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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Monday, 31 December 2018 23:22
Two weeks ago before taking a Christmas break, I took a look at two different Asus products. Before the new year I figured I might as well check out one last Asus product that came in as well. Along with the new water cooling kits Asus has also brought out their own power supply lineup. They are calling them the Asus ROG Thor, which I think the biggest surprise is that no one else has snatched that branding up for their own power supplies given the whole god of thunder and lightning thing. Anyhow like with their water cooling kits, Asus has gone a different direction with the Thor lineup including building in an OLED screen that shows the real-time wattage usage as well as integrating addressable lighting into the power supply as well. Sop today I’m going to take a look at some of the features that Asus went with on top of an already highly rated Seasonic Prime Ultra Platinum power supply. With that at its base, the Thor lineup is already one of the best on the market, but I’m curious to see if the Asus specific features and styling makes this any better of a choice over the Seasonic.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Friday, 30 November 2018 19:51
The SFX market has been slowly growing and with that companies have been finally taking notice with new brands now making SFX and SFX-L power supplies. Silverstone though was there at the start, being one of the only companies looking to provide a modular and high-power option for small builds. This has given them time to refine and work on their designs, that is why they have been increasing the wattage available over and over as well as coming out with new more efficient designs. They introduced the SX800-LTI early this year and the 800-watt capacity alone is worthy of getting your attention. With X299 and X399 systems having an extremely high-power draw and a renewed push in the GPU market that is starting to require more demanding power supplies the additional wattage is perfect for high-end SFX systems. But the 80 Plus rating was really what surprised me. The SX800-LTI is an 800-watt SFX-L PSU with an 80 Plus Titanium rating, the highest certification currently available.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Friday, 25 November 2016 16:49
It’s starting to become a meme at this point, but in the PC market almost everything now is available with RGB lighting. This is partially due to companies finally locking down the control they wanted for crazy lighting effects and also because it finally lets everyone bring out just one product that will work with any theme. No other company has taken this as far as Thermaltake as they have RGB lighting with their water cooling and RGB power supplies. As someone who prefers to make sure everything in my build matches I’m all for RGB and with that I wanted to take a look at Thermaltake’s Toughpower DPS G RGB to use in a build, specifically their 850-watt model with the crazy 80 Plus rating of Titanium!
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Friday, 18 November 2016 17:46
When it comes to building a new PC most of your focus is going to be on things like your video card, your CPU, SSDs, and maybe your case. That is because those are the components that affect the performance of your PC and with your case, it is the most visible component. So I completely understand why your power supply isn’t at the top of your list. You do have to remember though that a poor quality power supply can take out all of those other expensive components in an instant. I recently started looking at components for a new build for my main rig to replace the monster Fridge build. For the power supply, I wanted to go with a lower wattage because I had only planned on having two video cards, but I wanted to stick with Corsair and I needed fully modular to change out the cables later. So the Corsair HX850i came to mind. With its Platinum 80 Plus certification and a few cool features. The build it is going in is coming along, so today I’m going to take a look at the HX850i and see what it is all about.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Monday, 29 August 2016 06:03
So over the past few years and especially in the past few months I’ve had the chance to take a look at a variety of SFX form factor power supplies from a few different manufacturers. So far all of them have fit the standard SFX form factor, but recently Silverstone introduced a few power supplies that are SFX-L. The SFX-L form factor is the same size as other SFX power supplies in most dimensions, but they are slightly longer. This extra length squares off the SFX form factor and allows for a much larger fan to fit inside. The extra space and cooling also allowed Silverstone to up the power a little up to 700 watts. This is exciting because it finally allows for proper SLI and Crossfire setups in the SFX form factor. So today I’m going to take a look at the SX700-LPT and see what is different than Silverstone’s other SFX power supplies.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Monday, 15 August 2016 17:34
