Gigabyte's New Odin GT 800W Power Supply

Dynamic Testing

As our latest addition we will now perform dynamic tests on our test power supplies. During normal tests, we use a constant current to bring them to a certain level of load. The load is also constant once we reach that level, which is not necessarily the same as in a normal PC environment. The load generated by a PC is dynamic and can be higher or lower depending on the applications being run. A hard disk for example will suddenly apply a much higher load during startup, as it attempts to bring the platter RPMs up to speed. The more hard disks you have, the higher the startup load will be. These increased loads not only occur at startup but throughout normal usage, and depending on the component generating the load the demands can come on any or all of the rails.

High transient loads (i.e. short spikes of higher power requirements) can be harmful for a power supply and result in the system restarting/rebooting on occasion or sometimes even in damage to the power supply or connected components. The latest Power Supply Design Guide addresses this problem by defining how much transient load should be allowable on any of the rails. Even with high transient loads, the voltages should still stay within the normal specified range.

Dynamic Testing
Output	Maximum Step Size (% of rated output amps)	Maximum Step Size
+12V1	40%	-
+12V2	60%	-
+5V	30%	-
+3.3V	30%	-
-12V	-	0.1
+5Vsb	-	0.5

With the Chroma test equipment we can apply a very accurate load to the various rails, and in addition we can specify the duration of loading a specified value. This allows us to apply a different load with a different duration for each rail. This is important since there are clear specification differences between each rail. Since the maximum step size for the transient load is rated off the actual performance of each power supply, we have to apply a different transient load level to each new unit that we test.

The transient load will be applied on different stages of constant loading. We felt that testing transient loads at 20%, 50%, and 80% load would be the best way to clearly show meaningful results. The tests will be performed with each of the three different input voltages of 90/100, 115 and 230VAC.

The Gigabyte Odin GT performed very well during our dynamic load tests and was not disturbed by any transient loads. Even an inrush current caused by going from off state to 100% load didn't cause any problems.