900W to 1100W PSU Group Test

OCZ 1000W ProXStream

Supplied Connectors

• A 50cm 20+4-pin black braided ATX cable;
  
• Four 50cm red braided 6-pin PCI-Express cables;
  
• One 50cm black braided 4-pin 12V cable;
  
• One 50cm black braided 8-pin 12V cable;
  
• Two triple Molex and one floppy plugged, black braided cables: first plug 50cm, fourth plug 95cm;
  
• Two triple SATA plugged black braided cables: first plug 50cm, third plug 80cm;

It's hard to believe there are only six SATA connectors for the entire PSU, meaning SATA hard drives can take up less than 20 percent of the PSU's power unless you use Molex plugs or cable splitters. The separate 8-pin and 4-pin 12V connectors are good for server motherboards that require both, but for consumers it means having to hide another cable.

It's the same story with the 20+4-pin ATX cable: it allows variety for consumers but those who require a kilowatt of power will most certainly have a recent motherboard with a 24-pin ATX socket. There are four 6-pin connectors, making it capable of high end SLI and CrossFire, but there are no 8-pin connectors included. OCZ really needs to throw some more in to allow people to actually make use of the full 1000W the unit can supply.

The PSU itself is standard sized and will fit into any normal ATX case. The graphite colour makes it look great and surprisingly the shininess doesn't even pick up fingerprints that badly. The unit itself is plain with a simple white sticker on the top and single 80x80x25mm fan at the rear. This is the only fan in the system and it has an OCZ logo in the centre but astonishingly there's no power switch along side it!? Unfortunately you'll just have to pull the plug if you want your system completely off.


The single rear fan sucks air through from the grill where the cables erupt from, but all that power in such a small space cooled by a single fan immediately lead to some concerned faces even before testing began. Has OCZ woven some hidden engineering magic to keep it cool? Is it a real 1000W PSU or does it run like an aircraft on take off?

Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, it's the latter.

OCZ gets around the size constraints by including a dual layer PCB. This structure allows better use of space but hinders airflow far more, making it harder to cool everything efficiently. We've seen this same type of structure previously in the Etasis 750W, and at 25 percent load it still got extremely hot with the same sized fan to keep it cool.

The small unit is a quite respectable 2.58kg including cables, which is still a lot on four case screws but it's certainly not unheard of.

Testing

As we hinted previously, the size, power and single fan comes at a price: noise. Even at 50 percent the PSU is loud and by 100 percent its like a hurricane in a box. If you've ever owned a 6800RPM Delta fan, you can imagine the kind of intense whirr we're talking about here. If not, imagine a thousand angry bees trying to get out of a box after eating a load of curry.

The dual stacked PCB also means the heat builds up inside: we recorded 46.8°C on the surface which doesn't seem that bad. The air being pushed out the back felt cold, although we assume that can be attributed to the evaporative effect of the strong airflow, but you could feel the heat radiating from the inside of the opposite end.