Review: 600w OCZ GameXStream (7/21/2006, merged)

[UncleDavid218]

UPDATED (See below)

 

Please read this post fully in order to eliminate the need for unnecessary questions. Thanks!!

That doesn't mean don't ask questions... we are here to help!!

 

If you have already purchased and tested this PSU, please feel free to leave feedback.

Problems with your OCZ product? PM RyderOCZ or OCZTony.

 

The following is a brief review I and other forum members put together. It's not as detailed as some others' date=' but I used what resources were available. Anyway... on to the review. Accessories include a user manual (It's really more of a pamphlet), mounting screws, and power cord. That's it (but let's be honest, you don't buy a PSU because it comes with a cute sticker or cable sleeving). The first thing I noticed is that the PSU is much different from an aesthetical standpoint than previous OCZ PSUs, though it is definately growing on me.[/quote']

The unit itself is smaller and lighter than one may expect. It has a flat black finish and all cables are sleeved in black.

Here is the PSU with the cables untied. Look at that mess...!

A closer look at the cables. They are very flexible.

20+4 pin mainboard connector.

Got SATA drives? 6x SATA power connectors.

Plenty of molex connectors for everything... a total of six.

My old 450w OCZ Modstream and new 600w OCZ GameXStream. This unit is smaller (and lighter) than the Modstream.

 

Overall' date=' this thing really does it's job. It solved my problem of games crashing after purchasing my 7900GT and that's what I wanted it to do. I do not have a DMM to test with, but according the MBM these are the voltages:

 

+3.3v Rail: 3.35v

+5v Rail: 5.03v

+12v Rail: 12.41

 

Under load, the voltages do not move. This unit is quiet, powerful, and more reliable (though time will tell) than the OCZ Powerstreams. I would say this bests the Powerstream (though I have never personally owned one, I have had hands on experience). I really think that says a lot considering the Powerstream is/was one hell of a PSU. It has a 4+4 pin 12v connector to accommodate both EPS and ATX 2.0 standards. It also includes two 6-pin PCI-E connectors to satisfy all of your SLI/CrossFire needs. For anyone building a new machine, this IS the PSU for you, no matter if it's a low end or high end build, it's got all of the bases covered. If you are confused these are the types/amounts of power connectors:

 

1 x 24-pin ATX

1 x 4-pin/8-pin CPU

2 x PCI-Express

6 x 4-pin peripheral

2 x 4-pin floppy

6 x SATA

 

Recommended![/quote']

UPDATED: June 21, 2006

It seems as though a lot of people are confused as to what kind of amperage this PSU puts out. Instead of wasting bandwidth asking the same question 20 times' date=' here is what is listed on the PSU as well as some information from OCZ engineers. Hopefully this will clear up some confusion. [/quote']The following 2 quotes are from RyderOCZ and OCZTony, repectively.

 

They are both OCZ engineers and know what they are talking about.

 

If this isn't good customer service I don't know what is...

Some clarification regarding the sticker's on the side of PSU's.

 

The sticker's list the maximum amperage for everything...and the maximum wattage as well. This is not to be confused with the actual rated output of the PSU.

The PSU is going to be rated at 600W or 700W or 950W...whatever.

 

As ExRoadie pointed out....if you add up all the numbers...it totals 755W on the 600W unit....again that is if everything is maxed out. But' date=' you can't max everything out because the total output of the PSU is only 600W...do you follow me here?

 

Everyone is getting confused on what is being said about the amperage...again the sticker lists the Max...not the rated.

The sticker is correct as to the Maximum output of each line before the line is shut down due to OCP ([b']O[/b]ver Current Protection)

Total rated output for the 600W is 600W....You can arrive at that number however you want, within the limits set forth on the sticker. Meaning if you fully load the 3.3V line...you won't be able to full load the 5V line, etc, etc.

