Testing:
For voltage readings I used ITE Smart Guardian motherboard monitoring tool. To test the idle and load voltages of the
Zippy (EMACS) 600W and 720W power supplies, I installed them in a system with the following components:
» AMD Opteron 148 processor
» DFI Lanparty NF4 SLI-DR motherboard
» 1024MB G.SKILL Extreme DDR (2 x 512MB) memory
» 3x Hitachi 80GB 7200rpm SATA-II hard drives
» Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB 7200rpm SATA-I hard drive
» Maxtor DiamondMax 10 100GB 7200rpm SATA-I hard drive
» Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB 7200rpm IDE hard drive
» Western Digital Caviar 60GB 7200rpm IDE hard drive
» eVGA GeForce 7800 GT CO 256MB GDDR3 PCI-E
» Pioneer DL DVDRW
» Creative 52x CD-ROM
» D-Link Wireless G PCI
» SB Audigy 2z Platinum sound card
» 2x Enermax Enlobal 120mm fans
The idle condition was established by powering the system at stock speeds and voltages with no applications running for a period of at least 30 minutes. The load condition was established by running Prime95 for a period of at least 60 minutes. In addition to this stressful application running, the system was overclocked and overvolted to add more demand to the power supply.
Idle CPU 2.2Ghz (200x11) @ 1.39vcore, RAM DDR400 2-2-2-5 @ 2.6vdimm
Load CPU 2.9Ghz (290x10) @ 1.5vcore, RAM DDR580 2.5-4-4-8 @ 2.7vdimm
The data below represents the voltage readings while at idle and load for the two Zippy power supplies.
» 600W Idle - 11.71 - 4.86 - 3.26
» 600W Load - 11.71 - 4.86 - 3.26
» 720W Idle - 11.77 - 4.86 - 3.26
» 720W Load - 11.77 - 4.86 - 3.24
As a point of reference, the load voltage readings from the two Zippy power supplies were compared with the very popular (at least in the DFI Motherboard world) OCZ Powerstream 520W.
As you can see both
Zippy power supplies didn't blink an eye while handling a large load. The 600W had no change between idle and load voltages, while the 720W only saw a very slight difference of .02v on the 3.3v rail. While testing I was curious to see how hot the air felt from the exhaust. The exhaust air was about room temperature with the 720W being a little warmer than the 600W. The one thing I was worried about was not enough airflow through each unit, but they are not producing the hot air like I had thought they would. The cooling of both PSUs is fantastic, especially considering they use a single 80mm fan (and 40mm fan in the 720W model).
Although the voltages on the OCZ Powerstream 520W are a little closer to specification, I think the adjustable voltage rails are tweaked a little higher to compensate for the load.
