BFG ES Series 800W PSU

Value and Conclusions

At £116, this is significantly more than the £70 you can pay for the superb 750W Corsair TX PSU we previously reviewed. For £45 more we'd happily sacrifice 50W for a better PSU. Another example is the PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750W at just £100

There are plenty of other choices in the sub-£100 mark too, and we're not talking cheap and cheerful - good brands like Silverstone, Seasonic, Tagan and Gigabyte fill this bracket making you hard pressed to justify buying the BFG.

That's not to say there aren't 800W PSUs around this price, but they offer more value from unique selling points - like the Gigabyte ODIN GT that features monitoring and control software. If it were 900W, the BFG ES-800 would greater fit the price range, but right now it's charging a premium for something that isn't.

One thing that BFG does do that no one else does is provide a 10 year warranty. If you are inside North America this is extended to Lifetime, but thanks to EU law over this side of the pond we're a little more "limited", for lack of a better word. There is one condition though - you must register your purchase on the BFG website within 30 days or you will only be offered the standard one year.

Final Thoughts

We had high hopes for BFG's new PSU range and if you bought one without knowing what else was on offer, you won't be disappointed, after all it does certainly work well enough. However it's just not the best and by far not the cheapest you can buy. The box and bits are excellent, the design is good, the efficiency is exceptional and the warranty is un-paralleled, but it doesn't complete the package with the right cables, slightly low rail values and an exuberant price.

It's far, far better than what we saw last year but not quite far enough in the areas we look for. The PSU market is an extremely competitive industry and essentially it's like we said: this highlights the difference between a PSU manufacturer and a company making PSUs.

• Performance
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• 8/10

• Features
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• -
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• 8/10

• Value
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• -
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• 6/10

• Overall
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• -
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• 7/10

What do these scores mean?