OCZ 780W ModXstream PSU
Internal Components
It should go without saying that you should never remove the cover of any PSU as there is a risk of serious injury or even death but I’ll say it anyway. Perhaps less importantly, removing the outer casing will also invalidate the warranty on most, if not all PSU’s. So, for your convenience and at the risk of our own health, we will take a quick look at the internal components used in the OCZ ModXstream.
The outer casing also acts as an EMI shield and while being fairly thin it is sturdy enough to protect the innards from shock and tampering. With the four small screws removed (along with the warranty sticker) we get to see the guts of this PSU.
The 120mm cooling fan is a Protechnic MGA fan which is hard-wired to the PSU rather than using the usual 3 pin connectors most often found. The fan is true to its name, being whisper quiet at all but the highest loads and shouldn’t interfere with the acoustics of any near silent PC. When powered the fan glows blue from the integrated blue LED’s of which there are four.
Surrounding the main coil we see 2 small aluminium heatsinks and a single large NEG CapXon capacitor. I would have preferred to see smaller capacitors used rather than a single large one as quite often, large capacitors are more ‘noisy’ then their smaller counterparts creating ripple among the lines.
Here we see the main transformer for the 12v rails along with the smaller transformer situated behind transforming power to the 5.5 and 3.3v rails.
I was a little disappointed with the overall quality of components used as well as the internal workmanship applied. The soldering and cable tidying was haphazard and in general the PSU looked very amateur. The heatsinks cooling the mosfets also didn’t appear to be substantial enough which hopefully is testament to the high efficiency of the PSU and not penny pinching by OCZ. As OCZ now have control of PCP&C who are renowned for making quality PSU’s, I would have hoped this partnership would have enabled the designers to create something more than what we have here but looks, as they say, are not everything. Lets see how this power supply performs…