Returning readers have most likely seen a wide selection of SFX power supplies coming through the LanOC office over the years. I have to admit, I have a little bit of an obsession with these tiny power supplies. It’s because I love building small form factor LAN rigs and you can’t go small without having the power to push it, so when I first saw Silverstone introducing them a few years ago I jumped on them and used them in Lunchbox 2. I later built our entire Lunchbox 3 all around one as well. Recently a few other manufacturers have been jumping into the SFX market. This is exciting for two reasons. For one it means more options. But the most exciting thing is that most of the companies who have been bringing them out also manufacture cases, meaning there may be more SFX based case options coming in the future. Well, Thermaltake introduced a 450 watt and a 600 watt recently and today I’m going to check out the 450 watt and see what it is all about and find out how it compares to the Silverstone and Corsair SFX options.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Thursday, 05 May 2016 18:34
By now if you have been around LanOC on the review side of things as well as our LAN events you will have noticed that I love small form factor builds. I’ve gone on and on about them many times when covering all of the unique components that have been coming out for them. When it comes to feeding your new tiny build with power you used to have just two options. You could build a tiny build and use an adapter to run a laptop power adapter or you could shoe horn in the smallest ATX power supply you could fit. The laptop PSU option was limited in wattage basically eliminating the possibility of a powerful build and going ATX gave you the power but they take up a lot of space. Those of you who have dug into prebuilt PCs have most likely seen some of the FlexATX PSU’s, well SFX is a small standard form factor version of that. Over the past few years Silverstone has been the only option in SFX power supplies with enough power and modular options, but that has changed. Today I’m going to take a peek at the Corsair SF600 and see how it compares.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Monday, 12 January 2015 16:35
When I was putting together the last few parts for our In Win D-Frame Mini build I knew I wanted to stick with a black and red theme and get a power supply that matched the performance of the rest of the build. Going with a Thermaltake Power Supply really was the only option to get both. So they were kind enough to send over their Toughpower DPS G 750 Watt power supply. While it fit everything I needed, it also peaked my curiosity. I mean, this is a power supply that comes with software. So today, beyond taking a look at the power supply itself, I will also be taking a closer look at the included software to see what it is all about and find out If it is something you really need or if it is marketing fluff.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Wednesday, 24 December 2014 08:49
Over the past few years we have really seen the Small Form Factor market grow, especially when it comes to small easy to transport gaming PCs, or what we call LAN Rigs. Early in 2013 I upgraded our Lunchbox 2 by upgrading the cooling and opening up room for airflow with a new SFX power supply from Silverstone. Later when I built Lunchbox 3 I used the same model of power supply. Why didn’t I change it up? Well not only did the first 450 watt SFX power supply perform reliably for me, but also frankly there just wasn’t any other competition. Silverstone had the highest wattage in the form factor not to mention the only SFX power supply with modular cabling. Well today we have the chance to check out the new top dog in SFX power supplies, Silverstone’s 600W SST-SX600-G.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Friday, 10 October 2014 13:28
Sadly when a lot of people are shopping for a power supply things like does it have modular cables and styling play a big role. A lot of people forget that buying a quality power supply is important both to protect your components, but also higher power efficiency waists less. With power prices constantly going up every dollar counts, especially when you have more than one gaming PC in your household seeing heavy use. Well one of our event sponsors FSP sent over one of their new 80+ Platinum power supplies. Today I’m going to take a look to see what sets it apart beyond its high efficiency.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Wednesday, 09 April 2014 12:17
The power supply is the single most important piece of hardware you can put into your system and while most enthusiasts like to go big and powerful, some of us are left with a much more down to earth budget for a new build. Cooler Master looks to fill this niche with its i-series power supplies that are meant to have a more budget oriented price tag while still providing high quality power and protection for your components. Today we preview the i500, the smallest in the line, and give it a once over to see if it is worth your attention.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Wednesday, 26 February 2014 13:58
When I think of XFX their video cards are the first thing to come to mind. But they have actually been in the power supply market for a long time now. They have done a good job of standing out in a very crowded market by coming up with unique PSU casing designs when most of the market has just done the same thing over and over. Today is actually the first time I have had an XFX power supply in the office to check out. We don’t technically review them (read more to see why), but today I’m going to take a quick peak at the new XFX XTR 650 watt to see what sets it apart from the competition.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Thursday, 09 January 2014 15:42
