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- Date:
- Thursday , January 19, 2012
- Author:
- Paul Johnson
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Seventeam E-Force 750W Power Supply Review
Seventeam is a longtime PSU builder that has just recently started focusing on the enthusiast market in North America and it shows in its marketing. Today's 750 watt power supply is touted as, "Meets ATX 12V V2.3 standard," is Windows 7 Ready, and carries the 80Plus Bronze badge that is described as "High Efficiency."
Overview
The first thing we are going to look at with the Seventeam E-Force 750W is its packaging, accessories, and documentation. While normally none of these items is a 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 are cases where a manufacturer can include useful accessories to make installation, routing, and use more efficient.
The Seventeam E-Force 750W packaging presents well, but perhaps not for the NA market. On the front of the packaging we see one of the first issues with this. The warranty looks to be 5 or 3 years but not in NA. In fact, I never could track down how long the warranty is supposed to be on this product in NA which is not good for a line that Seventeam is claiming will be their lead product line in NA after the V-Force units are removed from market. We do see that the unit is certified for 80Plus Bronze which is confirmed when we check the 80Plus website. When we flip the packaging over to the back, we find the same list of marketing points that were listed on the unit’s webpage. The sides of the packaging contain the power labels for all of the E-Force units (the 750W’s is reproduced below) along with a fan speed graph. Other than that, there really is not much to see here, so let’s move on.
The power information for the Seventeam E-Force 750W looks very promising with a big caveat. The E-Force 750W has up to ~96% of its capacity available to the 12v rails (60A) if needed, with a maximum of 140W available on the minor rails. This is coupled with 4 Molex, 7 SATA, and 4 modified 8-pin PCI-Express connectors. The problem comes in with the fact the two 12v rails are divided up poorly. In this unit, one 12v rail feeds the motherboard connector, Molex, SATA, and floppy connectors. This leaves the most power hungry components and those connectors (EPS/P4(AUX) and 4 PCI-Express) on the other 12v rail with just 30A to split amongst them. Seriously, 8-pin PCI-Express connectors are specified for up to 150W a piece and there are four of these on a single 30A 12v rail not to mention that this is in addition to the CPU. What was Seventeam thinking here? Or were they thinking? Multi-12v rail units are not inherently any different to end users in 99.9% of cases but this unit could be in that 0.1% of cases because of this poor 12v layout.
Once we open the Seventeam E-Force 750W, we see that there is the power supply, manual, mounting screws, and silica included. The manual for the E-Force 750W is 30 pages long in 7 languages. Inside this manual we find the power label for all of the E-Force units (ranging from 450W to 750W), some simple installation instruction, and the 12v arrangement for each model in this product line. Otherwise, there is not much here to see. Not exactly the worst start we have seen overall, but certainly not the best either. Let’s move on now and look at the unit we are working with today.