be quiet! PowerZone 650W review – high-quality modular cable management

Today we would like to discuss a 650W power supply manufactured by the renown company be quiet!. This manufacturer is based in Germany and aims to offer high-quality products and as they name suggests – maximum convenience and silent performance. The model in question is part of the PowerZone series and boasts great features such as full cable modulation and 80 Plus Bronze certification. As for keeping temperatures down, the PSU features a 135mm SilentWings fan.

Power supply units are the most underrated components of a configuration. To ensure smooth operation of a system and to avoid any power-related damage, it is good to choose a good quality PSU. Thus, issues such as loss of data resulting from a restart of your computer can be avoided.

Stay with us to learn more about this product’s build quality, choice of materials and test results.

In the meantime you may also wish to browse through the currently available be quiet! power supplies: http://amzn.to/2lqzWAF

Contents

Specs sheet of be quiet! PowerZone 650W

PSU paramteres

What’s in the box?

We are presented with a good-looking box at whose edge we find useful information about the product. What is of interest to us, however, is on the inside. There’s a great textile bag with the company’s logo in the middle. It is namely it that contains our PSU. On either side of this bag, there are rectangular boxes hiding modular cables and the input cable. To facilitate your understanding we have placed the cables in a table according to their kinds.

All cables feature high-end 18AWG sleeves on top of their insulation. be quiet! has chosen them over flat type cables which are easier to push through to the rear of one’s configuration’s case.

PowerZone 650W modular cable management. It allows us to pick only cables needed for one’s configuration. This is of utmost importance for the airflow in the case and we must also confess that we hate chaotically arranged cables.

Construction and design

This PSU features a solid construction. Its dimensions are 86 х 150 х 175 mm (L х W х H). Even though the panels are made of plastic, be quiet! has made sure the material is high-end and this is namely the feel they convey. Additionally, PSU’s front side carries the power input and mechanical switch. We can’t but notice the good ventilation inside this case – there is enough place for the airflow generated by the 135 mm SilentWings fan. The latter can operate at various levels depending on the load the PSU bears. To ensure further safety be quiet! leaves the fan to spin for 3 more minutes after you have turned your computer off for the purpose of cooling your hardware components.

And on the back we find the panel with different modules. Each of them has an inscription to ensure really easy installation. It is good to see more and more manufacturers integrate this technology. The modular system is extremely useful when putting together a computer configuration. It could both contribute to better looks in providing cable management, and reduce the mechanical tension on the conductors. An additional bonus here is the option for connecting up to three fans directly to the power supply unit.

On the inside

And now we would like to go behind the beautiful edifice of this product. We would first like to discuss the available fan. As we already mentioned, it is 135 mm in size and its model is SilentWings. It is also a 6-pole fan motor which facilitates an easier transition between different magnetic poles which reduces noise and vibrations.  Its max speed is 2 600 rpms at which it generates 107.55 cfm (182.73 m3/h) airflow. Also, the fan’s power is 4.32 W and its voltage – 0.36 A. According to the manufacturer, this cooler generates 13.5 dB when working at 20%, 16.5 dB at 50% and 33.5 dB when working at 100% of its capacity.

Taking the panels off the PSU’s chassis, we reach the essential part – the circuit board. be quiet PowerZone offers several protections against high voltage, low voltage, electric current overload, short circuit and overheating.

As a whole, the build quality is good. We can also note the vibration protection we found (gray silicone in the photos) as well as the relatively small radiator size and all the available free space we see. In addition, the capacitor used here has a max operating temperature of 105°C, which will increase your PSU’s lifespan. Its manufacturer (TAEPO) is a company with good reputation in this sphere.

Behind the capacitor you can find the cooling block and transistor switches and diodes attached to it with the help of thermal paste. It is important to note that the elements are in a completely isolated corpus of the TO-220F type. Additionally, behind the capacitor there is an STTH8R06FP high voltage fast rectifier diode. In close proximity you can observe the passive elements from the controller’s scheme.

The details you can observe in the photo below are a high-voltage field transistor and a switch for the converter with their codes, respectively 17N80BC3 and 3N80C.

Here you could see a part of the input filter. In the lower left part you can also find the partly enclosed radiator next to the diode bridge. We can also add that the filter’s bigger elements have their own covers, glued to one another with silicone for the purpose of better durability in vibrations or light shocks.

Above them we can notice a PWM (pulse-width modulation) controller – FSP6600. It controls not a standard half bridge but a single-end converter.

Directly on the rosette’s contacts you will find two soldered varistors. They protect your device in case of short-term voltage increase or similar issues causing great electric current amplitude changes.

FSP6601 chips have been soldered to the vertical circuit board. These are PWM controllers of the DC-DC reducing converter.

The output filter uses high-temperature capacitors with low internal voltage of the SC (LowESR) series. Next to them one can find the power drossel.

In the modular panel one can clearly see additional filtering capacitors. They allow for the elimination of various loads the modules transfer to one another while being powered.

A good deal of the components have been soldered via surface mount soldering on the lower part of the printed circuit board.

Results

Of course, all this information as regards hardware is useful but to check how the power supply unit performs we conducted a number of tests. They include: measurements of power factor and energy conversion efficiency, as well as bus voltage under such a load on the 12V one so that it can issue 150, 300, 400 and 600 W of power.

Another important parameter for a power supply unit is the time for determining voltage. It should not be too fast or too slow – the lower limit is 100 ms. A signal determining voltage which is too fast can cause disruption in BIOS and hence problems with your system’s boot up. In the tests we conducted, we found out that the response of this PSU is 300 ms. Additionally, we managed to register the PSU’s power factor and got impressive results – from .96 to .99 (the results may vary from 0 to 1).

Energy conversion efficiency displays the ratio between the power the PSU draws and the power measured at its outputs. We calculated this device’s energy conversion efficiency at outputs power values of 150 W and 450 W.

Last but not least, we have the test with load of 0, 150, 300, 450 and 600 W on the 12-V bus.

As you can see in this table, the change in voltage values during load is negligible – this is namely what we are after in a PSU. This is illustrated in the graph below.

Gallery: be quiet! PowerZone 650W – a closer look

Verdict

And so, the elements’ build quality together with the protections implemented in this power supply unit are prerequisites for long product life. This statement is further backed by the fact that the block’s fan stops spinning three minutes after you have turned your computer off, and electrolytic capacitors are esteemed at 105°C and have been manufactured by TAEPO – a company with traditions in this business.

Another reason to go for this power supply over other 650 W models is the completely modular cable management it offers. This, combined with be quet!’s 5-year warranty makes PowerZone 650 W an irresistible offer. We should also mention the only drawback of this bad boy – it is hard to find in some markets.

In the meantime you may also wish to browse through the currently available be quiet! power supplies: http://amzn.to/2lqzWAF

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nexa electrical supplies

4 years ago

thanks for providing useful information on cable management

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