BFG GS 550W Power Supply Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
1,241 words · ~6 min read
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okay so I'm going to be doing a quick unboxing today of The BFG GS series
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power supply now I have specifically the 550 W model so this may not necessarily
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apply to the other models but I think most of the same rules should be the
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same for both of them that was awkward okay so basically you got dual 12vt
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rails okay it's PCI Express data connectors thermal control technology
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protection circuitry I'm not even sure if you're going to be able to read this
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you got a meantime between failure rating of greater than 80,000 hours and
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high efficiency so up to 85% efficient so even though I
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don't actually see an 80 plus
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certification bear in mind that 80 plus certification does not necessarily mean
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that the power supply does not comply with ad plus even if it doesn't have the
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certification because the certification does cost money so even if you build an
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efficient power supply if you don't submit it for the CT then you just don't
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have it but it might still be 80 plus okay so bfds claim here is that the
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efficiency oh yeah that's not even close to 80 plus anyway so they're saying that
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H here we go right there they're saying that on 120 volt or 115 volt input it's
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around 75% at the lowest around 80 to
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82% at 50% and then it goes down to about 75% again if you load it up all
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the way which is pretty typical
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um for a modern power supply I mean given that this one is such a value it's
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such a low price it's pretty much what you would expect um let's see if I can
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just get this out here this is not going
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very well for me today okay so oh
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actually here's another thing that they call out on the front of the box so fully sleeved cables which is really
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nice to see on a value power supply it makes it so you can do a nice tidy build
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with something like this six pin and 8 Pin PCI Express imagine a video card
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company properly taking care of you for the PC Express connectors right then
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you've got a 24 pin power connector you got SATA and you got an 8 Pin 4 plus 4
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pin for the CPU which is again pretty nice to see on just like a a 550 W
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fairly basic model power supply so inside we are going to find a power
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supply quick install guide okay something about power to the people and
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that's basically going to have how to install a power supply in about EMP
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billion different languages which is great and then we have four installation
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screws okay thanks BFG usually your case will come with those
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screws but it's nice of them to include it just in
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case okay and then we have nothing else
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in there you got some foam packaging make sure it doesn't get damaged in
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transit and then you've got a power like a standard PC power cord so that's just
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your your bone standard sort of thing okay then you surrounded in bubble wrap
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in addition to the foam that was also in there so that'll protect the finish on
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it a little bit all right so let's have a look at the unit itself here first
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it's got kind of a a shiny sort of slightly brushed looking Metal finish
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okay it's uh there's my camera see you can kind of see behind my camera as well
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you can see the LCD that I'm watching myself in right now at the back you've
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got your standard honeycomb grill with uh oh actually you do have to select
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okay so it does not have active power factor correction you have to actually
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decide whether you want 115 or 230 bolt input make sure you don't have that set
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wrong okay then you got your on off switch you got your power plug and then
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on this side you're going to find all of the basic specs of this power supply so
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you can see it's got two 12vt rails Each of which are rated at 18 amps and
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between the two of them they can provide 404 watts of the total 550 Watts that
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this power supply is rated for all right
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so that's all the pertinent information there on the bottom you will find what
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appears to be a 135 mm fan with a nice fan grill a nice little BFG logo which
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if I can get the sticker off then I'll be able to yeah see that's so shiny very
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nice okay in terms of connectors so they tell you things like
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it has has SATA connectors but they don't actually tell you how many on the
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outside of the box which is a very very odd thing to me okay so actually oh
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those are reasonable length those are these are a pretty good length for like
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a value power supply so you can kind of get some idea of the scale here I mean
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when they say fully sleeved I think they're you know exaggerating a little
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bit but honestly if you get a qual this
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this is higher quality sleeving than you see on most brand name power supplies
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even if it is a reasonably high-end power supply you can see that even on
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the 24 pin connector you can't really see the color of the cables underneath
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because it's a nice uh high density mesh over top of it whereas a lot of them the
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you can just see kind of right through it and it's all colorful anyway so let's
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get started having a look at what connectors we have so there's your 20 plus 4 pin or 24 pin if you will all
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right so then the next thing we've got here
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is okay oh yeah two PCI Express so you've got a 6 plus two so an eight pin
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and then you've got another six pin PCI Express then next we've got an eight pin
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or 4 plus 4 pin if you will uh CPU power
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connector okay that's pretty straightforward as well and then we've
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only got three other cables so I'll be interested to see what's actually attached to these all right on the oh
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this is kind of a weird configuration okay first of all we've got one cable
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here that has three Molex connectors on it all right so that's one of them and
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then the other two both have have SATA
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connectors Okay so we've got two SATA
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connectors on each of these so one two they're the first two on both of them
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one two and then the third connector on both of these cables here so we got one
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two three connectors on both is either a floppy connector or another Molex
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connector so that's kind of a neat configuration anyway thank you for checking out my unboxing of The BFG GS
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550 W power supply