Head2Head: Power Supplies

The method?
A PSU is strapped into the test bench.

We boot with all the hard drives attached. If it fails, we unplug a hard drive and boot again. Loop until boot is satisfied. Bake until golden brown.
Once we’re satisfied that the system is stable, we note the number of drives that remain plugged in that can all be started at once in a spreadsheet that will soon explode into megabytes of further results.

We have three reasonably expensive multimeters that log results to their own CSV file every half second. We use them to probe and log the voltages on the 3.3, 5 and 12 volt rails for a few minutes under three different scenarios: as Big Willy starts up, sits idle in Windows and runs through our tests.

From there, we average out the results, observe the startup voltages over the first ten seconds, and write everything we know about them.

Show your working
If you hit this link, you will find an Excel spreadsheet with all the results that we’ve gathered during this roundup. Feel free to check it out to see half-second by half-second results of how all the power supplies fared during our tests.

We’ll be testing more power supplies as they arrive in labs – and we’ll be updating this file as we do so. Check back in with us online to peer into some of the most horrendously detailed results you’ll find on power supplies anywhere in the world.