmatek's new PSU series, Centauro, consists of four units with capacities ranging from 600W to 1000W. All feature Bronze efficiency (although right now none of them are listed on the official 80 Plus page), a semi-modular cabling system and affordable prices. Today's review sample will be the strongest Centauro (XTK-CB-1000M) with 1000W capacity. Briefly, this unit features compact dimensions with only 160mm depth, a single +12V rail which can deliver up to 75A and it is equipped with a powerful 140mm fan which outputs up to 143CFM. Apparently the low efficiency rating of the unit leads to increased heat dissipation so a fairly strong fan is essential to handle the increased thermal load. The only problem is that a strong fan emits lots of noise; however Xigmatek states that the max noise level is only 32.7dBA. In our review we are going to easily verify whether the fan's operation passes unnoticeable, as Xigmatek states, or not.