Gigabyte's New Odin GT 800W Power Supply

Conclusion

Gigabyte has made a clear statement with the Odin series and we hope that there will be more in the future. The idea of providing software to control and monitor the power supply is very good and the results are generally worthwhile. The software itself needs to get a little tweaking here or there but already operates well at this point. The results shown sometimes don't match reality, in some cases they're worse than in others, but for the most part they are not too far off. The fan speed is very accurate though and also the shown voltage comes close to actual numbers. If the power output and amperage readings can be corrected, and hopefully reduce CPU and memory requirements a bit, the software would be about perfect.

Related to the above is the voltage regulation provided by the software. We didn't see any chance for this PSU after recording the bad voltage drops with increasing loads, but we were surprised at the ability of the software and hardware to regulate the rails, and the results were very good. Every rail had a better distribution after tuning, even at higher loads. However, there are limits to what can be done and when we tried to adjust the voltages with the PSU running at maximum capacity we found the limits of what could be done.


The efficiency of the Odin 800 is very high - higher than what we've seen from any previous CWT-models. At 85% with 230VAC input the result is very good and comes close to the Silencer 750 from PCP&C. Even better is that the overall efficiency is very good as well, showing a constant result of over 80% at any load higher than 20%.

The OCP has worked just fine on the 12V rails and unfortunately we couldn't figure out why it didn't work on the lower rails of 3.3 and 5V. The 24-25 amps on the 12V rails are a normal amount and used by most of the manufacturers which are rating the rails around 20A.

A potential concern is that the fan is not particularly quiet and never runs at a speed that could be considered "silent". You can clearly hear it when the power supply is running beside you. When mounted in a case with all the covers in place, it becomes much more difficult to hear, and as that's the normal usage scenario it's not a bad PSU. If you're looking for a quiet, high-efficiency PSU, the Odin 800 will fit the bill. If you're willing to risk overheating, you can even modify the fan speed to help keep noise levels low at higher temperatures, though we would be careful if you go that route.

At present, this power supply goes for around $230 USD and it's not yet listed in any European shops. There are power supplies that are available for less money that can provide equal or better results than the Odin 800, but it does provide some extras that might tip the balance back in its favor. The software that comes with this PSU is clearly worth taking into consideration, and you do get extra thermal diodes and a controllable fan header that some might find desirable. With any new technology there is always the potential for a high failure rate, but our initial results are positive and we hope that the build quality from CWT holds what it promised.