NZXT Teams Up With Seasonic for Semi-Digital E Series PSUs

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NZXT teamed up with Seasonic for the release of its E series, which consists of three power supplies with capacities ranging from 500W to 850W. The PSUs are 80 PLUS Gold certified, use a fully modular cable design, and are covered by a hefty 10-year warranty. They also feature a semi-passive mode for dead silent operation under light loads (up to 100W).

These PSUs also use a special version of the Focus Plus Gold platform, which features a digital interface courtesy of a Texas Instruments DSP. The platform's main functions still use analogue controllers, but thanks to the digital interface, you can monitor all rails and track total power-on time. There is also software over current protection on all three 12V outputs, with adjustable thresholds for the EPS and PCIe connectors.

All three PSUs will be available in the U.S. and Europe during the end of July and the MSRP pricing is the following:

• E500 - $125
• E650 - $140
• E850 - $150

Those prices are quite stiff, especially for the 500 and 650W models, while the very small price difference between the E650 and the E850 will surely affect the E650 unit's sales. At least in our opinion, NZXT should focus more on developing a fully digital platform if it wants to offer something truly innovative, instead of using an analogue platform and simply adding a digital interface with some added protection features.

The true strength in fully digital PSUs is the advanced control features that allow the utilization of highly efficient converters (e.g. totem pole PFC). Totem pole PFC converters are able to offer up to 99% efficiency levels, dramatically reducing energy losses, especially in high capacity PSUs. The major setback so far is that there are no commercial analog controllers available for totem pole PFC converters at this time. On the contrary, digital controllers, which can be programmed accordingly, can easily handle the increased demands of a totem pole PFC converter.