February 15th, 2011

Seventeam V-Force 650w

Testing

Test Rig

Processor	Intel Core i7 920 @ 2.67GHz
Motherboard	Asus P6T SE
Memory	OCZ Gold Triple Channel Platinum PC3-10666 6GB (3 x 2GB)
Graphics Card	XFX 1GB Radeon 4870
Hard Drive	Seagate Barracuda 3.0GB/s 7200.10 500GB
Power Supply	NOX Apex 700W
Enclosure	Antec P183
OS	Windows Vista 64-bit

Methodology

Testing power supplies is a bit of a mine field, as many sites – like our own – test rail voltages to measure stability and tightness to the ideal rail rating. For a multitude of reasons these are imperfect tests. That said, without several tens of thousands of pounds worth of equipment, it’s not possible to accurately measure PSU ratings.

With that in mind, we still use our multimeter rail test during idle and load states to give something; if at least a real world comparison between units. It’s not perfect, and we would ask our readers to not ba
e your PSU purchase solely on this review, but hopefully we can give some measure of comparing units. If not, then at least you know these units are capable of running out test setup for a prolonged period of time; or not.

The software used to load the PC was CPU Burn-In on all CPU cores, and the 3Dmark benchmark running at full tilt to load the GPU.

Results

Rail Stability

[Seventeam V-Force 650w]

Clearly, in terms of rail stability, the Seventeam unit is not the best with the rails changing by quite a bit from idle to load. They are by no means a poor set of results but don’t exactly make your jaw drop.

PF Rating & Efficiency

	PF Standby	PF Idle	PF Load	Watt Standby	Watt Idle	Watt Load
Antec CP-850	0.87	0.89	0.98	4	201	445
NOX Apex 700W	0.86	0.94	0.97	2	206	434
Seventeam V-Force 650W	0.88	0.93	0.96	5	211	428
Cooler Master Silent Pro M 500W	0.87	0.94	0.99	3	200	437
Nesteq ASM Xzero 500W	0.87	0.94	0.97	5	203	430

In terms of efficiency the Seventeam V-Force 650 does a very good job though. In particular, the PF ratings are much better than the competition especially at idle – obviously the APFC is doing its job well.

Looking at power consumption, the unit is a little greener than some of its counterparts and it doesn’t require quite as much juice.

Noise

Noise is about average for this PSU I would say; the 120mm fan doesn’t do a bad job and the fact that the RPM only increases up to a much higher level as the wattage too increases is a good thing. However, many PSUs now uses 135mm or 140mm fans which can spin at lower rates so as to churn out less noise, thus this unit is a little noisier than the larger power supplies.