Date:
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Author:
Paul Johnson
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
Google +1

Tagan BZ 1300W PSU

Tagan delivers some impressive features in this 1300 watt powerhouse of a PSU. It is advertised as future proof and guaranteed to last, but does it deliver the full 1300 watts of advertised power under our test conditions?

continued...

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

Article Image

Test #1 is equal to approximately 25% of the rated capacity of the Tagan BZ 1300W at 45c. This makes Test #1 equal to 327w by loading the 12v rail to a combined 23a, the 5v rail to 5a, the 3.3v rail to 3a, the +5vsb to 2a, and the -12v to 0.5a. The results of Test #1 are a good start as everything is starting off well within specifications. The real star here is that starting efficiency of 84.49% which is excellent!

Test #2 is equal to approximately 50% of the rated capacity of the Tagan BZ 1300W at 45c. This makes Test #2 equal to 637w by loading the 12v rail to a combined 46a, the 5v rail to 10a, the 3.3v rail to 6a, the +5vsb to 2a, and the -12v to 0.5a. Test #2 sees the positive DC output voltages all shed some with a peak change of 0.06v being recorded on the +5vsb rail (and the load didn't change there). The efficiency has moved up here in Test #2 and it lands at 85.16% with an exhaust temperature of 49c. Again good results!

Test #3 is equal to approximately 75% of the rated capacity of the Tagan BZ 1300W at 45c. This makes Test #3 equal to 961w by loading the 12v rail to 69a, the 5v rail to 17a, the 3.3v rail to 11a, the +5vsb to 2a, and the -12v to 0.5a. Test #3 sees another across the board drop in the DC output voltages with the +5vsb and 5v dropping the most at 0.05v while the 12v rail lost a peak of 0.06v on one connector. The efficiency has begun to retreat from Test #2's high as it hits 82.84% here.

Test #4 is equal to approximately 100% of the rated capacity of the Tagan BZ 1300W at 45c. This makes Test #4 equal to 1296w by loading the 12v rail to 92a, the 5v rail to 23a, the 3.3v rail to 17a, the +5vsb to 3a, and the -12v to 0.5a. In the final regular test we end with another across the board drop in DC output voltages with the largest change this time being on the 12v rail at 0.09v. The efficiency during Test #4 has dropped to 80.39% while the exhaust temperature has moved up to 60c.

120v Load Testing Summary

The Tagan BZ 1300W certainly passed all of our 120v load tests but in the process it posted some rather interesting items. The first being, while the 12v rail dropped only 0.17v over a 92A spread the 3.3v rail dropped 0.15v over a 17A spread which is just 65% of its capacity compared to 100% of the 12v rails. While in specification, this is certainly not great voltage regulation for this rail considering this is an independently regulated design. The other interesting point here is the efficiency which starts off testing very high at 84.49% at 25% load and peaks at 85.16% at 50% but drops right to the 80% level at full load. This is very good for the low loads as that is where the majority of users are going to find themselves, but at higher loads the steep drop off to 80% is a bit disappointing.