Testing

Installation

As this PSU was destined to be sat by our tri-SLI machine, there was no need to mount it in a case. That said, the Absolute is quite a weighty number and it would be advisable to find a case that supports the PSU in some other way than just the four rear screws.

The length of the unit may also cause an issue in small cases, as it’s slightly longer than your average power pusher. Another slight issue is that the surround of the power lead socket is very close to the edge of the unit, which may conflict with the back of your case.

Methodology

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As we’ve yet to come up with an expandable, real-world, repeatable test for analyzing power supplies it should be noted that these results can only be compared to the models listed below and not with any of our other reviews.

For this test, we’ll be using the below configuration.

Processor	Intel E6750 Core 2 Duo @ stock
Motherboard	XFX 780i Tri-SLI
RAM	4 x 512MB OCZ DDR2
Drives	Western Digital Protégé IDE HDD SATA DVD drive
Graphics card	XFX 8800 Ultra XFX 8800 Ultra

While we have the ability to test tri-SLI, none of the power supplies had the required connectors in order to feed the three cards (four PCI-e, not six); hence this is the current maximum GPU load these units will ever see.

To test, we run full screen (1600x1200) RTHDRIBL which is a primarily graphics stress program, although it uses 50% of the CPU too. This is run for half an hour and the voltages are taken, along with the PF reading, and the wattage pulled from the mains. The idle testing is done with nothing running and the PF value and wattage are read again. The system is tested with a run-through of 3Dmark06 to make sure that the units are stable, and to test the noise output.