Tested: Chieftec Feeders - BPS-450S, BPS-500S

You could read about power supplies on our site quite a long time ago, so it was time for some tin caste to come to us. It is already clear from the title which company is the manufacturer, but it is not that we are introducing you to two members of the relatively fresh Nitro family.

I can honestly say these foods are a bit embarrassing, I even sat over the article or two for a week as it’s hard to write an interesting article about products where there is nothing interesting. Chieftec feeds are often characterized by this duality, as the manufacturer's mid-range products are very good, very reliable on the one hand, and, perhaps to keep prices low, do not carry external tickets for the single reader user to jump to the articles that present them. .

These units, like other products in the company in general, do not deserve this miserable fate. If I think about it, I may have heard a rumor once in the last ten years about a series that wasn’t reliable enough, but for me it was equivalent to an urban legend, because even though I was pushing the industry with a single faulty power supply even then as a service manager.

Looking back a little further in time, it’s important to note that power supplies have also undergone serious development, even if it’s not evident on simple metal cans. On the one hand, the protections that characterized the upper category became available in the middle category, and on the other hand, the efficiency improved greatly.

This efficiency improvement is also seen in the Nitro family as they proudly wear the 80+ mark on the box. I think I can safely say that the improvement in quality is caused by the fact that although due to the multitude of hardware built into the machines, the energy hunger of 3-4 video card systems is huge, we don’t even have to think about power supplies above 1000 watts.

The 80+ label is a guarantee that less and less of the energy fed into the power supply by currently available technologies will become heat and more and more will be used the way we want it to.

So the power supplies we just got aren’t something interesting when we look at the outside, and maybe not when we look at knowledge. Let's be more precise! It’s not how knowledge is interesting in them, as we’ve come across all of the abilities we can find, just at double the price.

At Chiftec, they don’t give much to looks, at least they have the ability to ignore the design look if it makes the product cheaper because of it. They do not paint the box in different colors - at least in this price range -, they do not put lights on it, there is no piano lacquer, and the cable stockings do not fade. At least it’s not in this price range, it’s not really lacking if we want to be honest.

Let's take a closer look at what our 450-watt and 500-watt units have to offer! There is no difference between the cabling and the essential features, so the two tables below apply to both versions.

What makes performance data different, however.

Let's start with the cables. There’s nothing wrong with the length of the whips, the number of connectors, except for one thing, and that’s the fact that we only find one six-pin PCI Express connector. This is not enough, especially for a 500-watt unit, as smaller dual-card systems can run away with it (plus a Radeon HD 6870 requires two 6-pin PCI Express power connectors, for example). The length of the whips in a mid-tower is plenty, but in a larger house, supplying the components with power should not be a problem.

Of course, we also turned on the power supplies. Unfortunately, we do not have the possibility of oscilloscopic measurements, so the multimeter remains, but at least a showy piece of it, so that the instrument has less inertia. An Intel Core 2 E8400 processor, a 3 × 1 GB Buffalo DDR3 1333 MHz memory module, a GIGABYTE X48T-DQ6 motherboard that accommodates them, and an AMD RAdeon HD 6850 1 GB GDDR5 video card were used for the test.

We examined the power supplies from three perspectives. The first is the consumption in standby mode, the second is the voltage fluctuation of the 12-volt branches under different loads, and the third is the amount of power absorbed under different loads. We consider the first measurement important, as it doesn’t really matter today how much our machine eats during the rest period. We found it sufficient to monitor the extent of voltage changes on the 12-volt branches, today, with today's technologies, the role of the 3-volt and 5-volt branches has decreased significantly. Again, the importance of monitoring recorded performance cannot be questioned.

In the standby state, we measured 450 watts for the 3,5-watt unit and 500 watts for the 3,7-watt unit.

When measuring the voltage, we found that the above configuration was not able to cause a more serious problem for the power supplies. Voltage levels remained within adequate limits, perhaps the two 12-volt branches fluctuated a little better, but that wasn’t significant either.

Load measurement was performed in three states. The first was a dormant state, the second was average usage where we were watching a Youtube video, while a word processor and an image manipulation application were running, and in addition to Youtube, two more browser windows with different browsers. The third load was entrusted to 3DMark 11. Perhaps unsurprisingly, due to differences in units, there was essentially no change between measurements. In the resting state, the smaller one requested 110 watts, while the larger one requested 109 watts. Under normal use, these values ​​jumped to 154 and 153 watts, respectively, while at full load we could read 239 and 236 watts from the instrument.

What can we say in summary about Chieftec’s foods? A lot of bad in no way. There is a black dot due to the second PCI Express connector being missing. The fan does its job quietly by default, but at higher loads it spins properly, which also comes with some wind noise, which in turn is almost inevitable.

The lower segment of the Chieftec Nitro 85+ series, units from 350 to 500 watts, will surely not be sold by the interesting exterior. However, the Spartanly simple exterior covers a reliable interior. Stable voltage values, low standby consumption, and adequate power levels under load. Two 12-volt branches, which are almost essential nowadays. Of course, it’s not the solution where two branches are brought down from one rail, but the real double 12-volt rail.

Unfortunately, based on such a short trial, it is difficult to decide what power supplies will produce in the long run. To be sure, these are well-put together pieces, the PCB, the solders look good, and there will be no problem with heating either, so we can hope that like the Chieftec ascendants, these pieces will be at least as reliable.

By the end of the article, we need to insert so much that we can get to know two of the smallest members of the Nitro family. The manufacturer launches competitors under this name in four categories. The lower, all-out versions in the 350-500-watt category, the middle group in the 14-550-watt team with a black look and a 950-centimeter fan, the last version to take the lead start in the 1200-watt race, and we can find among the capabilities the Cable management option, which means cables that can be connected separately.

The beauty award winners of the Nitro family represent a separate group and can start among the designer foods, at least because of the red polish. However, these units are interesting not only because of their color, but also because of the 88+ marking. If you’re looking for one - they may not even be available at home - you can count on the 650-1000 watt category, 14-cent fan and separately pluggable cable whips.

In a nutshell, anyone looking for a reliable and quiet power supply that can take a moderately powerful machine will certainly not be disappointed with these 85+ units. The goods are definitely worth it, and you shouldn’t skimp on a power supply.

Chiftec Nitrox BPS-450S, BPS-500S

Chiftec Nitrox BPS-450S, BPS-500S power supplies a Kelly-tech Ltd.we got from for the test, which we thank you on this way too!