Gigabyte Greenmax Plus 450W: Measurements
Efficiency According to the 80 PLUS Spec
Efficiency by Load
Of course, lab results matter more than bundled goodies. So, let’s start with our two pet peeves: ripple and noise. Like all of the power supplies in our round-up, we observe brief spikes on the output rails. They're most pronounced on the 5 and 3.3 V rails. While even the 12 V rails exhibit spikes, they are within the ATX specification's limits. When we disregard the peaks, the oscilloscope's waveforms look a lot nicer.
The Greenmax Plus 450W's efficiency is almost on a par with Cooler Master and Corsair, which is to say it's good. This 450 W power supply stands out from the crowd in two ways. First, its inrush current is quite high at 230 V (62 A). On the other hand, its hold-up time is approximately 25 ms, or almost twice as good as the Silent Pro M2's hold-up time. However, the Greenmax Plus is outclassed by other PSUs when it comes to our acoustic measurements. We observed up to 35.5 dB(A), which is quite audible in a quiet room.
A Close Look at the PCB
The Greenmax Plus 450W's yellow PCB is somewhat smaller than the chassis can fit, which means the layout is necessarily compact. The cooling fins are pretty diminutive compared to Cooler Master's, for example. But we noticed that Gigabyte still uses quality components; there's no cost-cutting we can readily identify. The main capacitor on the primary side is made by Japan-based Nippon Chemi-Con, while the other capacitors are made by Samxon (we already encountered this brand inside Corsair's CX500). While the input filter is not split into two parts, we found all necessary components. We also found the soldering quality to be OK.