 

Now..you can't get 580W out of the 12V line either...because that leaves you 20W total for the -12V, 5V, 3.3V and 5VSB rails which every board needs to run...if you try to use 580W for 12V power...the system is not going to run and the PSU is going to shutdown.

 

Example: if we use 75W total for the -12V, 5V, 3.3V, and 5VSB rails..we have 525W left for the 12V rail total...or...43.75 amps. You can spread that load just about any way over the 4 rails...as long as you do not exceed 18A on 1 of the rails or the OCP will engage and shutdown the PSU.

I talked at at length with Eric today about the issue of end users thinking the OCP listing on the side of the PSU's is what the PSU will actually give out under max load.

 

The fact is this.

 

PSU's have a max output' date=' on the 12v side of things it could be 40A spread over 4 12V "rails", each rail has to have overcurrent protection to protect the motherboard and the cables that feed the juice from the psu to the board.One ot two of those rails may have to deliver 14A maybe for a setup which leaves 12A left over the last two rails....each of the rails may have OCP at 18A though and quote a sustained max of 15A. What we need to look past is the OCP rating or even the sustained rating and look at the max sustained rating from the PSU specs.

 

So as you see from this a 600W psu may have the same OCP rating as a 700W unit, it may even have the same sustained rating for each of the lines but the "master" OCP that looks after the core of the PSU may be a little lower.

 

I hope this helps if you have questions regarding the 600 and 700GE psu's[/quote']600w OCZ GX:

700w OCZ GX:

I can add this in the 600w's favour' date=' check out my voltages... this is after 12 Hours of stress testing, 2 instances of Prime95, Opteron 165 at 2.5GHz, 1.52V.

 

Now that's out of the way' date=' I would like to compare cable management with a modular PSU (Modstream) vs. the GameXStream. I am doing this because a lot of people claim modular PSUs = more airflow. Another arguement is that in smaller situations modular is better. I am here to prove otherwise... you can also read more on this topic in this thread.

 

450w OCZ Modstream:

600w OCZ GameXStream:

As long as you spend a good amount of time wiring up your case' date=' things will look perfectly fine with or without a modular PSU. There are simply no tangible reasons to buy a modular PSU.[/quote']

Here are some other reviews put together by more "official" review sites (they vary from the 600w and 700w versions' date=' some being more thorough than others):

 

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware...Z_GXS_700W_PSU/

http://www.ocia.net/reviews/gxs700/page1.shtml

http://www.3dgameman.com/content/view/2393/43/

http://www.bigbruin.com/reviews05/gamexstream_1

http://www.modthebox.com/review474_1.shtml

http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=551

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=502&num=1

http://www.bytesector.com/data/bs-article.asp?id=651

http://www.cooltechzone.com/Departments/Fe...y_200605312321/

 

There are of course more reviews out there, but these were the first to come up using a Google search.

You'll find while reading those reviews there are no negative comments about how this PSU performs, and that is what really matters.

[225Slant6]

Looks nice!

How quiet is it?

Still will not give up my Powerstream, but if I was going to be buying a powersupply this would be it.

[UncleDavid218]

Yeah no reason for owners of the Powerstreams to upgrade IMO.

 

Its quiet. Probably about the same or quieter than my Modstream. (which is nearly silent)

[p0tter]

Great pics!

 

How many FDD (floppy type) connections?

[ciberfog]

How quiet is it?

 

Very very

 

 

I think a spider can be more noisy

[UncleDavid218]

Bump for anyone wanting one of these!

[teknical]

looks nice, im picking one up....should be reaching my house in a week or so.......

 

does this one glow???

[red930]

You think the 600W would be good enough to run X1900CF setup on an ASUS A8R-MVP w/3200+ @2.6GHz and memory @236MHz, one harddrive and one optical drive along with an X-FI Extreme Music? Do you think i'll need to purchase the 700W GamerXstream? I'm thinking about it, but not sure. It's probably good enough using the 600W but since the price difference is so close i would feel safer with the 700W series. Anyone....

