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- Date:
- Wednesday, November 04, 2009
- Author:
- Paul Johnson
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Kingwin LZ-1000 1000W Power Supply Review
No matter how you look at it, 1 kilowatt, or 1000 watts, it is a lot of power that most computer enthusiasts will never need. Rest assured though, some of us do need all that power and we are generally very picky about that much power gets delivered to our enthusiast computer builds. Kingwin's LZ-1000 is up to that job?
Overview
The first thing we are going to look at with the Kingwin LZ-1000 is its packaging, accessories, and documentation. While normally none of these items is a make or break item for a power supply the packaging quite often contains a lot of information about the product we are purchasing. The inclusion of an owner’s manual that provides actual information about our product is also of great help. Accessories are almost unnecessary with a power supply as the unit is self contained, unless it is modular, but there are cases where a manufacturer can include useful accessories to make installation, routing, and use more efficient.
The Kingwin LZ-1000 comes in a rather colorfully decorated box complete with carrying handle that very much resembles that of previously reviewed Kingwin units. Like those previous unit, the packaging has a good bit of information on it including the number of connectors, types of connectors, 80Plus Bronze seal, and a lot of marketing points. While the packaging does lack the power table, the one reproduced below comes from the manual and unit itself. A quick check of the 80Plus website does indeed find the LZ-1000 listed as 80Plus Bronze (or Climate Saver 2) certified. Now while the unit does not carry the SLI logo we went ahead and checked since units are often listed after production starts. What we find is that the LZ-1000 is not currently listed as SLI Certified, however the 1000W Mach 1 power supply which this unit shares a platform with is SLI Certified for up to GTX 280 SLI. Additionally, this unit is advertised as "compatible" with up to 3-way SLI in the advertising bullet points. As such, I would expect the unit to do just fine in most SLI configurations especially if it makes it through our test. Previous Kingwin units we have reviewed have carried very short one year warranties, this time around we see that the LZ-1000 has upgraded a bit here as it now hosts a 3 year warranty. This is certainly better than one year but it still is a bit on the short side for enthusiast class products.
The paper specifications for the Kingwin LZ-1000 are interesting and require a bit of explaining. While the 12v rails have a total capacity of 80A or 960W the actually arrangement of these 12v rails is a bit odd. There are not six 12v rails as the packaging and documentation indicate. Rather, there are three 12v rails broken down as indicated above. This breakdown means that the modular connectors get a possible 60A, the motherboard connector a whopping 35A, and the other fixed cables a possible 55A in any amounts necessary up to the unit’s total 12v capacity. This certainly is one approach to the multiple 12v rail arrangement that can eliminate issues with users possibly overloading a single smaller 12v rail as these three 12v rails are massive! Coupled with this we find that the unit comes equipped with three 6-pin PCI-Express connectors and three 8-pin PCI-Express connectors along with a total of sixteen peripheral connectors (8 Molex and 8 SATA). Overall, this unit should be sufficient to run most tri-SLI systems and most users’ large RAID arrays given its generous number of connectors and large 12v rails.
Once we open the Kingwin LZ-1000 we see the contents mirror those of all previous Kingwin products we have reviewed. There is the power supply itself, the power cord, mounting screws, manual, and since the unit is modular a plastic tray containing all the cables. The manual with this unit is typical of what SuperFlower provides with their branded power supplies and is one of the more thorough on the market. However we find two problems once more in this now 8 page long (in English) manual. The first is that the manual does not give the 12v rail breakdown which one would think would not be problematic as the modular connectors are universal (one would be wrong). The other issue is the warranty information is once more MIA. Let's move on now and see what this unit looks like once we open it up.