I totally would install one for free, and $45 is close enough to free to make it an easy choice!
Yes, bronze is the minimum of the 80Plus certification. But it still means that it's 80Plus, which is better than a lot of the competition at this price point.
And what do you lose? 10W on standby, or 20W during the few minutes a day when you're really pushing the little Celeron kiosk you'd put this into? You could spend $90 on a Corsair SF450 Gold unit, or $160 on a Silverstone Platinum SX700. Even if those units had zero standby power consumption (they don't, the platinum still burns like 7W on standby), that $45 difference would buy like 4 years of electricity. You could run it for more than a decade on the SX700 before breaking even.
It's the right choice for the sign-in kiosk in the lobby, or a thin Word/Excel/Outlook client in the office. It's a fine choice for a NAS, or a media server in a closet. This is the right choice for the little Facebook machine you want to build for Grandma. And I depend on reviews like this from Anandtech so I can pick quality budget components for those machines! I'd probably be looking for a 300-500W ATX form factor power supply for 80% of my builds, and a small form-factor PSU like this one in this same power range for another 15%. Only a tiny fraction are the monster workstations and servers that need big, efficient power supplies.
Thanks, Fylladitakis, for another review of a typical power supply!
The minimum level is just 80 Plus, Bronze is the first step up above it. That said, especially at the 300W level just 80+ Bronze is better than most of what's on the market. Especially since this appears to be a modern 12V first design, vs a lot of the other junk on the market being old split rail designs.
80+ is a certification based solely on efficiency, and has nothing to do with output quality or durability. It's true that in today's market, the marketing pull of 80+ being what it is, that a non-rated model isn't likely to be any good. But the rating by itself is nigh-meaningless in determining if a given unit is any good.
The SG05 that I bought with the 450W SFX PSU is still going strong. I really don't hear the fan in the PSU at all. It seems to be quieter than the CPU's fan in this min-ITX case.
Thanks for reviewing these smaller, relatively lower-power-rated PSUs!
Props for the segment on "how picking an oversized PSU can lead to inferior overall performance", though I find it odd how this never gets mentioned in the reviews of idiotically oversized PSUs that are positioned at mainstream users (600-700W). These units get panned for being only bronze efficiency, but in the power draw situations of single-GPU systems, they would be a lot more efficient in the idle/light-usage state and possibly better while gaming compared to a PSU that is only at 30% load (in the case of a 700W).
Yeah, it's really funny and idiotic with all that "ZOMG you need a 600W+ PSU or your PC will explode" PSU memes all around....For a typical gaming single GPU PC that idles ~50W and maybe touch 300W at full load where a 600W+ PSU will run so far away from the sweet spot on the efficiency curve.
I generally stay away from commenting on the actual items you guys review, but I have to wonder here...how many people actually care about power supply reviews? Seems like there are plenty of other things to review out there...
Speaking of it, the only component that has carried itself over to my present build from my first 2008 gaming PC build, is the DVD-ROM drive. It comes very handy with games such as GTAV and the 6 DVD's that came with it.
I admit though that if I knew what I know now about PC's, it is possible that I would have kept the original Cooler Master PSU that came with my Cooler Master case, provided that it wouldn't have failed.
I personally love PSU reviews. It's interesting to see where corners can be cut to shave costs, and how different manufactures market and how OEM's approach different designs.
I believe it. I've had a PC Power and Cooling 750 Quad since 2008 go through a PC I kept for 3 years, a mining rig, and now back to a SLI gaming pc. It has had an incredibly hard life being run at 90% load 24/7 on the mining rig for almost 4 year so non-stop, and now it's driving a Xeon workstation with two 980's...
It's quiet, has been reliable, and it wasn't even that expensive ($120?) it's 80 Plus but I don't know what tier.
PSU is something everyone should pay attention too. A crappy one could actually result in an unstable PC, especially under load, and a quality one will save money over the long run.
This, so much this. I've seen so many builds over the years both from friends in RL and all over the web with high-end parts and absolutely garbage PSU choices. If you're going to spend $500+ on a CPU you can absolutely afford the +$50 necessary for a quality PSU.
I was finally able to build my own rig when I was about 10 years old after always using hand me down parts. I did a ton of research and a quality PSU was something I consistently saw mentioned. Used PCP&C Silencer and have continued to use high-quality PSU's and am currently pushing 30. In that time I've never had a single PSU related failure and have peace of mind knowing my hardware is covered if something happens.
