There are many different aspects to testing a power supply from the regulation, ripple, idle and load tests and even efficiency, but sadly only certain tests can be run on the hardware that we possess. The likes of efficiency testing needs very expensive hardware to be able to measure the results accurately and these are normally priced in the thousands. Due to us not having this equipment, there are only certain tests that we can run.
To perform our tests, we try to push the power supply to its limits, testing the stability of the rails. We run the power supply at idle and load wattages and measure (with a digital multi-meter) the 3.3V, 5V and 12V rails as well as any other 12V rails that the unit may have.
Our test system consists of the following components:
| Test System | |
|---|---|
| Processor (CPU) | AMD Phenom II X6 1100T |
| Motherboard | Asus Crosshair IV Formula |
| Memory (RAM) | 8GB Kingston DDR3 1800MHz |
| Graphics Card | AMD Radeon HD 6850 |
| Heatsink (HSF) | Gelid Solutions Silent Spirit |
| Primary Hard Drive | 2 x Kingston V+ Series 64GB SSD(RAID 0) |
| Power Supply | XFX 850W Black Edition |
| Operating System | Windows 7 Professional Edition 64-bit |
