Testing:
The
OCZ Technology EliteXStream 800W power supply had the following components connected for the testing portion of the review:
» Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 dual core processor
» Kingwin KA-9225 heatpipe CPU cooler
» eVGA NVIDIA nForce 790i Ultra SLI motherboard
» OCZ Technology PC3-10666 ReaperX HPC 2GB DDR3 Kit
» Seagate Momentus 5,400RPM 60GB SATA 3Gbps 2.5" hard drive
» Two Western Digital Raptor 10,000RPM 36GB 3.5" hard drives
» Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB SATA 3Gbps hard drive
» eVGA GeForce 8800GTS G92 512MB video card
» SAMSUNG 20x DVD Burner with LightScribe
Testing the EliteXStream 800W power supply will be focused on determining how much the main voltage rails (+5V, +12V, and +3.3V) fluctuate from idle conditions to full load conditions using a Fluke model 83 digital multimeter to monitor all voltage readings.
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
OCCT 2.0.0a and
3DMark06 for a period of at least 60 minutes. In addition to these stressful applications running, the system was overclocked and overvolted to add more demand to the power supply. The stock condition has the CPU at 3.0GHz and 1.184V, while the overclocked condition has it at 3.6GHz and 1.312V; and the RAM was overclocked from 1333Mhz to 1600Mhz.
The first thing we will look at is how the unit's voltage rails fluctuated between idle and load conditions. The readings on the +12V, +5V, and +3.3V rails remained constant when changing from idle to load conditions, which is something I haven't seen before with any power supply I have reviewed. The chart below summarizes the results.
As a point of reference, the load voltage readings from the OCZ Technology EliteXStream 800W power supply were compared with those from a
Zippy PSL-6720P(G1) 720W unit and a
Zippy GSM-6600P(G1) 600W unit, while powering the same test system.
All of the units are extremely stable and well within specification, but only the OCZ Technology unit puts up completely static readings regardless of the power demands.