I've been using mainly Seasonic the past 5-6+ years and generally re-use both my PSU, Case and Watercooling loop with 2-3+ different CPU/GPU/Mobo combos before refreshing everything every 18-24 months and repurposing the old stuff. First SS unit is almost 8 years old and it's ran a heavily overclocked system from day 1 and never skipped a beat and is still going strong.
PSU is the lifeblood of your machine, why skimp out?
many on this site likely care simply because they build their own PCs and build for others... I always pay particular interest to which oem is making the unit..and what the reviewers thoughts are on the overall quality.
These seem like very low wattages for modern power supplies. Is my perspective skewed? Is this likely sufficient for the sort of system that would normally use a PSU in the SFX formfactor? For reference, I have a system that uses an SFX PSU, but I went for a 600W unit and even that I felt was a worryingly small margin over the requirements of my system.
I would have thought most SFX power supplies are used in small, lower performance machines. Also most likely integrated graphics. So I'm thinking average system power demands of around 100W. As other posters have noted, it's not a good idea to install oversized power supplies as the increased static power kills efficiency at light loads.
We are at a good point in power consumption where 550w and up aren't needed for standard builds. I'm running an i5-6600k oc'ed to 4.5ghz paired with a gtx 1080 on an asus mitx pro gaming board. M.2 os drive, couple mid range ssds for storage, and your basic 16gb ddr4-3200. At the wall, under load I'm barely drawing 400w. Currently using the 450w that comes with the Node 202.
Second to this. I purchased one of these Silverstone 450's a whopping 3y ago (v2 at the time) for a mITX Haswell i5 build with a GTX 660 (ncase m1). At load the system never topped 350w (according to HWMonitor), but it was more than enough (esp with the 80cm fan) and left a good bit of room to upgrade to something newer in the future. 8pin PCIe connectors are amazing for future proofing.
The system I have running on a 600W SFX PSU is an ITX box with i7 6850K, 32GB DDR4 3000, Titan X Pascal, and 2TB Samsung 960 Pro M.2 I haven't measured the load at the wall, but according to an online calculator (Outervision) I am likely using about 520W
300W is plenty these days. Thanks for the review. I am interested in such PSUs. I miss building PCs again, but now, I want the challenge of compact ones.
That entirely depends on what you are building. A top end Intel CPU at full load can burn 140W plus the motherboard at 30W. Add a high end GPU at full load for 250W and you're at 420W already. Spinning hard drives idle at about 5W but during power-up they use up to 35W to spin up. There's been many a home-server builder with a broken build because their 8 drive system didn't have enough watts. NVMe SSDs use a lot of power during writes, the Intel models use up to 30W.
I, too, do appreciate such reviews, as they are actually useful for me a lot of times. Others should consider, that they might me more useful to them than they think, because more often than not such PSUs are much more suitable to most builds than the high-end stuff people seem to think they want.
There clearly is a need for good low-powered PSUs for smaller builds, and there really is a heavy lack of such units. Just 2 weeks ago a friend asked me for a recommendation for a small media-server build for a couple of hard-disks in a small case, and I really had a hard time recommending anything with a practical power envelope.
It's really absurd that people think the widely available oversized PSUs are ever useful, as there is only a tiny tiny fraction of builds that can utilize them to more than 50% load. A 600W PSU in a small SFX case seems ridiculous, as it is extremely unlikely that anyone will be using a >100W CPU and more than one 300W GPUs in those. In this high-end setup even with reserves and some hard-disks you won't ever utilize more than 500W on the 12V rails. A 600W PSU will typically provide at least 550W on the 12V rails.
My rule of thumb for builds is to reach 80% load on 12V for hardware you're actually going to use, and if possible 20% load at typical low-power use (achieving 20% on idle would be ideal, but is impractical). My dated Phenom II X6 setup is using a 550W GPU. This is the X6 running at 4 GHz with slight voltage increase (max. 150W), a HD7970 (max. 300W), Chipset 15W, Storage 30W, 3 180mm fans (15W). Combined max. 510W. Considering some of the power draw is not on the 12V rails, a PSU with 550W on 12V is plenty with some reserves. This is an old platform with very high-draw components, that just aren't typical anymore.
So let's see what we can do with a 300W SFX PSU (obviously this will be no ultra-high-end overclocking system, that's simply not the purpose): i5 65W, GTX 1070 150W, SSD+2*2,5" disks 20W, Chipset+RAM+Controllers 30W = 265W. The 300W PSU can handle this easily with reserves.
Anyway, thanks for the review, I'm sure I will take these units into consideration for upcoming builds.
