Super Flower's Upcoming Affordable Power Supplies
Super Flower announced today its upcoming affordable PSUs, which will be based on a double-forward topology platform and will feature Bronze efficiency.
Super Flower revealed an upcoming line of affordable PSUs. The company behind EVGA's high-end units announced 10 products featuring 80 PLUS Bronze efficiency, three of which have an optional semi-modular cable design, with the rest using native cables to restrict production costs.
The company said the new units are based on a double-forward topology platform, which will use quality components like Fairchild PWM and PFC controllers, Infineon PWM controllers and FETs, Fujitsu relays, Teapo 105℃ caps, and the like.
The first model of this line, the 450W member, will be released in Q1-Q2 2017. SF's new Bronze units will cover the 400W to 850W range, and in the U.S. market, where Super Flower doesn't have a retail presence, we will probably see those PSUs under EVGA's brand. Unfortunately there is no price information.
The platform uses very small heatsinks, and the PCB is underpopulated. We did notice that there are no DC-DC converters for the generation of the minor rails, and we're somewhat worried about there being only two coils on the secondary side, because that is an indication of a group-regulation scheme. In a group-regulated scheme, usually the +12V and 5V rails are regulated together, so in highly unbalanced (among the rails) loads, the voltages of the rails show great deviations.
The bulk capacitor will be provided by Teapo, like all the rest in this platform. (We would prefer a good Japanese cap.) The bulk cap is of high importance because it deals with very high voltage (loosely regulated 380VDC bus voltage), which can easily shorten the lifetime of a low quality cap. Nonetheless, SF looks to be highly confident about the reliability of this platform, and given its tradition of quality so far, we should trust its design choices.
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Aris Mpitziopoulos is a contributing editor at Tom's Hardware, covering PSUs.
-
anbello262 I think it would be interesting to see a standarized modular and semi-modular design, with interchangeable cabling among brands, and some brands selling affordable modular PSUs with no included cables (for people who already have a cable set from older PSUs)Reply -
PancakePuppy They should have worked harder to hide the "TEAPO" name on the PFC cap. Garbage capacitors make a garbage power supply.Reply -
damric They need to innovate and put out something that screams awesome like when LEADEX came out. LEADEX is still great but other manufacturers have caught up and surpassed that platform.Reply -
Onus Aris, I hope you are able to obtain and review one as soon as they are available. Is it possible that a method has been found to better regulate crossloaded rails in a group regulated design?Reply
I have to wonder if this is a "Corsair CX killer;" a budget PSU that, while nothing special, should be more reliable / cheaper than the CX. -
80-watt Hamster Reply19177320 said:They should have worked harder to hide the "TEAPO" name on the PFC cap. Garbage capacitors make a garbage power supply.
I don't read a great number of PSU reviews, but do remember OklahomaWolf of Jonnyguru.com stating that his opinion on Teapo capacitors has been improving over the last few years, particularly the 105C parts. With that in mind, coupled with the fact that a manufacturer with Super Flower's reputation is willing to incorporate them into a mass-market design, calling them garbage is uncharitable at best and flat-out wrong at worst. -
anbello262 In this case, I will put my trust in the company and believe they know what they are doing. I doubt they would be willing to lose their reputation over a low priced PSU. Of course, reviews will have the final word.Reply
BTW, am I the only one who reads TEAPO as CHEAPO? -
damric Is the tried and true Golden Green platform not profitable enough to manufacture anymore?Reply