XFX 1250W Pro Series 80PLUS Gold Power Supply Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
2,394 words · ~11 min read
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I have another XFX power supply to unbox
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so this one is slightly different from
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the last XFX power supply that I took a look at and in terms of the overall
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platform and the overall feature set it is fairly similar however this is a
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higher wattage unit than the 80 plus Platinum
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1,000 watt that we looked at before so this is a 1250 W power supply which yes
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there are higher wattage power supplies out there but I would say that for all
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practical intents and purposes 1 12200
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Watts or 1250 Watts or whatever you want to call it is pretty much as high-end as
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you need to go because you can power almost anything I can imagine I mean
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okay yeah you can add pelier and things like that to your system that would make
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it consume more power but with this you can easily power four graphics cards a
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quad core or rather quad cores aren't even high-end anymore I forgot a six
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core CPU and you know all the extra little random peripherals and
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accessories that you could want so the one that we had a look at before was the
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1000 watt one and that was more of a limited edition skew and I just hold on
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a second hold on just a moment so the th000 watt is the limited edition 80
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plus platinum and then the 1050 and the 1250 watt are the Black Edition
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non-limited Edition ones so these are 880+ gold which is to be expected
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because uh 80 plus gold is a little bit easier to achieve especially with a 1250
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wat unit I mean look at what you'd be expecting from a 1250 wat 80 plus
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Platinum unit we're talking what 90% efficiency basically uh for
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1,50 Watts so what does it have in terms
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of the overall other features that are similar to the 80 plus Platinum unit the
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answer is a whole lot it actually looks very similar so XFX has done a great job
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I mean back when they first launched their power supplies I was looking at it going well what can XFX do any different
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and what they're doing is they're using a very highquality manufacturer for the
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power supply units themselves and what they've also done is they found a way to
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set apart their aesthetic from what others are doing so you look at it and
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you go well really anything but black T not to look that great like you go and
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you do like a you know like a bronzy colored power supply and it might look
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kind of cool on its own but you go and put that in the system it looks kind of out of place so I was like okay well
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what are they going to do and what they did do is they did kind of a unique
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overall look so it's got a very XFX look
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to it it's still black they've done kind of silver accents um and rather than
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going the rather than going the You Know cover it with gold colored stuff root
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that a lot of guys have done with their 80 plus gold power supplies and when you
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combine good Aesthetics with very high quality I'd say you generally speaking
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end up with a winner so that's that's what they've decided to do with their
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power supply products and I have no
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hesitations whatsoever in recommending their power supply products so they do
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okay I'm going to say it one more time they do use a high quality manufacturer
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and then they do offer a 5-year guarantee that's from XFX so that's
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their legendary warranty service so it's hard to go wrong that way as well let's
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have a look at the modular fan interface where you're going to find a few different things so you'll see your
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motherboard modular connector so it's a fully modular power supply you also see
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a CPU connector so that uses an8 pin to8
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pin which I'm going to find right about here all right so that guy plugs in
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right there and then what you see is three more PCIe connectors and then an
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additional PCIe or CPU connector so that
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means you can either use this guy right here to do another eight pin although I
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would personally argue that unless you're using a dual socket motherboard
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that is entirely unnecessary so a single
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eight pin even if your okay I don't by dual socket I mean dual CPU sockets not
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dual uh eight pin sockets so I would argue if you have a single CPU you're
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going to be more than enough served by a single eight pin connector even if your
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motherboard has two connector slots so what that means is you could use this
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power supply to provide up to eight PCI
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E connectors so that is up to fourway
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dual pin requiring graphics card so you can see each of these connectors nice
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long cables has dual 6 plus two pin
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connectors at the end and XFX includes
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four of them so with the 1050 watt they include three and with the 1250 watt
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they include four and then they also include the CPU one so you can actually
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use it whichever way you want cuz if you're running two or three graphics cards and you do have the Dual 8 Pin
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connectors on your motherboard then I guess you might as well use them both
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high quality power cord included very very thick good to see it's just those
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little touches that do make a difference oh I want to talk about you know what
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I'll talk about that after okay let's have a look at the rest of the included connectors so you got your 24 pin which
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is pretty much bog standard I would hope that any PC power supply comes with a 24
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pin connector uh do I have all of them here yeah Okay so we've got a 3 by SATA
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connector one so two of them are right angle one of them is straight then we've
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got a two by SATA connector one right angle one straight that's what I'd
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recommend running up to your optical drive then we have another 3x SATA power
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connector and finally another 3 by SATA
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power connector so that's nine that you can run over to your hard drive bays and
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then two that you can run up to your Optical drives which is a good
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balance okay next we've got a dual Molex
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I'm a big fan of this CU I don't use many moxes in my uh case so I'd run that
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to my pump and I'd run that to my fan controller and then I'd be pretty much
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done then we've got one of those Molex to dual floppy adapters just in case you
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still use any floppy devices in your system whether it's a card reader or