I wouldnt load a 450 watt power supply with 400 watt, 90% load will havea pretty short service life. Assuming you game a lot. Personally i shoot for ~80% load on electronics, it seems to make them last a hell of a lot longer. As well as power supplies being more efficient at ~80% load then ~90%.
If i knew i would have a 400 watt load when gaming i would buy either a 500, or 550 watt, depending on price/specs. a 650 is too big, a 450 is too small in my opinion. You already have an approiately sized ps for that load.
As I said, 80% is the number to go for, we're not disagreeing. However, I'd argue, that you shouldn't be too conservative with your reserves, as actual usage will almost always be lower than the theoretical maximum. Even with games using your hardware to the fullest extent, you won't ever draw maximum power for the components. Your CPU will never draw maximum current outside of specifically designed synthetic benchmarks. Neither will your GPU. If you get to full load in a real world scenario it will unlikely last for more than a second at a time.
As this review shows, a reasonable quality PSU will handle even 100% load over a extended period of time without too much efficiency loss, so no reason to be overly cautious. Gaming will practically never get you to continuous maximum power usage of your main components.
That said, different usage demands different configurations, so if you're building a render node, feel free to oversize a little.
TLDR; Just don't overdo it. Pick the suiting hardware for the job, just as you do with other components. Oversizing too much will cost you doubly.
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30 Comments
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hasseb64 - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
Bronze? Wouldent installed one for free...A5 - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
The difference between Bronze and Titanium at 450W 100% load is 36W (roughly $38/year if you run 100% 24/7/365).Which isn't nothing, but it isn't a huge deal down in this power range.
TurboTastic - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
I totally would install one for free, and $45 is close enough to free to make it an easy choice!Yes, bronze is the minimum of the 80Plus certification. But it still means that it's 80Plus, which is better than a lot of the competition at this price point.
And what do you lose? 10W on standby, or 20W during the few minutes a day when you're really pushing the little Celeron kiosk you'd put this into? You could spend $90 on a Corsair SF450 Gold unit, or $160 on a Silverstone Platinum SX700. Even if those units had zero standby power consumption (they don't, the platinum still burns like 7W on standby), that $45 difference would buy like 4 years of electricity. You could run it for more than a decade on the SX700 before breaking even.
It's the right choice for the sign-in kiosk in the lobby, or a thin Word/Excel/Outlook client in the office. It's a fine choice for a NAS, or a media server in a closet. This is the right choice for the little Facebook machine you want to build for Grandma. And I depend on reviews like this from Anandtech so I can pick quality budget components for those machines! I'd probably be looking for a 300-500W ATX form factor power supply for 80% of my builds, and a small form-factor PSU like this one in this same power range for another 15%. Only a tiny fraction are the monster workstations and servers that need big, efficient power supplies.
Thanks, Fylladitakis, for another review of a typical power supply!
DanNeely - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
The minimum level is just 80 Plus, Bronze is the first step up above it. That said, especially at the 300W level just 80+ Bronze is better than most of what's on the market. Especially since this appears to be a modern 12V first design, vs a lot of the other junk on the market being old split rail designs.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80_Plus#Efficiency_l...
80-wattHamster - Monday, January 30, 2017 - link
80+ is a certification based solely on efficiency, and has nothing to do with output quality or durability. It's true that in today's market, the marketing pull of 80+ being what it is, that a non-rated model isn't likely to be any good. But the rating by itself is nigh-meaningless in determining if a given unit is any good.romrunning - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
The SG05 that I bought with the 450W SFX PSU is still going strong. I really don't hear the fan in the PSU at all. It seems to be quieter than the CPU's fan in this min-ITX case.hybrid2d4x4 - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
Thanks for reviewing these smaller, relatively lower-power-rated PSUs!Props for the segment on "how picking an oversized PSU can lead to inferior overall performance", though I find it odd how this never gets mentioned in the reviews of idiotically oversized PSUs that are positioned at mainstream users (600-700W). These units get panned for being only bronze efficiency, but in the power draw situations of single-GPU systems, they would be a lot more efficient in the idle/light-usage state and possibly better while gaming compared to a PSU that is only at 30% load (in the case of a 700W).
