Date:
Monday , July 21, 2008
Author:
Paul Johnson
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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Koolance PSU-1300ATX-12N Liquid Cooled Power Supply

We put the screws to Koolance's new 1300 watt power supply that takes advantage of being fully immersed in a non-conductive cooling liquid. Yes, we test at 100% load and 8-hour Torture Tests! Then we tear it apart to show you the insides. We almost cried.

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Load Testing

For those of you that are curious as to some of the reasoning and equipment behind our PSU testing program here at HardOCP, we have put together a living document that shares a lot of the behind the scenes of the program. The testing we are conducting today is exactly as described in that document and will begin with a range of loads tested at 120v input including our torture test and then move on to the same set of tests at 100v input but without the torture test.

120v Load Testing Results

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Test #1 is equal to approximately 25% of the rated capacity of the Koolance 1300w at 45c. This makes Test #1 equal to 319w by loading the 12v rails to a combined 24a, the 5v rail to 2a, the 3.3v rail to 1a, the +5vsb to 2a, and the -12v to 0.5a. The results of Test #1 are all good with the DC output voltages all starting off slightly above nominal values. The efficiency is also coming in at 82.64% while our Exos-2's temperature sensor is reading a coolant temperature of 46c.

Test #2 is equal to approximately 50% of the rated capacity of the Koolance 1300w at 45c. This makes Test #2 equal to 673w by loading the 12v rails to a combined 52a, the 5v rail to 4a, the 3.3v rail to 2a, the +5vsb to 2a, and the -12v to 0.5a. Test #2 showed slight across the board drops with the exception being 12v4 which has actually risen some here. The efficiency has moved up to 85.19% while the coolant temperature has also moved up to 47c.

Test #3 is equal to approximately 75% of the rated capacity of the Koolance 1300w at 45c. This makes Test #3 equal to 975w by loading the 12v rails to a combined 76a, the 5v rail to 6a, the 3.3v rail to 4a, the +5vsb to 2a, and the -12v to 0.5a. Test #3 sees the same trend as Test #2 with all the rails dropping slightly except for 12v4 which has moved up once more. The efficiency has moved down from its Test #2 high to 82.35% while the coolant temperature has risen to 49c.

Test #4 is equal to approximately 100% of the rated capacity of the Koolance 1300w at 45c. This makes Test #4 equal to 1300w by loading the 12v rails to a combined 106a, the 5v rail to 2a, the 3.3v rail to 1a, the +5vsb to 2a, and the -12v to 0.5a. In our final regular test, we once more see small drops in the DC output voltages including 12v4 this time. The unit’s efficiency has dropped significantly from Test #3 as it hits 79.17% here with a coolant temperature of 51c.

120v Load Testing Summary

The 120v load testing results for the Koolance 1300w were all good in the metrics used in our evaluation. The voltage regulation of the Koolance 1300w was certainly good but a bit mixed when it came to the 12v rails with 12v1 showing a peak change of 0.17v while 12v4 only showed a change of 0.03v during testing. At the same time the Koolance 1300w posted efficiency values of 79.17% (100% load) to 85.19% (50% load) which is a very good peak value at 50% load, though a bit lower at full load than we would hope for. At the same time the unit was very cool showing a peak coolant temperature of 51c; keep in mind our ambient temperature is a hot 45c. This low temperature delta is certainly due to the use of the liquid cooling solution and benefits in our testing from being the only thing cooled by the Exos-2.