OCZ Technology PowerStream 420Watt PSU Review

Cases & PSU/Power Supplies by KeithSuppe @ 2004-05-26

We take a look at OCZ?s venture into the PSU world; their first unit is packed with features, comes BTX ready and looks stunning; how does it perform? Read on to find out.

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Intro

Madshrimps (c)



OCZ Technology famous for producing some of the finest quality memory on the market today has delved into another area of the PC-Enthusiast market, power supplies. Today were taking a look at their newest offering the PowerStream 420 (OCZ-420ADJ), and I believe anyone appreciating exceptional build quality, and high current capabilities, will appreciate what OCZ has to offer. OCZ Technology makes other quality PC-products, including heatsinks, ram-sinks, and at one time made some of the better Geforce-3 graphics cards. Back in Nov.2001 HardwareOne titled a review of OCZ's Titan-3 Geforce-3 "Top of the Pack." In fact the Titan-3 was one of the best graphic's cards on the market. I often wondered why they chose to stop making their VGA cards. Here's a photo from the HardwareOne review of the Titan-3, sporting after-market hardware which was considered true cutting edge for the time


Madshrimps (c)



Why mention a 3-year old graphics card? The point is OCZ Technology is no novice to the PC game, and their knowledge transcends that of DRAM. Of course PSU's are not an easy item to build correctly. Almost anyone can sub-contract another manufacturer to supply (pardon the pun) a switching power supply.

However; creating high quality units for budget prices such as TTGI-USA or taking a cost-no-object purist approach as does PCPower&Cooling, takes true talent. These are designs which endure the test of time, and change with the needs of PC-Enthusiast's. Some manufacturers have gone to the extent of offering water-cooled PSU's such as the proSilence 450W, or Cool-Cases LC-Power 550. Water-cooling a PSU is indicative of the fact they produce large amounts of heat. And just like any other electrical PC device, cooling is of primary importance.

Of course, no matter how exotic the accoutrements, if the unit can't hold its rails, it's all water under the rectifier-bridge. As OCZ's PowerStream PSU is fairly new, there's no source of specs at their site to be reprinted here. I chose the next best method, which gives the reader an indication of things to come. Personally I can't wait to get my hands on the 520 version, with a peak power rating of 620W. As OCZ Technology isn't known as a switching power supply manufacturer, I have an intuition the guts of the unit may be produced by a company known as Tagan;


Madshrimps (c)

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