PSU Roundup: Mega Power in xATX style!

Cases & PSU/Power Supplies by JNav89GT @ 2005-02-07

Clean and steady power is what our computers crave, almost like we humans need clean and abundant air. Sure we can live in a polluted environment, but our health will suffer, and our tolerance to exercise will be lessened. To the point, when overclocking our precious PCs, a high quality power supply is paramount in maintaining and pushing performance. Today we are looking at some of the finest power supplies we have ever had the joy to work with.

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Zippy PSL-6701P 700W

Zippy PSL-6701P 700W
Supplied by: Zippy
Products details: Manufactures' website


When I opened the box that Zippy sent and first saw the HP2-6460P I was impressed. After I dug deeper and found the PSL-6701P I was simply floored. This thing is a monster, a huge enormous monster. Almost twice the size of a normal ATX power supply the unit looks built to rock and roll and the specs are impressive to say the least. I was told the PSL-6701P would be a better choice for overclockers than the PSL-6700P. The difference between the two is with the ratings on the 12v/5v/and 3.3v rails. Where the 6701P has a stronger 12v rail, the 6700P offers higher 5v and 3.3v rails. Edward described for server application the 6700P would be recommended where there would be numerous hard drives etc... However for high CPU demands he recommended the 6701P.

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I was able to use this power supply for about 1 month prior to actually getting time to review it. All I can say is whatever system I had it in was like a rock. I had absolutely no question when it came to power and the stability of the systems was excellent. The only negative about this unit is it might not fit in some cases do to its size. I have placed it in several cases without issues, but I will admit my cases are larger ATX mid or full-tower designs. That said, this is by far the best power supply I have ever had the privilege to work with. A plethora of power connectors both in 12 Molex plugs, 4 SATA power plugs, 2 Floppy power connectors, plus the standard 24 plug extended ATX header, 4 pin Auxiliary power, 8 pin EPS power cable and the 6 pin PCI Express card power cable are included as well. If you choose to buy this Power supply and need to use it on an older 20 pin ATX board, you will need an adapter which can be found at most larger merchants.

Similar to its little cousin, the PSL-6701P has only one rear exhaust fan. When I asked Edward Chang about this he sent me some interesting literature/data.

"Some power supplies boast to have two, even three fans and are claiming two/three are better than one. The truth is, in order to maintain same mechanical dimension, low end power supply downsize high value key components, like heat sink, capacitor, transformer and etc to render room for a low cost (around $1.00) sleeve or no name ball bearing fan. When any of these low end fans failed, smaller heatsink can not handle the fast rising heat, the very next thing you will notice is a smoking power supply! Heavy duty, high end power supplies have passed rigid thermal certification within specified working temperature range with ONE industrial grade ball bearing fan. When one is enough, why two? In addition, most motherboard and CPU manufacturers suggest adding case fan to help system cooling. The additional power supply fan actually interferes with normal chassis thermal design."


I had also asked him about multiple 12v rails and that concept and got an interesting response to that question!

"The PSL-6701P has one +12V rail only. The split rail concept came from Intel. We have challenged Intel Technical Dept with such inappropriate definitions since they proposed it. The background of split rails is to limit the output of each +12V rails to 240VA so it is non-hazard to human. But this will add tremendous power supply design efforts and it also conflicts with their power hungry CPU roadmap. New Nocona CPU is rated at 135W (converted to VA with typical 85% VRM efficiency yield 158VA) each. So a four CPU system requires at least 5-6 rails of +12V (four for each CPU and 1-2 for peripherals). This will end up with a monster size power supply. That’s why most power supply manufacturers are not following their proposal. We have customers using PSL-6701P in a dual Xeon system with 14 Western Digital hard disks in two stripes (seven each) for video animation/rendering and it works flawlessly."

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