CeBIT 2008: The Best of the Rest

More power supplies

We sat down for a long and very interesting chat with Seasonic PSU Guru, Walter Sun, who took us through Seasonic's new M12II unit. It features a scratch resistant, powder-coated inside and out, a high quality ADDA 12cm fan and an MTBF rated at 120k hours at 50˚C.

In addition, the modular connectors remain the same, but throughout the conversation Mr. Sun was keen to point out the emphasis on quality for Seasonic products. For example, the smoothness of the ball bearing in the fan and whether the spindle can take the stress as the unit is likely hung upside down for most of its life.

We still think the modular connectors are too tightly packed and could use reseating with the clips facing away from each other. The unit on display was just 500W but it still featured the same DC-DC conversion as explained above.


Tagan showed off its ESA compatible BZ series which we first wrote about here. Here are some pictures of it in action though – the connector lights and connectors are certainly high quality, and even though we think it looks pretty cool in the dark it's yet another set of lights in a case.


We also spotted Corsair's new HX1000W unit - it’s a semi modular unit and is longer than the other Corsair PSUs, but it is the first 1,000W unit to be certified for 3-way SLI – every other unit that’s certified is rated to at least 1,100W. The HX1000W uses a 140mm fan, solid aluminium capped capacitors and a 12V rail that can deliver a whopping 80 Amps. To do this, it also features the same DC-DC conversion we mentioned above.


Budget power supply manufacturer Silverpower had an 850W model on display with slightly revamped styling, but BFG was the bigger hitter with a completely new product. While its old FSP models were, well, not great, BFGTech has employed the services of the PSU review master, Johnny Guru to help design this model to vastly increase the quality. The branding looks better, the quality of the fan and cables look better and we can't wait to get a hold of the new ES series 800W model shown here.


Next up was Zalman and it is still pushing the heatpipe thing very heavily in all its PSUs, which all feature copper pipes and fins clearly visible by the exhaust. The modular connectors mirror those on the Seasonic units, but they’re placed in a much more favourable arrangement. The smooth, flat black cables are wonderful though – in some ways even improving on the flat black cables that come with the Ultra X3s and new Cooler Masters (above) that we’re big fans of. However, we expect them to bend and fold with more resistance which could make tidying them a lot more difficult.


Finally, we have BeQuiet's latest offering. The company approached us last year with some early samples but early samples they were – one popped rather loudly when we plugged it in and the other was simply DoA. However, a year later and BeQuiet assures us that significant R&D has gone in to the units which now feature colour co-ordinated modular plugs and a range of wattages.


That’s all for another year at CeBIT!