Cooler Master offers a wide variety of power supply solutions, and understanding the multitude of series and product families can be a bit daunting. The units essentially break down into four main categories, gaming being an intermediate solution between enthusiast and entry-level units. The GX, or “Game Xtreme”, line of power supplies have recently been re-introduced with a few improvements that blur the lines between enthusiast, gamer, and their self-entitled silent demographics while continuing to pay mind to budgets of a crowd torn between a software library and the hardware required to support it. Today we have the 650W version of the new GXII PSU family, and we’ll take a look at what new offerings it brings to the table.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Wednesday, 15 May 2013 13:00
Hey guys and girls, if you have been around the site or at some events you may have picked up that I have a thing for small form factor PC builds aka LAN rigs. I’m sure a few of you are laughing thinking about how big of a monster our “Fridge” build is, but that is exactly why it is important to have a rig that you can just grab and go without breaking your back. Last year I put together a rig that we called Lunchbox 2 using a Lian Li PC-TU200. After almost a year I had a few things I was interested in swapping around that I think some of you might be interested in.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Tuesday, 07 May 2013 13:00
When it comes to building your new rig there is one thing that often gets overlooked while being arguably the most important piece to the puzzle. That would be your power supply. After throwing down hundreds or thousands of dollars its really hard to force yourself to do the same with your power supply, especially when there is a cheaper model next to it and they both will power your rig right? Not only is quality important with a power supply, but you also need to keep in mind its fit, efficiency, wattage, and wiring. Today we are going to take a look at Cooler Master's new V1000 power supply to see where it fits in those four aspects.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Tuesday, 26 June 2012 19:02
In the power supply world, most people end up buying far too much power supply for their builds. Part of this is with the hope of upgrading to a second hard in the future and sometimes it’s because they don’t know any better. On our video test bench for example we run a 1200 watt power supply, but even then we found ourselves scrambling for adapters and hoping we wouldn’t push the power supply too far when we tossed four HD 7970’s in quadfire on it. With a TDP of 250 Watts for each card and our I7-3960x itself with a TDP of 130 watts we were already pushing it. That doesn’t even count in power for the motherboard itself as well as memory, disc drives, cooling, ect. It’s clear than in some cases there is a need for a power supply larger than 1200 watts, even if the market is limited. Cooler Master introduced their Silent Pro M2 line today including a 1500 watt monster, we are going to take a sneak peak at what they have to offer.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Saturday, 16 October 2010 00:00
There are some that say the power supply is the most important part of your computer. On the other hand, there are others that could care less. They're content to buy the cheapest off-brand box with wires coming out of it, they can get their hands on. I have to assume you're not the latter, since you're reading this review. That being said, AXP (Xion) Sent me one of their 90+ power suppies to check out. Let's see if it how it does.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Monday, 19 July 2010 00:00
Thermaltake's power supplies get a step up from pure power to tough power with the launch of their new line. Justifying it's name, the Toughpower XT sports a long list of features, including performance under extreme conditions while remaining cool and quiet. Thermaltake has sent us a sample of the 775W model to put to the test.
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Tuesday, 15 June 2010 11:00
At Computex two weeks ago it seemed like everyone was announcing their new 80+Gold high wattage power supplies, apparently gold is the new black. We already took a look at Sparkles offering recently, today we have a chance to put Cooler Masters Silent PRO Gold 1200 watt to the test. With 1200 watts and an 80+ Gold rating we know this will be a monster, but will it maintain the silent performance that we have come to expect from their Silent Pro line up?
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Category: Power Supplies
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Published: Tuesday, 11 May 2010 19:34
Of the 2,195 power supplies currently listed on the 80 plus website, only 186 of them are certified 80+ gold. That means just over 11% of the power supplies tested meet or beat their highest standard. Although not listed on the 80+ website yet, Sparkle Computer Corp is gearing up to release a monster of a power supply. At 1250 watts it puts out nearly double the power of most of the other 80+ gold PSU’s. That high standard most likely is the reason for the “Gold Class” name; let’s dig in and learn a little more about it.
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