BFG 800W Power Supply Review by SKYMTL. Featuring OW. :)

[burebista]

Here. Thanks SKYMTL for a good review.
A good Topower?

[Oklahoma Wolf]

I don't 100% like Topower's choice of caps in there, but the design looks pretty solid to me otherwise. Much better than the similar design in the Epsilon anyway

[jonnyGURU]

I'm going to send an email out to Topower on those leaning transformers. There's got to be a reason why BOTH units had the lean other than QC. The inconsistancy is too consistant.

[SKYMTL]

Originally Posted by jonnyGURU

The inconsistancy is too consistant.

Yeah, I was actually pretty surprised at that. When I went through Okla's pictures a second time I said "wait a second, does MINE have a leaning transformer?"....and lo and behold.

[spursindonesia]

Umm, out of curiousity, what are the differences beetween the platform used in BFG PSU compared to the one used in Tagan PSU ? Any advantages or disadvantages coming from both platform design ?

[jonnyGURU]

You never know with Topower. Essentially, they can't make a good unit unless you kick their ass. And even when their asses get kicked (like BFG kicking Topower's ass on the 800W) they shaft you somewhere else like the too short cables or providing only two PCI Express connectors.

You have to watch those guys like a hawk, and with Topower and Tagan almost being pretty much the same company, who knows if someone is actually looking at the over all quality, or just the bottom line.

Oh.. and as for the finish, they actually got away from that black ti finish because it does scratch easy. They would have to replace the covers on brand new units that were scratched right out of the box. Another $3 a pop I believe. The fact that you got a black ti one means someone's not rotating stock. They're just a polished steel right now.

[SKYMTL]

Fix the number of PCI-E connectors, fix the bloody lengths of said PCI-E, ATX and 8-pin connectors and you might actually have a pretty good unit.

To give everyone an idea of how short the cables are; I initially insalled this PSU on a Highspeed PC standard size tech station. The PSU was diagonally opposite from the GPUs with the cables spilling out in the same direction as the back-end of the GPUs (where the PCI-E connectors are). The cables wouldn't reach both HD2900XT cards.

[jonnyGURU]

Originally Posted by SKYMTL

Fix the number of PCI-E connectors, fix the bloody lengths of said PCI-E, ATX and 8-pin connectors and you might actually have a pretty good unit.

Oh... so you think Topower deserves another chance?

Yeah.. I was surprised at how good the unit was (save for the cable/connector issues) and that's why I sent one over to you. But there's not enough hours in the day to ride Topower's ass on making the "perfect unit".

I have no idea how the cables ended up so short. In the lab, we have a number of builds in Thermaltake Armor cases, and the two PCI-e connectors barely reach an 8800 GTX. When we do SLI, we have to use a little extension cable to reach the second card.

[SKYMTL]

Originally Posted by jonnyGURU

Oh... so you think Topower deserves another chance?

Personally, no.................

Maybe if their clients start dropping them like two month old milk they wil stop cutting corners.

[spursindonesia]

Thx jonny for your thought. The reason i came with that question, because the local distro of Tagan brand in my country has decided to temporarily not selling Tagan's PSU. The RMA cases are mounting, and the RMA policy is rather dubious.

Many customers felt dissappointed, because their supposed premium PSU dies after around 1 yr of usage -the local warranty only covers 1 yr one on one replacement/RMA, after that the distro doesn't accept RMA and tell customers to claim the RMA internationally straight to Tagan HQ.