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whatever else if they need floppy power they need it you got a triple Mox and
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then you've got another triple MOX that is also included now this is cool check
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this out I wonder if we can see the solid link interface down there you know
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what we can't see that but we can see something so I want you guys to check this out you know how on most modular
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power supplies you see a big bundle of cables coming off can you see inside
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sort of going to try and get an angle where you can see along the right hand Edge so most modular power supplies
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you'll see a whole bunch of cables that are soldered down there and then run
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over to the back of the PCB that makes up the modular interface which is going
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to be right behind here the way that these power supplies work in order to
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conserve efficiency is rather than using those cables and those solder points
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which tend to be somewhat inefficient they use solid pieces actually here they
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have a good diagram here where is it ah
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they use solid metal pieces to run right off the PCB onto the modular interface
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itself so you can see what it looks like with this uh with this back piece taken
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off so that does provide I mean we're talking very small amounts of increased
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efficiency but you'd be amazed how much
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uh how much these things can add up over time like I'm aware of at least one 80
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plus gold power supply where this was a less reputable manufacturer this was not
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fxfx so don't don't take that away from this story but what they did was when
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they actually sent their unit away to the 80 plus certification committee they
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included cables that were 30% shorter
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because just that extra little bit of
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resistance that they're taking away from the power output earned them an 80 plus
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gold certification instead of 80 plus silver so that's something to bear in
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mind if you're buying a power supply you want to buy from someone reputable who
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doesn't sort of fudge the numbers in order to hit a particular Plateau um
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that's actually one of the other things that XFX really feels is important so
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their capacitors and their operating uh
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specs are based on a standard operating condition of 50° so they're not actually
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going to go ahead and put the power supply in a colder environment which
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does help it perform more efficiently in order to achieve a better rating they're
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putting it in a more uh realistic scenario so they've got all Japanese
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capacitors as well as uh testing them
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wow cool so they test them at 50° and they're rated to withstand up to
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105° automatic protection sensor so you got all of your usual safety
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certifications I would expect that from someone like XFX as well as from the
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manufacturer that is building the power supply in the first place cuz I mean
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when it comes to actual manufacturing plants someone like an XFX is going to
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stand behind the warranty for you they're going to support the product for you they're going to bring it to market
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for you they're going to do you know promotions and MIRS and all that good
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stuff for you but when it comes to an actual Factory not everyone owns a power
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supply Factory so uh they are using a very very high quality OEM arguably the
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best one out there hybrid fan mode so
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we're finally on to what I think is really the uh best feature of this
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particular series of power supplies their Black Edition full modular and
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that is hybrid fan mode here so when you enable that feature what you're actually
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doing and they include a useful graph right on the power supply itself I will
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show you that graph when I find it aha very cool check this out so up to 20%
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load plus orus 5% you it operates in silent mode that means your fan is off
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remember 20% load on a 1250 wat power
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supply is about 300 watt you'd be hard
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pressed to find a system that idles above 300 watts in fact let's take this
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system right here which is dual GTX 580s
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and a 2600k no what is this this is a 39
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uh 3930k 6 core processor and I'm going
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to go ahead and I'm going to show you guys this system idles at 144 Watts
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check that out can you see that it's okay you'll have to take my word for it
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it idles at 144 Watts 8 gigs of RAM the
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works so that means that whenever you're
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browsing the web or doing just general low maintenance stuff your power supply
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fan is going to be off that's great not only for noise reduction but also for
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dust reduction that means your power supply isn't even going to get dust
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caked into it because unless you're actually playing a game rendering a
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video or doing something intensive like that your fan isn't even going to be on
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so this is by Design if you flick the switch you know don't be scared that
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your fan isn't on um but yeah pretty
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cool right okay two more things uh one is that this is a single rail power
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supply so it's capable of providing up to 104 amp on a single rail that is only
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two Watts shy of the entire rated output of this power supply so what that does
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mean is that you don't have to worry about which connector you're plugging
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what high draw device into so you know short of accidentally plugging
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everything in your system into a single Molex connector and overheating this
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entire wire which is very unlikely to happen um you don't have to worry about
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having you know two graphics cards on one rail and One graphics card on the
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other Rail and accidentally triggering the over current protection don't have
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to worry about that you just go ahead and worry free you plug everything into
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everything and it's all coming from a single 12vt rail inside the power supply
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so thank you for checking out my unboxing of the XFX Pro 1250 wat solid
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link 80 plus gold power supply and don't forget to subscribe to lus Tech tips for
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more unboxings reviews and other computer videos and honestly if you're shopping for a power supply tomorrow
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look for one with hybrid fan mode so remember the XFX 1050 watt 80 plus gold
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the 1250 watt 80 plus gold as well as the 1000 w80 plus Platinum all have this
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feature and it's very very cool