OCZ MOD XSTREAM 780W Power Supply

OCZ MOD XSTREAM 780W Power Supply
Manufacture: OCZ Provided by: OCZ
Reviewed by:
Date : June 18th 2007

The MOD XTREAM in detail Cont'd

Looking closer at the Molex connectors provided, they have a clip on design making it easier when unplugging the connectors off a device.

The MOD XTREAM offers all new features offered in higher end PSU units such as APFC (Active Power Factor Correction), Overvoltage / Overcurrent / Short-Circuit protection and boasts an efficiency rating of 80%. If you’re looking for more information about these technologies read our review on TAGAN’s 2 Force II 900W Cross Fire certified Power Supply Unit.

The PSU also has four dedicated 12v RAILS with a maximum output current of 20A each. The +3 and +5 RAILS are rated at 30A each with the -12V and +5Vsb rated at 1A and 3A respectively. This level of power would be more than adequate for serious ATI crossfire setups or SLI setups.

Installation

Installation of the unit is quite straight forward. To make things easier for you, start from the larger connectors and work your way downwards as it’ll give you more room to work within confined quarters. OCZ also supplies screws in the same color as the PSU for connecting it to the casing.

Testing

CPU:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 processor @ 3.5GHz

Motherboard:

ASUS P5W DH Deluxe Motherboard

Memory:

2GB OCZ DDR2 PC8000

Graphics Card:

8800 GTX VGA card

Hard Drive:

2 x 250GB Seagate SATA drives in RAID 0

1x 250GB Maxtor SATA Drive

Optical Drive:

Sony 16X DL DVD +/-R/RW

OS:

Windows XP Professional

Cooling Fans:

2 x 120mm case fans and 2 x 80mm fans

Our testing procedure consisted of first getting voltage readings at system idle and then while on full load. We used a digital multimeter to get all our readings since this is more accurate than any other method to record voltage ratings. Getting readings off software that often come with motherboards will not give you accurate results, so if you plan to test your PSU you’ll need to use a multimeter.

A thing to note is that most of you will never really reach the full power output this PSU provides in real life unless you put it on some electronic load simulator; nevertheless we believe the above rig should be adequate to produce a real life scenario which most of you can relate to.

Max load was obtained by overclocking the system slightly and running benchmark tools such as 3D mark, PRIME and a few games for a couple of hours continuously. So here are the results.

As the results show the MOD XTREAM 780W Power supply performs well within specifications of +/- 3% (It was more like +/- 1V). On full load the system is still very stable and we didn’t have any problems at all even after many hours of stress testing. So it certainly is capable of handling very demanding situations well.

Even on full load the PSU wasn’t too loud for our disliking, so OCZ’s POWER WHISPER technology does seem to be doing its job. And as the above numbers show, the temperature on full load is quite decent.

Conclusion

With the amount of wattage available of the12V RAILS places the MOD XTREME 780W well within the big players and will easily power most high-end systems. For quad core setups you might need to upgrade to the 900W model, which will also cover you for future upgrades as well.

On the downside of things users might have a problem with the MOD XTREAM having only 1 PCI-Express power connector and limited number of molex connectors offered. If you can pass beyond these limitations, the MOD XTREAM 780W will be an extremely good choice to power your system.

Having a modular design certainly helps in reducing the clutter within your PC and increases overall airflow within your system, and OCZ’s MOC XTREAM not only caters to this ever increasing demand by users but also packs a load of power to power even the most demanding systems out there. With their recent acquisition of PC Power and Cooling we can only expect to see even better performing power supply units from this already big giant. The MOD XTREAM 780W currently retails in the range of US$169-$180 so search around for the best bargain for these units as they certainly will not disappoint.

Pros:

Active PFC
Silent operation
Fully sleeved cables
OCP and OVP protection
Excellent performance
High efficiency rating

Cons:

Only one PCI-Express power connector
Some users will have a problem with the lack of enough Molex connectors

Performance:	98%
Value:	95%
Build Quality:	98%
Features:	98%

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