OCZ GameXstream 700W review posted

Ahh..at last. :p I have the 600w version but I don't know if I should be worried about "ripple" or not. I think I'm gonna choose to not worry because I haven't noticed any problems and my 12v rails are rock steady. ;)
 
YES! I've been waiting for you to review the FSP700w for so long and this is as close as I'm going to get it seems. :D

*goes to read*

[EDIT: Damn... that ripple bothers me a little although I know it shouldn't given my typical usage scenerio. It's still a damn fine PSU for what it costs. Now I'm looking even more closely at getting a Silencer 750 to replace it though.]

Thanks for another great review, Jonny!
 
Blue Falcon said:
YES! I've been waiting for you to review the FSP700w for so long and this is as close as I'm going to get it seems. :D

*goes to read*

[EDIT: Damn... that ripple bothers me a little although I know it shouldn't given my typical usage scenerio. It's still a damn fine PSU for what it costs. Now I'm looking even more closely at getting a Silencer 750 to replace it though.]

Thanks for another great review, Jonny!
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Doesn't bother me at all considering that I got mine for $99 shipped..not a special sale price.. ($89 if I get my rebate) from Monarch before they realized how much everyone else was charging for these things. :D

edit- This is the only "Ripple" that interest me http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_(wine) but sadly they stopped making it before I was old enough to hang in a liquor store. :(
 
joemama said:
edit- This is the only "Ripple" that interest me http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_(wine) but sadly they stopped making it before I was old enough to hang in a liquor store. :(
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Fred Sanford couldn't buy enough to keep that product on the shelf, eh?

Well... One thing is true about the ripple on a power supply and Ripple the drink... They BOTH can cause long term damage.
 
Great Review, very informative, especially as I am in the market for a new PSU, crazy to note that the ripple exceeded ATX Specifications, thats not like OCZ at all. But as mentioned in the review, its a pretty demanding test.
 
-=WooDWorKeR420=- said:
Great Review, very informative, especially as I am in the market for a new PSU, crazy to note that the ripple exceeded ATX Specifications, thats not like OCZ at all. But as mentioned in the review, its a pretty demanding test.
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OCZ doesnt make the unit. FSP does.
 
It's not like FSP either to let ripple go that high, but they must have had a good reason. Possibly involving the higher than usual (at least for them) switching frequency and/or capacitor selection on the secondary side.
 
Oklahoma Wolf said:
It's not like FSP either to let ripple go that high, but they must have had a good reason. Possibly involving the higher than usual (at least for them) switching frequency and/or capacitor selection on the secondary side.
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I'm not sure why any PSU company would have a good reason to fail to meet specs except poor testing or cost cutting to meet a price point.

From my point of view, the point where the PSU failed to meet specs was the "actual" max power it could produce. What good is 700W if my highly overclocked system keeps crashing due to power fluxuations or I have to listen to buzzing components?

Then again, any product that says "Gamer", has a capital X in it to replace a real word (Xtreme), uses a Z instead of an S (Gamerz), or uses buzz words like "Fatal1ty" is something I avoid. This PSU fails on 2 of those marketing schemes... :p

I'm not trying to bash anybody (except Fatal1ty), just making a point. It'd be similar to an AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor reaching it's rated speed @ 100% load, but only at 75C. (oh wait, I just had a 4600+ X2 sent back for replacement that did that, lol)


Edit: Actually, if you look at my profile you'll see I use the Soundblaster X-Fi XtremeMusic soundcard... then again I got it for free so that doesn't really count...
 
well i have one. I didn't do much research on the psu i suppose. i haven't seen my 12v rails move, and my OC is stable. so i don't know
 
I have one too, it replaced a 535watt Enermax that wasn't quite cutting it.

My system is running like a top, but the results from jonnyGURU's tests do concern me a little bit.

I can't really afford to keep replacing the damn PSU though, so I'm going to stick with it.
 
Methos said:
I have one too, it replaced a 535watt Enermax that wasn't quite cutting it.

My system is running like a top, but the results from jonnyGURU's tests do concern me a little bit.

I can't really afford to keep replacing the damn PSU though, so I'm going to stick with it.
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What system were you trying to run with the Enermax?
 
Methos said:
I have one too, it replaced a 535watt Enermax that wasn't quite cutting it.

My system is running like a top, but the results from jonnyGURU's tests do concern me a little bit.

I can't really afford to keep replacing the damn PSU though, so I'm going to stick with it.
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I too am curious about your specs.

If the Enermax 535 put out enough juice, I'd take the Enermax over the OCZ AND a box of donuts.
 
I'm using said PSU in my rig at the moment. I have no reason to complain, it's quiet and seems to be handling my OCs quite well.

What can I say? I LOVE IT :D
 
pfft.. an extra 30mV ripple out of spec at max stress isn't very frightening. (150mV ripple, 120mV standard spec, 150-120=30)

I've seen much large ripples on much more sensitive equipment here at work and there were no adverse effects. We did have to change out power supplies just because of plant safety and PM advisory rules. 200+mV ripples (50mV out of spec) on seismic monitoring equipment power supplies and a Thermo SV100 precision monitoring computer power supply. They had been running that way for 2 years because of the PM (preventitive maintenance) schedule they were on. The PSU's did have a little bit more flexible specs than ATX spec, but it was still much more sensitive equipment.