[UncleDavid218]

You think the 600W would be good enough to run X1900CF setup on an ASUS A8R-MVP w/3200+ @2.6GHz and memory @236MHz, one harddrive and one optical drive along with an X-FI Extreme Music? Do you think i'll need to purchase the 700W GamerXstream? I'm thinking about it, but not sure. It's probably good enough using the 600W but since the price difference is so close i would feel safer with the 700W series. Anyone....

Yeah. Quad 18a rails dude!

 

Don't they recommend 38a for CF X1900XTX?

 

I might go with the 700w version though. It really doesn't cost all that much more and you have piece of mind that it will work for sure.

 

I saw a review that used 2 7900GTs in SLI, a dual core Opteron, 10 hard drives, two optical drives, etc., etc. and this thing didn't flinch. (the 600w)

 

Here is a review of the 700w GX

 

does this one glow???

Yes, it's a rather dim blue LED fan. Not much brighter than my CNPS9500.

[NEOAethyr]

What were your ambients when you tested the rails?

 

I'm not impressed at all about those leads, 2x 4pin ide leads, come on..

2x sata leads, lol.

 

Meaning you can power 2 fans and 2 sata drives max, how nice...

 

Anyways have you opened it up?

If so, what kind of caps does it have?

The 600w powerstream has some caps that blow real easy, and ones that are'nt in any datasheets, ie maybe bootleg caps.

I only know this because I have to replace all of them in the future, and I allready had to take the +12v rail splitter pcb off there because the majority of the caps leaked on it.

 

 

In any case, give us a heads up on the rails at 100f.

I'de like to know if the psu can handle real world applications.

 

Lower the +12v rail down a bit though 1st, that's way to high.

So high that it may hide fluctuation, I mean, the higher you go, sometimes the less fluctuation you get.

That's to high anyways.

 

Hit it with dvd +rw burning and booting too, to see how the rails do, also check the rails during intial posting please.

 

 

One more thing, what is the accuracy of your dmm?

 

Edit:

Opps...

 

What is the gauge of all leads?

How long in feet or inches are all the leads(Meaning any over 2ft?).

Are the leads aluminum or copper?

 

Are the connectors, all of them, gold plated?, or pure silver?

Or just aluminum?

[dab]

There are many more than 2 sata and 2 molex connectors. The cables are plenty long.

 

EDIT: FYI There 2 floppy conectors and the molex behind each is perfect for the dfi boards!

 

[NEOAethyr]

No what I meant is there's only 2x leads per ide and 2x leads per sata.

Useable conenctors equal out to each lead, ie 2.

 

You start adding drives and fans to the connectors past the 1st one on each lead and it totally screws over stability and performance.

 

 

Lemme explain what I mean before you dismiss me as being foolish .

 

Lets say you have 2ft of alumin cable, 16awg, which is likely the thickest cable you'll ever find on a consumer psu.

Lets load up this lead with one hardrive, ide type, at 500ma, which is 0.5a.

 

The voltage drop from that many amps at +12v is 0.016v.

Which equals out to 11.984v the hardrive gets if the rail is 100% on the dot, +12v, and allways +12v.

 

Now say there's 3 connectors for hardrives on that 2ft lead.

So lets increase the amp load to 1a (2 hd's on the 1st 2 of 3 connectors).

 

The voltage drop increases to 0.032v.

Therfor the actualy power you get is:

11.968

That by the time you get to the 2nd ft, on the 3rd coennctor, that's what a 3rd hd would get.

If you loaded it up with a 3rd h however, the actual voltage would drop even more.

 

The stuff I said is'nt 100% exact, but it's close enough.

 

Lets say for example, for ref only, not real life, we load up 4 hd's on a 2ft cable.

The voltage drop from that is 0.065v.

Or 11.935v.

That's a big drop ^^.

A really big one.