StrangerGuy - Tuesday, January 31, 2017 - link
Yeah, it's really funny and idiotic with all that "ZOMG you need a 600W+ PSU or your PC will explode" PSU memes all around....For a typical gaming single GPU PC that idles ~50W and maybe touch 300W at full load where a 600W+ PSU will run so far away from the sweet spot on the efficiency curve.phexac - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
I generally stay away from commenting on the actual items you guys review, but I have to wonder here...how many people actually care about power supply reviews? Seems like there are plenty of other things to review out there...galta - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
Maybe the do not care, but they should.jabber - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
PSU is a key component. Plus if you buy a quality one, it may well be the only part that carries over to the next build.Achaios - Wednesday, February 1, 2017 - link
Speaking of it, the only component that has carried itself over to my present build from my first 2008 gaming PC build, is the DVD-ROM drive. It comes very handy with games such as GTAV and the 6 DVD's that came with it.I admit though that if I knew what I know now about PC's, it is possible that I would have kept the original Cooler Master PSU that came with my Cooler Master case, provided that it wouldn't have failed.
Samus - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
I personally love PSU reviews. It's interesting to see where corners can be cut to shave costs, and how different manufactures market and how OEM's approach different designs.jabber - Friday, January 27, 2017 - link
I think on my 5820K build back in May I spent more time looking up the PSU than any other part.Samus - Saturday, January 28, 2017 - link
I believe it. I've had a PC Power and Cooling 750 Quad since 2008 go through a PC I kept for 3 years, a mining rig, and now back to a SLI gaming pc. It has had an incredibly hard life being run at 90% load 24/7 on the mining rig for almost 4 year so non-stop, and now it's driving a Xeon workstation with two 980's...It's quiet, has been reliable, and it wasn't even that expensive ($120?) it's 80 Plus but I don't know what tier.
PSU is something everyone should pay attention too. A crappy one could actually result in an unstable PC, especially under load, and a quality one will save money over the long run.
ZipFreed - Tuesday, January 31, 2017 - link
This, so much this. I've seen so many builds over the years both from friends in RL and all over the web with high-end parts and absolutely garbage PSU choices. If you're going to spend $500+ on a CPU you can absolutely afford the +$50 necessary for a quality PSU.I was finally able to build my own rig when I was about 10 years old after always using hand me down parts. I did a ton of research and a quality PSU was something I consistently saw mentioned. Used PCP&C Silencer and have continued to use high-quality PSU's and am currently pushing 30. In that time I've never had a single PSU related failure and have peace of mind knowing my hardware is covered if something happens.
I've been using mainly Seasonic the past 5-6+ years and generally re-use both my PSU, Case and Watercooling loop with 2-3+ different CPU/GPU/Mobo combos before refreshing everything every 18-24 months and repurposing the old stuff. First SS unit is almost 8 years old and it's ran a heavily overclocked system from day 1 and never skipped a beat and is still going strong.
PSU is the lifeblood of your machine, why skimp out?
just4U - Tuesday, January 31, 2017 - link
many on this site likely care simply because they build their own PCs and build for others... I always pay particular interest to which oem is making the unit..and what the reviewers thoughts are on the overall quality.caten - Wednesday, February 1, 2017 - link
I care. +1 for PSU reviews, especially for the more mainstream wattage sizes. I have a mITX system so another +1 for SFX.NZLion - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
These seem like very low wattages for modern power supplies. Is my perspective skewed? Is this likely sufficient for the sort of system that would normally use a PSU in the SFX formfactor?For reference, I have a system that uses an SFX PSU, but I went for a 600W unit and even that I felt was a worryingly small margin over the requirements of my system.
