Gigabyte Odin GT 800 Watt PSU review - Page 3

Power Efficiency

Judging from the specs the power efficiency of the Odin GT 800W is nothing to be ashamed about either, as it is rated at +80% overall efficiency with a load of 50%. Measured at 230V (which we use here in Europe).

Hilbert my man ... what does that mean? The Power Efficiency of a power supply?

First and foremost; higher = better, efficiency is good. When power is drawn from your wall socket and travels into your power supply, not all of it is transformed into electricity that your computer consumes. A rather large part of that current will get lost as there is heat that is dissipating in the capacitors or leakage in circuits and other insufficiencies. So it boils down to this: If your computer requires 500 watts of power, a power supply will draw more than that from your electric company. Here's an example:

If you have a generic power supply with an average 70% efficiency a 350 power draw (350/70x100) watt load would mean it is drawing 500 watts of current from your wall socket while your PC only uses 350 watts, interesting eh?

Let's do that math again with this PSU, this time we redo that math with a 80% power efficiency in mind: 350/80x100= 437 Watt. So that's saving 63 Watts over a 70% efficient product. If you have your PC powered on a lot , think about this theory and what it can save you in the long term. The higher the efficiency the less power loss, the less money you have to pay. And hey ... it's good for mother nature as well.

So next to being a really capable and efficient PSU.

Active PFC

This model has a very nice feature called Active PFC. To put it in simple terms, Active PFC PSUs are more expensive and, from a power consumption point of view, more efficient. Power Factor Correction (PFC) allows power distribution to operate at its highest efficiency. There are two types of PFC, Active PFC and Passive PFC. This PSU has Active PFC. Active PFC uses a circuit to correct power factor, Active PFC is able to generate a theoretical power factor of over 95%. Active Power Factor Correction also markedly diminishes total harmonics, automatically corrects for AC input voltage, and is capable of a full range of input voltage. Since Active PFC is the more complex method of Power Factor Correction, it is definitely more expensive to produce an Active PFC power supply.

Warranty

Warranty is a little confusing with this product, as far as I was able to find out, in the USA you'll spot a dead on 3 year warranty for the product. Here in Europe I see the shops offering a one year warranty. Which is mediocre for a PSU. I hope I'm wrong but I certainly believe that a company like Gigabyte can offer more than a skinny 1 year warrranty.

Some extraordinary features

As stated in the introduction already, next tot he slick sleeved modular cables this PSU has some other features that are key items for you to think about when purchasing a new PSU. I'm here talking about the main difference between the (regular) Pro and GT series, which is the sheer amount of bangs and whistles that come with the GT series; all Odin GTs come with temperature sensors, fan rpm sensors / controllers and Gigabyte’s P-Tuner software suite.

As the photo-shoot will demonstrate, there are lot of cables and connectors when it comes to this power supply. You'll notice four temperature probes which can be mounted anywhere in your case. They'll take surface reading temperatures or for that matter ambient temperatures, and we will find out a little later if they do so with any accuracy. All these readings are processed and can be monitored with Gigabyte's Ptuner software

You'll also spot two fan connectors that can connect to the power supply. You are able to read and control your system fan speeds through the Ptuner software.

Clearly with such features this the Gigabyte GT of PSU's is targeted at an enthusiast market: Guru's readers. 

Obviously it doesn't end here as the most interesting part of the PSU is actually it's ability to be monitored and to a certain level controlled with the previously mentioned P-Tuner software. And that software is the topping of this little ice-cream.

Now I know that in the past month or two a lot of reports have been made about the buggy software. Good news! Grab the latest version from the Gigabyte website and you'll notice that it was updated, 100% stable and working like a charm.

But what can we do with the P-Tuner software? Well let's have a look, next page please.