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Review: FSP Aurum PT 1,200W

by Tarinder Sandhu on 23 October 2015, 13:59

Tags: FSP Group (TPE:3015)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qacvl3

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Conclusion

...Industry giant FSP has realised that making supplies for other people, whilst beneficial from a volume point of view, does little to enhance its own reputation.

The last five years have seen every PSU manufacturer up its game to a level where it's far more difficult to find a below-average supply than a good one.

The race for electrical excellence is most pronounced at the premium end of the market that's characterised by a number of 80 PLUS Platinum and a smattering of Titanium-rated supplies.

Industry giant FSP has realised that making supplies for other people, whilst beneficial from a volume point of view, does little to enhance its own reputation, and this is why it's forging a retail presence of its own through the Aurum PT line.

Highly efficient and quiet across all loads, the only minor blot on what is an otherwise top-quality PSU is a lack of fully flat cables for all ports and, if we're being picky, no semi-passive fan mode. In all other respects, however, this is a PSU primed for users who run everything at 11.

The Good
  
The Bad
Premium electrical performance
Very good efficiency
Low noise
7-year warranty
Competitive price
  
All cables not flat



FSP Aurum PT 1,200W

HEXUS.where2buy

The FSP Aurum PT 1,200W power supply is available to purchase from CCL Computers.

HEXUS.right2reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.


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HEXUS Forums :: 4 Comments

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Posted by whatif - Sat 24 Oct 2015 11:32
Nice review, thanks.
I like using these higher wattage platinum PSU's as sometimes my PC is left running for days performing minor tasks, but I also get into playing demanding games and like to turn up the dial on my PC's potential. Have not seen it included over the past few years, but I had a Gigabyte MB that allowed me to switch off my video cards while in windows when not needed - thought that was a great tool to reduce noise, power usage, and heat - wonder why that function disappeared? Or do some still have it and I just couldn't see for looking?
Even though I run a relatively simple system (water cooling on CPU with a slight overclock and either 1 or 2 high end video cards also with water cooling), I like to try and come close to doubling to PC's total requirement by about a factor of 2 (I aim to run at somewhere around 40% to 60% of it's potential, always plenty of overhead left, runs cooler and quieter, and runs within it's best efficiency band). So I have been running a 1350W platinum for a few years now in my gaming PC without any problems and a 1200W in my work PC.
Please correct me if this is wrong - but after reading reviews and such, to me this appears to be borne out by the comments and figures.

Just to offer some constructive criticism - Pity that there were not other PSU's included ( I picked Enermax as as good example, because they designed and made their own, the company has been around for about as long, plus Hexus has a review of a Enermax Platimax 1200w - so it is the right category and capacity, and may offer a good independently manufactured comparison, but any others would be fine to add). It would have been nice to see how they compare and how much (or not) they have evolved and improved over this time. I am sure there are a few of us out there who have some of the older ones and would like to see how they stack up.
Would also be good to see if there is any major drop in any areas of performance or efficiency over the years of usage. After all, we did spend the extra for their platinum efficiency and performance, and although I have read comments concerning their deterioration, I have not seen any tests or comparisons on PSU's that have had a couple of years of use and possibly abuse.
Maybe a topic for a future article.
Posted by Whiternoise - Sat 24 Oct 2015 14:42
Provided the efficiency is the same, a 350W power supply delivering 300W at 80% should dissipate the same amount of heat as a 1000W rater supply delivering 300W at 80%. The difference is more that to deliver 1500W, a 1200W PSU needs to be able to dump 300W somewhere, while at most, a 350W supply needs to handle ~90W.

However, in terms of component wear, that means that the beefy power supplies have better heat sinks and larger fans. Most of the components are probably rated the same for temperature, since it's unlikely you'd want to push any system over +125C anyway.

Whether it makes sense to double or triple your PSU capacity depends on what certification the supply has:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/power-supply-protection-calculate-consumption,review-32356-2.html

In the end it may give you some slight energy savings, but not much. Won't hurt though.
Posted by whatif - Sat 24 Oct 2015 23:46
Thanks for your reply, always open to others thoughts and comments.
Unfortunately the link provided keeps coming up with a 404 - Page Not Found error.
I had checked with PSU calculators and the minimum recommended result with one video card comes back at around 700W (that is the 50% I mentioned) and with two cards comes back at just over 1000W (calculated with only 2 AIO coolers and I run 3 when I have 2 cards in crossfire). So it still has plenty of headroom for plugging in all sorts of things (like I run 2x dual TV tuners as I use it as a HTPC as well).
As for the heat, I considered that with good components, just like you mentioned it should have better heatsinks and it has a 140mm fan, so the heat it generates should be well within what it is capable of coping with and dissipating, compared to say a 850W running closer to it's maximum (sorry, my fault, I did not explain myself well by just putting in “cooler”).
So that is why I picked a 1350W, as it gives me many options without any hassle. But the main reason I picked this one was that I managed a huge discount at the time, so I thought I'd be silly not to grab it (Was selling here for over Australian$500 or UK£235, I only paid A$130 or UK£61 for a brand new high end PSU and even now it is still selling new for well over double what I paid). Sometimes we can be lucky to be in the right place at the right time. :-)
Posted by Arulmani - Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:34
Good review. This PSY is really a nice one from FSP .