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OCZ EliteXStream 1000w

OCZ pulls its namesake into the spotlight again by today launching a newly branded "EliteXStream" power supply. It claims the full 1000 watts of power is available to the enthusiast up to 40 degrees c, so let's push it the limits and beyond and see if it proves to be worthy of the most demanding enthusiast conditions.

Introduction

OCZ Technology is a company that has been around in various forms since 2000 and is most well known for marketing high performance memory modules. Like a number of other companies OCZ has diversified their offerings to include power supplies, cooling products, and even video cards once more. This diversification into the power supply field was never more obvious than when last year OCZ Technology acquired PC Power & Cooling naming PC Power & Cooling’s Doug Dodson as Chief Technology Officer. With this move OCZ certainly can be seen as becoming a player in the enthusiast power supply market, but OCZ's and PC Power & Cooling's approaches to power supplies have historically been diametric opposites so today’s look at a third OCZ 1000w power supply, the new EliteXStream 1000w, will certainly be an interesting one. While the EliteXStream 1000w is a post-PC Power & Cooling acquisition product, OCZ has not gone with any of PC Power & Cooling’s OEM partners but rather has turned to Impervio for this power supply.

Impervio Electronics Co. Ltd. Is a rather small design company founded in 2006. From what we can gather from leaded internal documentation, SilverStone is "major" partner in Impervio. Many US customers have PSUs that Impervio has designed but are sold under the SilverStone label. Impervio's main focus in power supply development has been on high wattage ATX and redundant power supplies which leads nicely into the enthusiast market. The EliteXStream is, however, the first Impervio designed power supply we have reviewed to date.

But is it Elite Enough ?

The 1000w realm for power supplies is certainly getting to be a more crowded place when we look at power supplies in general, but when we more specifically look at OCZ products today we find that there are a number of 1000w power supplies now available. The previously available entrants consist of the OCZ GameXStream 1010w, ProXStream 1000w, and the PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR; all of which we have reviewed here in the OCZ 1000w Duel and as a standalone review for the Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR. (This product predates the acquisition of PC Power & Cooling by OCZ). Today, OCZ has added a fourth unit (the EliteXStream 1000w) which makes this not only a crowded market place but also a bit of a confusing one as the last time we reviewed OCZ power supplies we found little product placement differentiation but a large difference in capability.

OCZ brings the powerful new EliteXStream 1000W to the system-builder and enthusiast market. With 1 Kilowatt of raw power, high efficiency (82%) rating and trend-setting single +12V Rail (80A), this PSU will provide optimum power distribution, all within a standard ATX form factor that easily fits most cases.

So will today's EliteXStream 1000w continue diluting the product lines at OCZ or is the EliteXStream one 1000w power supply to rule them all?

Let’s move on and see what we have to look forward to when we purchase the OCZ EliteXStream 1000w power supply in terms of documentation, accessories, cable count, rail layout, output characteristics, and general build quality.