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Titanium Efficiency At Premium Cost
Without a doubt, Super Flower created a winner in the Leadex Titanium PSU. This is the company's superb new platform, which is highly versatile, able to deliver a wide range of power (up to 2kW) with efficiency levels that meet the strictest (at least for the moment) 80 PLUS Titanium requirements. I believe that only Flextronics, with its amazing Corsair AX1500i, has something that can really surpass this new Leadex platform in overall performance. However, even that PSU's digital circuits lose in out to the Titanium Super Flower when it comes to efficiency. Instead, Flextronics achieves a better overall performance score.
The new Leadex Titanium PSU has many advantages and is currently the most efficient high-capacity PSU on the market. The engineers who built it clearly pushed the analog circuits to their limits in order to keep energy losses to a minimum. Doing this requires numerous testing hours, extensive knowledge and, of course, a good design.
All of the above, along with the quality components used, play into the high price that Super Flower is asking for this unit. After all, there are only two Titanium-rated products in this category, and the most efficient one is this Leadex PSU. It may lack the digital circuits that allow for software monitoring and control, but some could argue that in a PSU it is better to keep things as simple as possible. In my opinion, however, digital circuits are the way to go for even more efficient and higher-performing PSUs, since designs like the one used in this Titanium Leadex PSU are really difficult to improve any further.
Compared to the Platinum- and Gold-rated versions of this platform, the Titanium implementation had to make some small sacrifices in ripple suppression and load regulation to achieve higher efficiency levels. However, this didn't prevent this PSU from achieving high overall performance, which classifies it among the best PSUs that money can buy. If you're looking for similar capacity and a better performance per dollar ratio, then look to the Gold version of this platform. Also a terrific product, it is currently sold at a much lower price than its Platinum and Titanium siblings.
The Titanium Leadex has other downsides besides its high price. Take the huge dimensions and the noise that its fan makes once it is engaged if you select the semi-passive mode, for example. Also, you can't find this product anywhere in the U.S, disqualifying it from award contention.
Aris Mpitziopoulos is a Contributing Editor for Tom's Hardware. Contact him as Aris_Mp on the forums.
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