BurnOutPC.com

The FSP Epsilon 700watts powersupply has the following specifications.

• +3.3V: 36A,
• +5V: 30A,
• +12V: 15A,15A, 15A, 15A,
• -12V: 0.5A,
• +5vSB: 2A

With reference to the performance factor of this power supply. Last time we looked at a 650 watts powersupply which had a combined output of 52 Amps for all four 12v rails. If you compare this with a top of the line video card which approximately consumes about 10 amps per card, it ’s safe to say that 700watts is more than enough to use in your high end gaming machine.

Power efficiency

The FSP Epsilon power supply says to have an efficiency of 85%. To understand what this means, I’ll give you a brief 101 on power supply efficiency. I’ll be using some bits from motherboards.org for this explanation.

The efficiency of a power supply is determined by taking the DC output of a power supply and dividing it by the AC input. If a power supply draws less AC to produce more DC, then that power supply is more efficient then one that draws more AC to produce the same amount of DC. So if we have a power supply that was currently putting out 250W, and it’s pulling 300W from the wall, then we can figure out it’s efficiency by dividing 250 by 300. The higher this percentage of efficiency is, the less power a power supply is going to use to run your computer.

Another advantage to better efficiency, outside of a lower electric bill, is less heat. The 15 to 20% of power that’s unaccounted for is dissipated as heat. So a more efficient power supply should run cooler, require less cooling and run altogether quieter. Something to remember about efficiency is that efficiency is not a straight line. It’s not even a slope, really. It’s more like a bell curve, with a high point somewhere in the middle and a low point at the beginning and an even lower point at the very end.