Best PSU 2017

Winner: Aerocool Project 7 PSU 650 W

Aerocool made a strong entry into the high-end PSU market with the release of the Project 7 line. It is good to see some competition in this tough market where a handful of companies set the rules, so far at least. We collaborated with Aerocool on the engineering of their new PSU, which resulted in very high performance for the ACP-650FP7 - other reviewers agree. Aerocool and Andyson, the provider of the Project 7 platform, worked hand in hand, listening to our feedback, to get this PSU made. For those of you wanting something different from the typical brand choices in this category, give the Aerocool Project 7 PSU a try, and we are absolutely sure it won't let you down, especially if you are out searching for a dead-silent PSU with the ability to power a strong gaming system.

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Runner-up: FSP Twins 500 W Redundant PSU

Redundancy in a desktop system and housed inside a normal ATX-compatible chassis? Yes, why not. Even this is possible with the FSP Twins 500 W that consists of a pair of independent PSUs. This is the first hybrid desktop/redundant PSU to hit the market, and it packs a great number of interesting features, including digital circuits and a communication interface with the system's mainboard, good build quality, top-notch cooling fans, and an easy-to-use software. It can't match regular high-end desktop PSUs in terms of performance, especially when it comes to the +12V rail's ripple levels; however, ripple suppression isn't the most important feature for a server PSU as long as it is within spec. Nor does the Twins unit hide its origins, being noisy, and because it essentially consists of two PSUs operating in parallel, efficiency is pretty low under light loads. As you can probably tell by now, some compromises had to be made since desktop PSUs not only use the +12V and 5VSB rails, but also need 5V and 3.3V, which required some modifications to provide all the necessary rails. This is definitely a unique PSU, the first and only of its kind so far with a redundancy feature for plain users with deep pockets. FSP is open-minded when it comes to new projects and ideas, and this is one of those. I am looking forward to an upgraded Twins version with all the improvements we asked for.

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Looking forward to 2018

Personally, I believe the digital era in PSUs is the future, which means all major manufacturers will invest in fully digital PSUs; PSUs where all major circuits are controlled by digital controllers. There is no doubt that analog PSUs still have much life in them since the engineers of today have vast amounts of experience with them, which leads to top-performers like the Seasonic Prime Ultra platform. Nonetheless, if we want to raise the efficiency bar even higher to finally see some ETA-A++ (over 94% overall efficiency) units in the Cybenetics scale, along with top performance in all other areas, fully digital platforms are the way to go.