| Voltage
Rail |
5 Volt |
12
Volt |
3.3 Volt |
| Reading under NO load |
4.99v |
12.27v |
3.37v |
The 5
volt rail is off by a mere .01 volts, which can easily be attributed to a
percentage of error on the part of my volt meter. I will not presume
that my volt meter is 100% accurate. Especially considering that it only
displays 4 digits (two before and two after the decimal point) when reading
voltages below 20 volts DC. Also, keep in mind these readings were taken
with no stress being induced on the power supply. The tester is in no
way able to dissipate 700 watts of power without turning itself into a
smoldering pile of ash. So, let's get this thing into a real world
system and see how it does.
Installation /
Testing
Some power supplies tend to get quite large once they
cross the 550 watt mark, and this can be a real issue with some enclosures.
OCZ has packed 700 Watts into a very standard size power supply. This gives
you plenty of room to tuck away all that extra cabling, and you won't have
to mod an enclosure that has tabs for supporting the power supply once its
installed. Which, installation goes just as easy as it would for any power
supply. With the arrangement of cables on this unit, I was able to
plug in 2 optical drives, the Sound Blaster X-Fi break-out box, and get a
Molex connector to the motherboard's power receptacle and only use ONE power
lead. one power lead was also more than sufficient to connect two SATA
drives, and the 4x4 12-volt connector fits like a champ. The 20+4 ATX
power connector was not the friendliest plug I've ever worked with. The 4
additional pins don't actually snap onto the 20 pin connector like
most cables I've seen. This one just sort of lays against it and it uses
paws on the top to stop it from sliding out. It made it sort-of awkward to
install the cable as one piece. So, the workout was to install the 4-pin set
first, then connect the larger 20-pin connector right over it. Everything
fits and it can't work itself out from vibration because of the paws on the
4-pin piece.
| CPU |
AMD Athlon
3700+
San Diego @ 2.8Ghz |
| Motherboard |
Asus
A8N32-SLI Dexlue |
| Drives
(Optical) |
1x Plextor
Plexwriter Premium
1x Toshiba DVD |
| Drivers (Hard
disk) |
2x Hitachi
Deskstar
80GB SATA |
| Expansion Cards |
1x PCI-Express
eVGA 7950GX2
1x Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum |
| Other Devices: |
USB:
Logitech G-15 Keyboard
Logitech G-7 Mouse transceiver
& Battery charging unit
Logitech Freedom Extreme transceiver
-------------------
On-board:
iEEE-1394 Controller
Gigabit LAN x2 |
Loading
up the system with various tasks from game play to all-out system
benchmarking will load different the power rails accordingly. Gaming for 4+
hours playing things like BF2 and Prey at resolutions of 1600x1200 puts a
decent load on the graphics card. Doing some Defragging of the hard
disks while burning an MP3 disk, all while running a 3D benchmark at
1600x1200 was another attempt to put a load on the power supply. And that's
all it was, an attempt.
|
Voltage
Rail |
5 Volt |
12 Volt |
| System:
IDLE |
4.99v |
12.27v |
| System: Loaded |
5.00v |
12.25v |
Conclusion....
Spinning the system up and doing some
multi-tasking finally put enough of a load on the power supply to bring the
5 volt rail to a reading of a SOLID 5 volts. Other rails didn't even begin
to falter under the strain the system was putting on them.
Obviously, it's going to take more than this modest system build to tax this
power supplies resources. One of the main goals in any system build and
upgrade is 100% stability with some kind of room for expansion and future
upgrading. A 700 Watt power supply should be able to fulfill the power
requirements for a PC - for some time to come. The Game X Stream was
up to the task at holding this system up for a 24-hour Prime95 run,
plus all those other menial tasks I threw at it for a stress test.
Of
course, one thing we also need to touch on is the heat generated by a power
supply of this size. In the case of the OCZ Gamer X Stream, it is the
LACK of heat that I want to mention. Since this system is not much of
a strain for a power supply of that size, the unit runs incredibly cool.
With a single 120mm fan providing the cooling breeze for this unit, it is
also VERY quiet. I put a temperature sensor on the rear of the power
supply to measure the exhaust air. With an ambient temperature of 69*F, the
exhaust air was a mere 88*F with the system at full tilt. So, it's
running very cool and very quiet. A WIN / WIN situation for
Overclockers.
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