Chieftronic Steel Power 750W PSU Review

A Closer Look

Out of the box, the Chieftronic Steel Power is well presented with a nice predominantly black aesthetic with silver highlights. While it doesn’t offer anything particularly special or eye-catching, it certainly seems to carry a professional look.

Without a doubt, the vast majority of the visual goodness is located at the top of this power supply and notably so in the fan covering. With its unique vent covering as well as the Chieftronic logo to the center, this certainly catches the eye but doesn’t become a dominating factor in the Steel Power’s overall presentation.

Another factor of note can be seen in the overall presentation. Despite being predominantly black, both this and the silver highlights have a lightly mottled effect. It’s a small touch, but one that certainly, and perhaps surprisingly, really adds to the overall look.

The cable input bank is well organised with each section being laid out in a ‘piggyback’ style. This helps ensure that both cable insertion and removal are exceptionally easy. The only moderate downside is that the specific ports are not denoted for their use. On the plus side, however, there is a diagram in the bottom corner that does display this information. I can, however, only presume that this sticker has been necessary because the different wattage outputs from this power supply series have different bank designs. If this isn’t the case though, then honestly I see no reason why they couldn’t have just put the port description below/above each part actually printed onto the metal.

The exhaust section of the Chieftronic Steel Power is exceptionally well presented with practically the entire area being open for airflow. This should, therefore, and all going well, ensure that the components within are nicely cooled without the fan having to run at excessively high speeds.

Cabling

Although not supplied with masses of cables, the Chieftronic Steel Power comes with more than enough to easily hook up the vast majority of gaming PC systems. The cable length is decent enough for good cable management and each one is clearly denoted (as per the picture below) to indicate its usage.

Internals – A Look Inside!

Getting inside the Chieftronic Steel Power is quite straightforward, but we wouldn’t, of course, recommend that you do this as it will almost certainly invalidate your 5-year warranty. While there are a number of points we will discuss shortly, however, the initial presentation is excellent with a nice clean layout.

A closer look at the cooling fan reveals this to be a 120mm design from popular manufacturer ‘Ong Hua’. While it is perhaps a little disappointing to find that this is not a Chieftronic own design, we have seen this cooling solution (or at least similar ones) used in many other PSU models and have never failed to be impressed with its performance.

A look at the PCB reveals something very unusual indeed. Namely, it’s white! – Typically speaking, for those of you unaware, these are (within power supplies) generally either green or black and it’s certainly unusual to see that this one utilised in the Chieftronic Steel Power is different. It is, however, and merely from a technical standpoint, rather neat to see all of the components clearly itemised on it. Not to mention the fact, and on a far more practical note I might add, that all of the key parts within are exceptionally well spaced with the heatsinks having a nice central location below the fan.

As Chieftronic cites Japanese capacitors as one of the key features of the Steel Power series, while we never doubted for one second that this wasn’t the case, it is, of course, important to take a closer look. So, with that in mind, and as you can clearly see in the image below, the main capacitor is indeed Japanese and one that comes from a highly reputable manufacturer.

Overall Thoughts!

I think it would be fair to say that while the Chieftronic Steel Power certainly appears to be a solid, competent, and not displeasing on the eye power supply, it doesn’t exactly do much to exactly push the boat out in any particular direction. On the whole, it all looks rather generic, or perhaps more accurately, that Chieftronic hasn’t wasted any money on what could be considered useless aesthetics. On the plus side, therefore, this might’ve been translated into the components, which all going well should result in some excellent test results.

Just how well will it perform, though? – Let’s find out!