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Trepidati0n

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http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.aspx?i=3021

Saw this article and it seems that Anand is stepping up their game. I keep feeling this is in direct response to how well received the [H] PSU reviews have been and how much people value them.

Right now the biggest diff in my mind is the torture test vs their noise test. Based upon what i've seen, for gamers, the [H] still wins hands down. Makes me wonder if Anand is just trying to tow the line and evaluate the given w/o looking for failures of PSU's.

Guess from a presentation point of view, I like their graphs better. They tend to give a nice "complete" picture with little fluff.

Anybody elses thoughts?
 
Trepidati0n said:
Anybody elses thoughts?
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As a manufacturer and reseller of power supplies, Corsair would welcome any review site that steps up its methodology to be more accurate and useful to the consumer. I think it's to the benefit of high-quality manufacturers when any review site, like [H], decides to do real, high-stress component testing.

I'm very interested in Anandtech's accoustic testing, since it looks like it's pretty in-depth. I have to wonder how it will work out. It'll be interesting to see a few of their reviews.
 
Will be interesting what they say if they do blow one up, I notice you have to read between the between the lines to figure out what "you know who" is actually saying, Unlike some sites ;)
 
They don't even look at quality of the DC output of the units, which makes their overall review worthless in my eyes, but they do mention they are working on it.

Then take into the fact we are testing transient loads and they do not even make mention of this....

Their equipment is a bit more limited than ours in terms of load, but that will not make a difference till we see 1600w units.

As for sound testing, good for them. I honestly do not find the need to give a decibel rating on the PSUs. I think Paul's subjective feedback is more than sufficient for our audience.

BUT here is the most important key to great PSU review and good PSU reviews and that is the engineer/author. I will tell you right now that it took me a long time to find a person like Paul Johnson to write for HardOCP. I wanted to start PSU reviews YEARS ago, but could not find the right mixture of passion, knowledge, and desire to present that to our readers. AT is good at finding solid technical people, but I would suggest that [H] has more passion when it comes down to a grassroots level of feeling what the consumer feels. And quite frankly, we have passed up the more knowledgeable guy in the past for the more passionate candidate because we know we can teach him where he is lacking. In Paul's case, he has had as much passion as anyone I have ever seen in this business and he is the one teaching us things. :)

I could not be happier with our PSU reviews. There is a reason that you will find our PSU awards presented on banners on AT, and that is the fact that our PSU content is second to none in the industry, and I think that will be a continuing trend.

I will put my soapbox away now.
 
Blatant self-appraisal sometimes works against its intention, even in the US...

I tend to visit SilentPCreview for advice on PSUs, as they (like me) are not on the 1000W+ bandwagon.

btw I find it strange that no Seasonic PSUs have been tested by H so far, considering that several units from less reputable manufacturers have been tested.
 
jon67 said:
btw I find it strange that no Seasonic PSUs have been tested by H so far, considering that several units from less reputable manufacturers have been tested.
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You mean published.
 
Trepidati0n said:
http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.aspx?i=3021

Saw this article and it seems that Anand is stepping up their game. I keep feeling this is in direct response to how well received the [H] PSU reviews have been and how much people value them.

Right now the biggest diff in my mind is the torture test vs their noise test. Based upon what i've seen, for gamers, the [H] still wins hands down. Makes me wonder if Anand is just trying to tow the line and evaluate the given w/o looking for failures of PSU's.

Guess from a presentation point of view, I like their graphs better. They tend to give a nice "complete" picture with little fluff.

Anybody elses thoughts?
Click to expand...

Personally I seriously doubt it........
I do know they have been talking to various people for several months and from what I am told OCZ has something to do with this.......

Have fun peeps!!
 
Here's some observations I made that I posted in their "comments" section.

1. How much of the voltage drop shown would you contribute to the resistance created by the interface board and wires located between the end of the PSU's connector and the actual load. This isn't my favorite power supply, but I know the voltage regulation isn't nearly as bad as you have it graphed. And naturallly, since load also creates resistance, your voltage is going to decrease exponentially if you're not loading and measuring at the end of the connector. Since you're using a Chroma, I know you're not loading and measuring at the connector. Perhaps you could rig a DMM to measure voltages at the end of the connector instead of reporting what the Chroma is telling you since the Chroma is going to be incorrect since it doesn't take into consideration this added resistance.

2. Do you think it's possible to define "10%, 20%, etc." as it pertains to your loads. Naturally, you can't load all rails by 80%, 90%, 100%" because you'd easily exceed the power supplies capabilities. And certainly you're not loading the +12V with 80%, 90% 100% and then filling up the remainder with a 3.3V and 5V load because then you would crossload the PSU with an unusually high +12V load.

3. And, at risk of sounding like I'm beating a dead horse, ripple and noise results. We all know spec is 1%, and ripple and noise does typically increase with load. It would be nice to see if the power supplies being tested stay within that spec. through out it's total advertised capability.
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Unfortunately, the comments section is dead compared to the forums and even when the author of the review popped in to thank everyone for their fine comments, none of my concerns were addressed.

I even said "good job" and "look forward to the next PSU review" so it didn't seem as if I were trolling. ;) Seriously... I don't think the Olympia/Decathlon has the best regulation, but they graph it as having horrible regulation on all rails and I think that has everything to do with the equipment they use to test.

And the 10%, 20%, 30% killed me. Very reminiscent of Tom's PSU reviews. Telling me the PSU is loaded 10%, 20% and 30% without telling me the actual load is like Motor Trend telling me if the car was going fast, faster or fastest during the 0 to 60. :(
 
jon67 said:
Yeah that's absolutely horrible.

In order to stand out from Anand's and even SPCR's noise evaluations you could include a noise frequency spectrum, if possible with phon compensation, along with the subjective impression. That would be pretty hard to beat. Free advice for you right there ;)
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We have been over this ad nauseum but the SM-8800 and really all the load testers we looked at that are designed for this pupose are loud....very very loud. As such MikeC is the best bet on getting accurate sound numbers and well should be as that is his focus. Our focus is slightly different ;)
 
jon67 said:
Yeah that's absolutely horrible.

In order to stand out from Anand's and even SPCR's noise evaluations you could include a noise frequency spectrum, if possible with phon compensation, along with the subjective impression. That would be pretty hard to beat. Free advice for you right there ;)
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I don't think we need comprehensive sound evaluations of PSUs to "stand out" and the fact is that we did very much consider doing this in our evaluations and decided it was not worth the resources to our readers. That is not to say that you do not find it important. All of their fancy sound testing in their first review was summed as this:

The power supply didn't produce any noise other than from the fan which can be quite bothersome from time to time. There is no ticking noise from the fan either.
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We don't need a decibel metric chart to tell us that. I think our subjective component is just fine.

I can tell you that after years of evaluating hardware that loudness is seldom the actual problem with fan noise. Obviously being too loud is sometimes an issue but being annoying is quite another and there is not a decibel meter in the world that can tell you that. :(
 
The focus of the sites are different. SPCR is more for the those who really care about noise (aka the site name lol). Alot of HTPC builders there and noise is important. On the contrary a site like XtremeSystems no one gives a damn about sound as long you can break the WR on some particular benchmark. IMO [H] leans more towards XS end of the spectrum than SPCR. I think Anandtech is pretty similar to [H] therefore I wouldnt really care about their noise review. I would just read the SPCR stuff if I was concerned since IMO SPCR gives the most through reviews on noise. I would not go as far as to say Anandtech's reviews will be useless though. The more reviews the better. You never know what a reviewer could have missed.
 
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