Which Platinum-Rated Power Supply Should You Buy?
If it’s the cream of the power supply crop that you seek, then we just looked at five different models that certainly deserve such a distinction. They all sport very high efficiency, which is what we were expecting from a round-up of Platinum-rated PSUs.
But two of these products stand out from the crowd: Cooler Master's Silent Pro Platinum gives us unprecedented power efficiency, followed by the value-packed Rosewill Fortress 550.
However, the Enermax Platimax 600 W and Kingwin Lazer Titanium 550 W aren't all that far behind. Most of the samples we reviewed exhibited minor flaws. For example, Rosewill's Fortress 550 exceeds the maximum allowable ripple voltage on the 12 V rail, which is an indication of cutting corners in circuit design or component quality. While Enermax's Platimax also exhibits spikes on the DC rails, they're extremely short and can safely be disregarded.
Although the Cooler Master and Kingwin models don't suffer any specific flaws, we still have suggestions for both manufacturers: we’d like to see longer cables on the Silent Pro Platinum, and better soldering on the Lazer Platinum.
At the end of the day, Cooler Master, Enermax, and Kingwin share a first-place finish in today's round-up, and prospective customers should make their decision between those three power supplies based on your own criteria (price, the number of 12 V rails, connector counts, and so on).
The price/performance winner is Antec. No other company offers such high efficiency at an entry-level price. Though the EarthWatts Platinum 550 W misses the stringent 80 PLUS Platinum thresholds by a slim margin, we think the power supply's price point offsets that to a large degree. We also determined that the 80 PLUS organization's test criteria partly differs from ours, primarily with respect to the load placed on each rail. So, we do believe that Antec deserves its Platinum logo, as long as you follow the organization's methodology. If you can live without modular cables, the EarthWatts Platinum is worth looking at, too.