XFX 1000W Pro Series 80PLUS Platinum Power Supply Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
2,484 words · ~12 min read
0:07
well this new XFX power supply brings a few interesting things to the table so
0:12
the first thing we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and open it
0:17
up so this is a h how should we put this
0:22
this is a second thing well the second time we've
0:27
encountered this on this particular Channel and what this power supply is is
0:33
an 80 plus Platinum power supply so as
0:37
I've sort of discussed in the past already 80 plus Platinum is pretty much
0:42
almost 90 plus I think uh at 100% load
0:47
it can go down as low as 89% efficiency
0:51
that is in the AC to DC conversion but we're going to go ahead and talk about
0:54
some of the other cool new things that this power supply brings to the table
0:58
very shortly here so it is 80 plus Platinum here we go uh 80 plus gold
1:04
certified means that this has 90 plus power efficiency and 80 plus Platinum
1:07
certified means okay so there yeah so at least 92% power efficiency and that is
1:12
at the at the Peak at sort of the optimal level in its uh in its load in
1:17
its power uh in its efficiency curve all
1:20
right continuous power yeah okay so XFX has got the true wattage guarantee yes
1:25
some power supplies are rated at
1:28
unrealistic sort of in unrealistic ways so that is maybe they're rated for the
1:33
peak output or maybe they're rated for
1:36
unrealistic testing environments like 25° C but XFX power supplies guarantee
1:42
their advertised wattage even at well above standard operating conditions at 50° cus which is that's that's probably
1:48
even a little bit on the high side clean power so power draw from your AC outlet
1:52
is typically dirty with W spikes and fluctuations this is very very true xax
1:56
power supplies give you tight DC voltage regulation with minimal AC Ripple you
2:00
say for cleaner power okay extreme heat tested capacitors up to
2:04
105° whereas some of their competitors are using Japanese caps but they might
2:08
only be rated for 85° this is all true
2:11
they say they've included all of the various safety protections although one
2:14
thing that's going to be a little bit challenging safety protection wise is
2:18
you guys have to bear in mind that ocp
2:21
over current protection is a yeah it's kind of hard to implement
2:27
on a single rail power supply and this is a single rail power supply that does
2:31
go for all single rail power supplies that is an enormous amount of current
2:35
running through a single rail so just bear that in mind hybrid fan control is
2:39
very cool the uh power supply operates silently that is the fan does not turn
2:44
on until it reaches 20% load or 25° now
2:47
bearing in mind that 20% load on a 1,000
2:51
watt power supply is 200 Watts I have
2:54
yet to see a system other than like an SLI quad core type system that idles at
3:00
more than 200 watt so that means your power supply is pretty much going to be off 90% of the time whenever you are not
3:05
actually doing anything intensive with it so that's very cool so note hybrid
3:10
mode is on the fan will not be on initially this does not indicate a fan
3:13
sorry about that guys so yeah it will turn on automatically when it's needed
3:16
also I should note I said the power supply will be off 90% of the time I meant the fan not the power supply so DC
3:22
to DC converter design is very efficient and allows you to maximize the 12vt rail
3:28
uh usage on your on your power Supply so that means that almost all of the rated
3:33
power of this unit can be delivered on the 12vt rail so you can see that that
3:36
is 900 can you even read that oh yeah you can wow it's really hard to see it
3:40
in person but up to 996 watts can be
3:43
pulled through the 12vt rail and then if you do use more plus 5 Volt or plus 3.3
3:49
volt you have up to 125 watts on those two combined quiet 135 mm ball bearing
3:55
fan okay supports multiple high-end graphics cards uh up to three graphics
4:00
cards natively highquality Japanese brand capacitors connectors included
4:04
we'll get to that when we actually open up the thing I just want to go through and see if there's anything else here so
4:08
for real high power gaming needs okay so this is uh easy rail is what they're
4:12
calling their single 12vt rail design so that single 12vt rail as I mentioned
4:17
before uh does does have some challenges
4:21
in that you're running a lot of current on one rail but it is the easiest way to
4:26
ensure that you're not going to have the safety mechanisms of your power supply
4:30
accidentally shut down your system when you actually just want it to run so you
4:33
don't have to worry about which connectors you're plugging into which graphics cards easy rail allows you to
4:38
not think about that solid link this is really cool so check this out they do a
4:42
cutaway of the power supply here you can see the modular interfaces now modular
4:47
aha okay so this is a bit of a history lesson modular power supplies when they
4:51
first started showing up in any real volume were well known to be far less
4:55
efficient than a traditional wired power supply and that was due to how
5:00
inefficiently how sloppily soldered and
5:03
how poorly designed the modular interfaces were at the time now you do
5:08
lose a little bit of efficiency just by having plugs like this that are plugging
5:12
into something else and maybe you're not making a perfect connection all of that
5:15
stuff but so how was XFX able to achieve a modular 80 plus Platinum power supply
5:20
still very efficient by the way 80 plus Platinum well that is or so they say by
5:24
using solid link so solid link instead of using a PCB with soldering points and
5:29
aha this is exactly what a traditional modular interface looks like on the
5:34
inside they've used solid pieces of metal to bridge the gap between the PCB
5:40
inside your power supply and the connectors on the outside so that's very
5:44
very cool that's the first time I've seen that it also comes with a 5year
5:48
warranty and less wires less Heat this is very much true that's modular power
5:52
supplies in general because by having fewer cables cluttering up your case you
5:56
do allow for better cooling for the rest of your system system they're going to
6:00
block less of the cooling so full modular design solid link hybrid fan
6:04
mode okay lots of PCI Express connectors and we are finally ready to have a look
6:08
at the unit itself after we look at the included modular connector so here you
6:13
can see we've got our 24 pin connector very nice feeling cables actually nice
