Until a few years ago, users who paid $50 or more for a power supply (PSU), especially in our country, were regarded as either very rich or out of their minds. Power supplies weren’t even considered a computer component. However, with a simple logic, thinking that the source required for the operation of the computer is electrical energy will be enough for us to grasp the vital importance of power sources.
In short, when we look at the past; The importance of power supplies came to the fore with the launch of the first examples of AMD’s Athlon series processor family. The high power values required by the Athlon series processors brought along many problems such as system crashes, crashes, resets, which are experienced by the insufficient power supplies of the users who update their systems with these processors. Finding power sources at the root of the problems was one of the most remote possibilities imaginable. So much so that a game magazine published in Turkey described the imbalances that occur in the systems where AMD processors and Geforce series graphics cards with high power requirements are located, with the words “Athlon and Geforce series are incompatible“… Emphasizing that there are power sources that cannot provide the specified values, he made great efforts to erase the bad image created by power supplies.
Today, although the budget allocated by the users for the power supply in our country is still not very sufficient, it is possible to see that the vast majority of them are conscious of this issue compared to the past. Now, it is possible to come across many discussions about specifying system components in messaging environments such as forums and the like, and what value the power supply should be compared to these components.
In order to give a rough idea about this; We can say that 300W power supply will be sufficient for a computer with Pentium 4 3GHz / Motherboard, 2x256MB Ram, 1 x 7200Rpm Hard Disk, 1 Optical Device (CDRom/Rw, DVDRom/Rw) / Floppy, and a mid–level graphics card. But the key point here is; that the power supply can actually deliver the predicted 300W. If the product is not a product of a reliable company and remains in the range of 10–20$ numerically, even 450–500W of this product may not be enough. The only reason for this; This is probably due to the fact that the product was put up for sale with fake label values and there are major deficiencies in the materials used. For this reason, such power supplies cannot provide enough power to feed the system due to the use of poor quality materials or the lack of material used.
As a result of the use of quality products and all the necessary materials, as well as many useful additional materials, the weight of the power supply increases in the same parallel. Thanks to this obvious weight difference, it is a very simple and effective method to distinguish between a quality power supply and a poor quality power supply. However, it may not be possible to distinguish two quality products from each other by weight difference. So what should we do in this situation? What criteria should we consider when we are between two quality products? In answer to these questions, we can say that we have no choice but to rely only on the power values labeled on the product by well–established manufacturers.
Testing a power supply with precise data requires serious laboratory conditions. The seriousness of the situation becomes a little more understandable when it is considered that even the most realistic test results carried out by THG with the equipment in its possession are discussed by the electronics engineers in the German newsgroups on the grounds that “they do not reflect the conditions in the computer environment“. For this reason, I think it is worth mentioning from the beginning that the tests we conducted were carried out to give a general idea.
Who Says There’s No Fanless PSU?
One of the most important points in power supplies is a healthy cooling system. Most manufacturers try to overcome this issue by using large air grilles and high speed/large fans in their products. For this reason, no matter how high quality the product is, they can reach disturbing sound levels due to the high speed fans placed inside. Thermaltake, which entered the market in 1999 and made a name for itself in a short time with its quality cases, cooling systems, power supplies and similar products, brought a different solution to the cooling issue with its new PurePower Fanless PSU series. Thermaltake PurePower Fanless PSU, which we reviewed today, draws attention with the fact that it is a fan–free product beyond being a power supply…