 

Really what I'm going by is one load src, at the very end of the cable, so like I said, my specs above are'nt 100% exactly what each hd would get and etc.

None the less, you load up somehting at the end of the lead, and something at the begining is gonna lose power too.

 

Voltage levels are'nt the most important though.

I dn if that's what it looks like, that I'm trying to put across, it's not though.

It's the signal.

 

You load up stuff on the leads, and the signal goes to crap on that lead.

 

Anyways here's a comparison between copper and aluminum at 16awg, at 2 ft, 2a of load at the very end of the cable:

 

Aluminum: 11.935v

Copper: 11.967v

 

I've tried copper myself, the diffrence between the 2 cannot even be compared.

It's not the voltage levels, because I could adjust5 them to the same thing if I wanted to in the past, and I've tried and tried to get what I got now.

Anywys I have these copper leads on my enermax 350w, and the performnce of my drives on them blow away the ocz.

Even though on the ocz, I only loaded up one drive per lead, which I'm doing the same on my custom cables that I half @ssed put together myself for the enermax.

Totally diff level though.

 

Now when you increase the legnth of the wire, it gets wores and worse, and the more conenctors you have on th lead, the worse it gets as well, this is really bad.

 

For xample, instead of loading a drive at the 1st conencotr, you may put it on the last one not knowing it's hurting your drives stability, people, even pc makers do this sorta thing all the time, it's very bad for your drives.

 

Have you ever seen what happens to a lead when you load up some fans on it?

It goes nuts.

Lights, even worse.

Now imagine you do this to the ocz you got now, add some fans to the leads you got drives on...

Instead of +12.40v that you're psu is really putting out, the hd's get maybe 12.10-12.20v maybe.

But it'll fluctuate alot.

Add some lights, and it'll drop it to maybe 11.80-11.90v maybe, been a while, so it's just a guess.

 

This will all add up to alot of fluctuation and maybe some radation I dn.

Which in turn will make the drives on that lead very unhappy.

When the drive are unhappy, they tend to ramdonly dissapear, no matter what drive you have.

That's hd's, if you do this to a dvdrw it gets even worse, way worse.

Anyways when drives are unhappy, and sometimes dissapear, if not whatever, but in anycase when they're unhappy, the mobo gets unhappy.

 

This will make say what was stable at 275, now unstable at even 250.

I dn how much of an effect this would have an say an nf4 board, but Im sure it would effect stability by some amount.

The ref above was for a nf2, which is much harder to clock probably.

I'm guessing the diff would be alot smaller, depending on how high you're running your rig.

 

 

 

Anyways that's why I asked what I asked .

It's not I care about the stock setup that much...

It's just I'm curios on how it's made and such, for initial impression on how it would react to certain setups.

In reality, if it does turn out to be a good psu, at say a high ambient, then I may buy 2 or more the suckers for one pc.

Though I would hope they put at least crapty caps in it this time, not ones that start going out the 1st day you get it like they did on the 600w powerstream.

 

I like adjustable rails, they're a must.

How many adjustable rails is there?

Just 3 like the last right ?

If that's the case I need.., umm 2 for the mobo, 2 more for the drives.

God that's alot of money though...

 

The 600w powerstreams should of been a $40 psu because of the caps they used...

 

Anyways please measure the length of the cables a bit .

From what I can see on that pic, that looks way over 2ft.

I would'nt even use it stock on anything.

 

That and please give us at least the temp of ambient you measured the rails last time at.

 

Also, have you smelled the "new" sort of smell blended with a smell like "burning wires", or somehting like that?

That's the leaking caps smell.

 

In any case, your review seemed allright to me anyways , I'm just a bit picky now when it comes to actual real life perfomance of a psu, because past experiences with drive speed/stability and mobo/cpu stability stuff like that.

Expensive stuff being lost is'nt something I like.

Last time I lost a fan that cost me a little bit of money, a good brand new panaflo 120mm too.