Why 99% of PSU Reviews are Wrong

Big B

Big B

HWF Godfather
Most PSU reviews don't tell you squat about the performance. Hardware Secrets gives the low down on why most PSU reviews out there don't have a proper review of what I would argue is the most critical component of your system.

Some websites will use a regular PC on their PSU review. The problem is that high-end power supplies nowadays can deliver at least 600 W and a regular PC is not able to pull all this power. Even if you use a very high-end PC with two CPUs, several hard disk drives and even four video cards, you won’t be able to say how much power you are pulling at a given moment and you also won’t be able to say up to how much power you were able to pull from the power supply, since you are not using any measurement device.

This is an excellent read. They also list a few websites that do a solid review of power supplies for any future reference.
 
The only article I've read in a magazine where PSU's were testing to breaking point is from CustomPC - I posted about it here - the tested PSU's using specialist testing equipment to truly put them under 100% load.

That's an interesting read you listed there B!
 
I've been suspecting that most people don't have the electronics background to know how to properly test a power supply for awhile. Very, very few sites do any sort of load testing that involves high-end testing. While I'd love to do PSU reviews here, I don't have the equipment to do so, nor plan on it just for a hobby. If we would ever get to the point where we were on the same page as Anandtech or [H]ard|OCP, that might be something to consider. Unfortunately, I don't know if that's where we'll ever be for starters. If I end up making a lot of money, something like the Chroma system that PC Power & Cooling has might be something cool to have. It's not as expensive as I thought, but it's like $10,000, and that's still not particularly cheap.
 
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