6:18
flexible cables a what looks like a reasonably good quality sleeving so it's
6:23
not as opaque as some of the ones I've seen in the past but it's also much
6:27
better than some of the others that I've seen in the past so it's got a about
6:30
sort of this length to it so fairly standard you should be able to reach
6:34
pretty much any 24 pin power uh connector location on a given
6:39
motherboard the ones that are usually more challenging are these eight pin ones so this looks also fairly long so
6:45
as long as you're in some kind of a reasonable you know not like a uber full
6:49
tower case you probably won't need an extension cable for these and then it
6:53
comes also with another 4 pin power
6:57
connector which looks a little something like this there we go so you got another
7:02
one of those now okay so two of those what else we got here so we have two MOX
7:07
love this nice conservative numbers of
7:10
Molex connectors on one of the included modular cables why do I like that
7:15
because I use very few Molex connectors these days and when I do I just need to
7:19
run a couple of them somewhere this one has three Molex which is great because
7:23
I'm either using two or three in a given build and this one uses another three
7:29
and then that does it for Molex we do have a Molex to Tool floppy pin adapter
7:33
just in case you still have something that uses that whether it's a sound card or something like that um and then for
7:39
PCIe we've got uh three two three and
7:45
three so for more peripheral adapters you've got one here that's just got two
7:49
so you run that up to your optical drive or drives and then you've got a few more
7:53
here that each have three Molex or three SATA connectors on them and you'll use
7:58
that for the bulk of your drives here
8:01
wow these are nice and heavy these have some real heft to
8:04
them got to love heavy wiring it always
8:07
has that uh that quality feel to it okay
8:10
so these are I'm a big fan of these uh these are dual PCIe to uh or rather
8:17
single connector to dual 6 plus 2 pins this is the most flexible possible way
8:21
of doing it pretty much any high-end graphics card these days requires two
8:26
connectors so this way you can take this one brick where you can see you've got
8:30
two separate connectors just kind of coming out of it and then you plug that
8:34
into your card you've got three of these so you can do up to three dual six pin
8:39
or dual 8 Pin or 6 Plus 8 Pin cards natively with this power supply or you
8:44
can even do actually you can even do uh three or rather uh two like ASUS Mars or
8:51
something like that because you've got six total connectors all right we've got
8:55
some included thumb screws black thumb screws for mounting the power supply in
8:58
your case nice beefy power cable is included uses
9:03
a standard connector so you don't have to worry about uh having a custom custom
9:07
cable you forget your your special cable you go to a land or something you
9:11
realize you don't have it and all of a sudden it's a trip home which is a real
9:15
pain comes in a little bubble wrap black
9:19
package and that looks very nice XFX has done an outstanding job of really
9:24
setting aside the look of their power supplies from everyone else without
9:27
making them look tacky because that's the challenge that you run into a lot of
9:31
the time when you try and make your product look different is you make it look different in a bad way I don't
9:35
think XFX has done that at all so here's
9:39
our large 135 mm cooling fan you can see
9:42
they've got kind of a neat cutaway look here but what they've done in doing so
9:47
is they've actually not um made the cooling efficiency any worse like it's
9:51
still quite closed inside so all of the
9:54
down draft or updraft whichever way you Orient your power supply is going to be
9:59
focused on cooling the components Inside So speaking of components inside I want
10:04
to have a look at their solid link interface which I oh unfortunately I
10:09
can't really see so I guess we'll have to settle for the outside so on the back
10:12
we find kind of your Standard Grill your power switch on and off there's no 115
10:17
230 volt selector because it has uh Universal input so there's your power
10:22
cable spot okay let's move around to the other side so there's your Pro 1000
10:27
limited Black Edition full modular power supply unit So speaking of fully modular
10:32
there is your fully modular interface as well as your important info two fan
10:36
modes hybrid fan mode or the fan is always on normal I would personally
10:41
switch it this way I'm a huge fan of this feature hybrid fan mode very very
10:46
cool being able to have silence when my system is idling from my power supply is
10:51
just amazing I don't mind if it turns on while I'm gaming and while it's actually
10:55
providing all that juice but components these days are so efficient at idle that
11:02
why why would I why would I bother having that fan on all the time that's
11:05
outstanding okay so motherboard there's your 24 pin there's your CPU 8 Pin
11:11
there's your 1 two three PCIe um dual connectors then we've also
11:17
got 1 2 3 4 5 six peripheral connectors
11:21
and then finally check out this one so that's either for another eight pin or
11:26
for another dual PCIe connector so you have that flexibility XFX has included
11:32
two uh8 pin where are they ah here they
11:36
are two8 pin motherboard connector so
11:39
you can see that's designed to go into that one and then this one is designed
11:43
to go into that one but you could also um Source yourself an additional PCI E
11:48
connector and use that instead for up to four graphics cards so yes this power
11:53
supply would be capable of powering four-way SLI although I probably
11:57
wouldn't do it with 4 580s or anything like that because it is a th000 watt
12:01
unit and that's probably a little bit more than it's designed to deliver so
12:05
let's go ahead and flip it over to the other side where we can see XFX also has
12:09
their sort of you know their branding and their elements you can see once
12:12
again they've sort of designed the aesthetic to look kind of cool but they'
12:15
put a little plastic piece back there in order to keep the cooling efficiency
12:19
from actually being affected by what they've done so here we can see the
12:23
specs again on the unit itself very sharp looking power supply XFX is so
12:27
good at Aesthetics so thank you for checking out my unboxing of the Pro 1000
12:32
wat 80 plus Platinum power supply don't forget to subscribe to lus techtips for
12:36
more unboxings reviews and other computer videos