XFX ProSeries 650W Power Supply Review

XFX has long and actually very solid history of producing high quality enthusiast power supplies. We have consistently found XFX PSUs worthy of [H] Editor's Choice Awards. Today the XFX ProSeries 650W promises "One Rail, One Setup" in a PSU that is different. Let's see if that is good or bad.

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Overview

The first thing we are going to look at with the XFX ProSeries 650W 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.

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The packaging of the XFX ProSeries 650W is just about identical to that of the other XFX ProSeries units we have reviewed to date. As before, we see that this unit listed that it is certified for SLI and CrossFire configurations but neither the SLIZone nor the AMD CrossFireX webpage list this unit as being certified for any level of multi-GPU support at the time of writing. We also see that the unit is listed as being certified for 80 Plus Bronze levels of efficiency. After the lack of certification previously seen for the multi-gpu standards, it is good to see that the 80 Plus website does have this unit listed. The balance of what we find on the packaging is recycled marketing points from prior units and the extensive "easy rail" marketing nonsense. The last pieces of useful information we find are the power output figures (reproduced below) and the warranty. As with other XFX units, this unit is covered by a 2 year warranty standard even though it advertises a 5 year warranty. If you want the 5 year warranty you are going to have to register your unit within 30 days of purchase. So be careful of the shady slight of hand there!

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As we see from the above information, the XFX ProSeries 650W has a power distribution that is identical to what we saw from the Core Edition 650W some time ago. This means we, once more, get a single 12v rail with a capacity of 53A or ~98% of the units total output if necessary. The minor rails each have a peak capacity of 25A and a combined capacity of 150W. The connector output paired with this unit is different than what we saw with the Core Edition 650W though, which is interesting. Today, we see that the number of PCI-E connectors has doubled to 4 and the number of Molex connectors has dropped to 5. Otherwise, we again see eight SATA connectors on this unit for use with peripherals. All in all, this is a better appointed 650W unit than the previous Core Edition 650W and might be a better match for a number of enthusiast setups that go more GPU heavy.

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Once we open the ProSeries 650W box we find the power supply, the power cable, mounting screws, modular cables, and the user manual. The user manual that comes with the unit is 15 pages long in English only. Inside of it we find the power information and connector counts for the "XFX PRO650W XXX EDITION", "XFX PRO750W XXX EDITION", and "XFX PRO650W XXX EDITION" (I guess this unit is one of those) as well as the connector count for all three. There is also a brief section on installing the power supply and a really brief selection on troubleshooting. After that, we find the warranty information which tells us we have a 5 year warranty, unless you are in Europe where you have a 5 year warranty but you don't really get a 5 year warranty because it is 3 years unless you register within 30 days! Completely skipped is the part that the warranty in NA is 2 years (as stated on FXF's product page and quoted below) unless you register within 30 days to get the 5 year warranty that is plastered everywhere. For those looking, the text can be found here:

2 year standard warranty with all PSUs - simply register your PSU when purchased at http://xfxforce.com/en-gb/Help/Support.aspx to obtain a 5 year warranty.