flgt - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
I would have thought most SFX power supplies are used in small, lower performance machines. Also most likely integrated graphics. So I'm thinking average system power demands of around 100W. As other posters have noted, it's not a good idea to install oversized power supplies as the increased static power kills efficiency at light loads.wolfemane - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
We are at a good point in power consumption where 550w and up aren't needed for standard builds. I'm running an i5-6600k oc'ed to 4.5ghz paired with a gtx 1080 on an asus mitx pro gaming board. M.2 os drive, couple mid range ssds for storage, and your basic 16gb ddr4-3200. At the wall, under load I'm barely drawing 400w. Currently using the 450w that comes with the Node 202.takeship - Friday, January 27, 2017 - link
Second to this. I purchased one of these Silverstone 450's a whopping 3y ago (v2 at the time) for a mITX Haswell i5 build with a GTX 660 (ncase m1). At load the system never topped 350w (according to HWMonitor), but it was more than enough (esp with the 80cm fan) and left a good bit of room to upgrade to something newer in the future. 8pin PCIe connectors are amazing for future proofing.takeship - Friday, January 27, 2017 - link
Still running without issue as well, for whatever the data value of my own anecdote is.NZLion - Tuesday, January 31, 2017 - link
The system I have running on a 600W SFX PSU is an ITX box with i7 6850K, 32GB DDR4 3000, Titan X Pascal, and 2TB Samsung 960 Pro M.2I haven't measured the load at the wall, but according to an online calculator (Outervision) I am likely using about 520W
zodiacfml - Friday, January 27, 2017 - link
300W is plenty these days. Thanks for the review. I am interested in such PSUs. I miss building PCs again, but now, I want the challenge of compact ones.Zan Lynx - Sunday, January 29, 2017 - link
That entirely depends on what you are building. A top end Intel CPU at full load can burn 140W plus the motherboard at 30W. Add a high end GPU at full load for 250W and you're at 420W already. Spinning hard drives idle at about 5W but during power-up they use up to 35W to spin up. There's been many a home-server builder with a broken build because their 8 drive system didn't have enough watts. NVMe SSDs use a lot of power during writes, the Intel models use up to 30W.Ascaris - Saturday, January 28, 2017 - link
I considered PSU reviews very carefully before I bought my current one. I find them extremely useful!thomasg - Sunday, January 29, 2017 - link
I, too, do appreciate such reviews, as they are actually useful for me a lot of times.Others should consider, that they might me more useful to them than they think, because more often than not such PSUs are much more suitable to most builds than the high-end stuff people seem to think they want.
There clearly is a need for good low-powered PSUs for smaller builds, and there really is a heavy lack of such units.
Just 2 weeks ago a friend asked me for a recommendation for a small media-server build for a couple of hard-disks in a small case, and I really had a hard time recommending anything with a practical power envelope.
It's really absurd that people think the widely available oversized PSUs are ever useful, as there is only a tiny tiny fraction of builds that can utilize them to more than 50% load.
A 600W PSU in a small SFX case seems ridiculous, as it is extremely unlikely that anyone will be using a >100W CPU and more than one 300W GPUs in those.
In this high-end setup even with reserves and some hard-disks you won't ever utilize more than 500W on the 12V rails. A 600W PSU will typically provide at least 550W on the 12V rails.
My rule of thumb for builds is to reach 80% load on 12V for hardware you're actually going to use, and if possible 20% load at typical low-power use (achieving 20% on idle would be ideal, but is impractical).
My dated Phenom II X6 setup is using a 550W GPU.
This is the X6 running at 4 GHz with slight voltage increase (max. 150W), a HD7970 (max. 300W), Chipset 15W, Storage 30W, 3 180mm fans (15W). Combined max. 510W.
Considering some of the power draw is not on the 12V rails, a PSU with 550W on 12V is plenty with some reserves.
This is an old platform with very high-draw components, that just aren't typical anymore.
So let's see what we can do with a 300W SFX PSU (obviously this will be no ultra-high-end overclocking system, that's simply not the purpose):
i5 65W, GTX 1070 150W, SSD+2*2,5" disks 20W, Chipset+RAM+Controllers 30W = 265W.
The 300W PSU can handle this easily with reserves.
Anyway, thanks for the review, I'm sure I will take these units into consideration for upcoming builds.
none12345 - Monday, January 30, 2017 - link
I wouldnt load a 450 watt power supply with 400 watt, 90% load will havea pretty short service life. Assuming you game a lot. Personally i shoot for ~80% load on electronics, it seems to make them last a hell of a lot longer. As well as power supplies being more efficient at ~80% load then ~90%.If i knew i would have a 400 watt load when gaming i would buy either a 500, or 550 watt, depending on price/specs. a 650 is too big, a 450 is too small in my opinion. You already have an approiately sized ps for that load.
thomasg - Wednesday, February 1, 2017 - link
As I said, 80% is the number to go for, we're not disagreeing.However, I'd argue, that you shouldn't be too conservative with your reserves, as actual usage will almost always be lower than the theoretical maximum.
Even with games using your hardware to the fullest extent, you won't ever draw maximum power for the components.
Your CPU will never draw maximum current outside of specifically designed synthetic benchmarks. Neither will your GPU. If you get to full load in a real world scenario it will unlikely last for more than a second at a time.
As this review shows, a reasonable quality PSU will handle even 100% load over a extended period of time without too much efficiency loss, so no reason to be overly cautious.
Gaming will practically never get you to continuous maximum power usage of your main components.
That said, different usage demands different configurations, so if you're building a render node, feel free to oversize a little.
TLDR;
Just don't overdo it. Pick the suiting hardware for the job, just as you do with other components. Oversizing too much will cost you doubly.