Introduction
Over the years we have seen many trends in the power supply segment. Heck, five years ago you guys all had grey PSUs at 350 Watt.
PCs have changed though, we have much more stringent requirements and next to that the competition in the PSU segment is just cutthroat. That however is a good thing as it makes manufacturers creative, seeking new opportunities and features.
Trends we have seen in the past few years are different colors, modular cabling, aesthetics (rugged/LEDs/sleeved), e-peen (huge kilowatt power supplies) and lately efficiency.
That last trend, efficiency is however (we feel) important. In the years to come energy is going to become expensive, next to that we all care about mother nature, right ? The more power you consume, the higher the CO2 output.
Roughly in 2009 the trend for 'green' power supplies picked up. Honestly, if we go back to the dull grey colored power supplies from 2005, these had an efficiency of 75 sometimes 70 percent. Now if you have a 70% efficient PSU that means you lost 30% of your power thanks to an inefficient power supply, so if your components are drawing 500 Watt, your wall-socket was actually drawing 650 Watt as the rest was lost.
In 2009 certification picked up, 80+ efficient gold, silver and bronze certified PSUs, all indicating how efficient they are. The new trend is ongoing and as high-efficiency means you have the best product out there.
Enermax always is able surprise us, they now have released the Platimax power supplies, that means a platinum certification and yeah ... that boils down to a 94% efficient product. Very few products get this certification.
Today we'll grab a couple of older supplies and see if what they claim is true, that we can really save on energy. We fire off three PSUs at a P55 / Core i7 870 based system setup with a GeForce GTX 590. We then monitor power consumption in idle, CPU productivity (stress) mode and then lock into a gaming session.
Will the Enermax Platimax actually win from even Kilowatt power supplies ? Let's find out.