I'm happy with my OCZ 700w.. it performs great, looks good, runs silent, and has the connectors run perfectly for my setup. A small ripple does not concern me since out in the real world I've seen larger ripples on much more sensitive equipment. I'm sure if I called up OCZ they would replace my PSU in a heartbeat if I ever had an issue with it. They have top notch customer service.
 
w1retap said:
A small ripple does not concern me since out in the real world I've seen larger ripples on much more sensitive equipment. I'm sure if I called up OCZ they would replace my PSU in a heartbeat if I ever had an issue with it. They have top notch customer service.
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You do realize that the problem with ripple does not mean the power supply will not perform and does not mean that the power supply will fail. Right?

What prolonged excess ripple does do is make the regulators that bring that voltage down to the Vcore for your CPU and GPU, etc. work harder and can cause them to failure prematurely.
 
DoomRulz said:
I'm using said PSU in my rig at the moment. I have no reason to complain, it's quiet and seems to be handling my OCs quite well.

What can I say? I LOVE IT :D
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That Enermax must of had something wrong with it, because a working one would handle that rig easy.
 
jonnyGURU said:
You do realize that the problem with ripple does not mean the power supply will not perform and does not mean that the power supply will fail. Right?

What prolonged excess ripple does do is make the regulators that bring that voltage down to the Vcore for your CPU and GPU, etc. work harder and can cause them to failure prematurely.
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I'm well aware. I'm saying its not a big enough of a ripple to concern me at all based on what I see in day to day work with the electrical engineers at a nuclear power plant.
 
dBTelos said:
That Enermax must of had something wrong with it, because a working one would handle that rig easy.
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Um...I never said I had an Enermax...what are you going on about?
 
AMD 3700+ @ 2.75ghz, XP-90
2 gig OCZ DDR500
ASUS A8N32-SLI
2 Seagate SATA 80's striped (was wanting to go SCSI, but haven't gotten around to it ie: no money)
2 eVGA 7800GT CO's
DVDRom, floppy, a couple of 120mm fans... not much else. On board sound even.

I had run the system for some time with a single 7800GT, and I had zero problems. After I added the second card, the system would turn off after playing games for a bit. Not reboot, or crash, but turn off. It was quite annoying. I played with the cooling, checked the connectors, checked drivers, tested each vid card seperatly, etc etc. I got a bit tired of messing with it, so I threw some money at it instead, and got a new PSU (aforementioned 700w OCZ). It has yet to crash, and I've had it running for nearly a month now. Sadly, I now find out its going to slowly erode away at my componants like some flesh eating disease, but hey, lets live in the now, shall we?

Honestly, I'm not claiming my system needs 700w or something retarded like that; but the 535 was either faulty or inadequate. Either way, I just wanted the damn machine to work, and the OCZ was available and affordable.
 
Weird.

My machine is IDENTICAL to yours (A8N32-SLI, 2GB, 2 SATA Seagates, etc.) except I have a 3800+ and my cards are eVGA 7800GTX cards and I'm only using a SevenTeam external 500W power supply. No problems.

Before that I had an Ultra X2 550W powering them, but the second card added enough of a load on the PSU to where it's fan would spin full RPM and the noise was unbearable. Ultra's not happy about that, but if they made something that would run two 7800's w/o sounding like a jet engine I'd be all over it.

I'm very surprised an Enermax 535W couldn't handle that. Like dBTelos said: There had to be something wrong with that Enermax.
 
Sadly, my tools for testing the PSU include my finger and a paperclip.

To be truthful, I seriously think the issue was heat related. Here is my theory;

My apartment gets really hot, pretty much all the time but even more so in july/august. The PSU would be running hot to start with, and then when I game, its puts a bit of load on the thing and then she'd cut out. The 700w works because its got a bigger fan and isn't working at anywhere near its capacity with the stuff I've got.

If this makes no sense, then I don't know what to say.

I'd ship it to you to test, but I live in Edmonton. Thats pretty far away from pretty much everywhere.
 
Just saw the 700 watt gamextream on newegg for 129.99 the same price as the 600 watt. Wonder if it is a typo, I ordered the stinking 700 watt yesterday and the price was 159.99...
 
Methos said:
Sadly, my tools for testing the PSU include my finger and a paperclip.

To be truthful, I seriously think the issue was heat related. Here is my theory;

My apartment gets really hot, pretty much all the time but even more so in july/august. The PSU would be running hot to start with, and then when I game, its puts a bit of load on the thing and then she'd cut out. The 700w works because its got a bigger fan and isn't working at anywhere near its capacity with the stuff I've got.

If this makes no sense, then I don't know what to say.

I'd ship it to you to test, but I live in Edmonton. Thats pretty far away from pretty much everywhere.
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jonnyguru.com server is in Edmonton. ;)

It's probably heat. Heat in the PSU. The Enermax doesn't move much air. Think about my scenario: either I use a PSU with a fan runs like a bat out of hell or I use an external unit that's not affected by ambient temps inside the case. :)
 
Well, I'm likely going to use the 535 in another build, so it won't go to waste.

And I'm not going to sweat the 700 too much, because it's not running anywhere near capacity, and despite the ripple, you still gave it an '8'. And 8, if I'm not mistaken, is closer to 10 than it is to 0.

Hopefully FSP/OCZ will take your results to heart, and come out with a second revision.

PS: If you ever come visit your server, I'll buy ya a beer.
 
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