![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Monday , August 04, 2008
- Author:
- Paul Johnson
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
FSP Everest 1010w Power Supply
If a company is ballsy enough to send a 1 kilowatt + computer power supply into HardOCP it must be just that good. Or is it? We show you again the reason for knowing what you are buying when it comes to PSUs.
Overview
The first thing we are going to look at with the FSP Everest 1010w power supply is its packaging, accessories, and documentation. While none of these items is a real make or break item for a power supply the packaging quite often contains a lot of information about the product we are purchasing. The inclusion of an owner’s manual that provides actual information about our product is also of great help. Accessories are almost unnecessary with a power supply as the unit is self contained, unless it is modular, but there cases where a manufacturer can include useful accessories to make installation, routing and use more efficient.
The packaging of the Everest 1010w certainly carries on the mountain theme with its color scheme and background. Imposed upon this somewhat serene image we have a few marketing points, a True Total Power sticker, a SLI label, diagram of the modular cables, power label, and some additional basic details about the unit including efficiency of greater than 85%. Among the items listed in the marketing points is something called True Total Power which certainly sounds promising, however I can’t find out what it is supposed to mean in this context. Do other FSP products not provide True Total Power and instead inflate their product ratings? Certainly that would not be what is implied by this bullet point as that would hardly be a good marketing point to make for other FSP products. So I would assume that this is directed at competitors but today we are looking at the Everest so we will have to see how this plays out for this unit. Moving on, The SLI certification for this unit is currently listed as being for 8800Ultra SLI while a quick check of the 80Plus website results in an interesting blank for this unit as well as FSP’s other 1000w products at the time of writing even though the packaging indicates 85% efficiency. This is an aspect we will certainly take a look at today as well since FSP currently fields a large number of related power supplies that are 80Plus certified. Lastly, of interest is that nowhere on the packaging is there an indication of the unit’s warranty length. However, after searching the wide selection of FSP websites (1,2,3,4) I was able to locate this PDF that lists the warranty for the Everest 1010w at 6 years. While 6 years is a good length of time not listing the warranty and terms in the manual or on the website that is LISTED in the manual, www.fsp-retail.com, (at the time of writing) is certainly not a good approach.
The power label for the FSP Everest 1010w is interesting and a bit disappointing all at the same time. On the interesting side, this unit calls for a maximum 12v current of 75A. Now, if the FSP Everest 1010w has 75A available on the 12v rails that would be a respectable ~89% of its total DC output capacity. However, the last time we reviewed a 1010w FSP product it was not quite capable of that power output so during testing we will see how this pans out. On the disappointing side we see something reminiscent of the last 1010w FSP product we reviewed (the GameXStream 1010w) and that is where the unit’s ripple/noise values are specified in the literature to exceed the ATX12v allowance of 120mV for the 12v rails and 50mV for the 3.3v/5v rails. As was pointed out in that review of the GameXStream, advertising the fact that a product violates the ATX12v specifications does not make it all ok. Interestingly, the Everest 1010w PCB does not carry the Epsilon part numbers of the GameXStream and recently the 700w Epsilon based units (the Super Talent Atomic Juice 700w and the Sigma SP-700) we have reviewed have been at times noisy but have not provided results that actually exceeded the ATX12v specifications as the GameXStream did. Hopefully, the Everest 1010w can continue in this recent trend of staying in specification. The unit’s rail and connector breakdown is well planned with the PCI-Express connectors paired on two rails (each rail having one 8 pin PCI-Express connector and one 6 pin PCI-Express connector) while the motherboard and Molex/SATA connectors are on their own 20A rail as well.
Once we open the packaging for the FSP Everest 1010w we find the power supply itself, power cord, manual, modular connectors in a padded bag, and the mounting screws. The overall allotment of items is fairly standard with the only exception being the padded bag. The user manual comes in at 25 pages thanks to the 6 languages included. The information contained in the manual is very basic with just some installation instructions, the power tables for the 800-1010w model Everest, a few troubleshooting steps, and a website address. As stated earlier this website unfortunately at the time of writing does not have the warranty information on it making its inclusion less than helpful in that regard. Overall, the information contained in the manual is of very little use to the Everest’s target audience and the exclusion of the warranty information is certainly not helpful.