The Rosewill Photon 1050W Review
by E. Fylladitakis on March 24, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Rosewill
- 1050W
- Sirfa
Introduction
Rosewill is a company that started as a subsidiary and house brand of Newegg, focusing on simple components and hardware at very competitive prices. In time, the company fledged into a stand-alone company and expanded their product ranks to include a myriad of products from simple cables and adapters to advanced computer hardware, home appliances and office products. The sheer number of products Rosewill markets today is bordering on ridiculous. Nevertheless the company is strongly localized, with their products readily available only in the North American markets. Rosewill is making moves to enter other regions and some, but not all, of their products can also be found in Southeast Asia, Japan, China and Australia.
Today we will be having a look at the Rosewill Photon 1050W. This is the second model of the Photon PSU series which is aimed to advanced users and gamers. All the units of the Photon series are 80Plus Gold certified, have a single 12V rail and are fully modular without any hardwired cables. It is a large series, with units ranging from 550W up to 1200W - it is therefore extremely likely that not all of the units are based on the same platform, or even that they come from the same OEM. Therefore the results of this review should not be extended to reflect the performance of other units of the series.
The unit retails for $140 including shipping and the 1050W version of the Photon is significantly cheaper than most competitive products. The 1050W unit that we will review today boasts good features and warranty for its price range, yet there is a catch: it is rated for 1050W output at 40°C. This is not in any way illegal, as this is the normal rating for the operating temperature of consumer PSUs, but most of the competition rates their high performance units at 50°C. We do perform out hot testing with >45°C ambient temperature and as such we will soon see where the Photon 1050W truly stacks against the competition.
| Power specifications ( Rated @ 40 °C ) | |||||
| AC INPUT | 100 - 240 VAC, 50 - 60 Hz | ||||
| RAIL | +3.3V | +5V | +12V | +5Vsb | -12V |
| MAX OUTPUT | 25A | 25A | 87.5A | 4A | 0.3A |
| 130W | 1050W | 20W | 3.6W | ||
| TOTAL | 1050W | ||||
Packaging and Bundle
Rosewill supplies the Photon 1050 in a fairly sturdy cardboard box, with a simple and very dark artwork theme. The artwork is focused on a picture of the unit itself, surrounded by abstract imagery. Very basic information about the PSU and its features can be found around the sides of the box.
The bundled items are few, limited to some very short cable ties, four normal screws, an AC power cable and a very basic manual. The manual is so plain that the user would have to seek detailed information elsewhere, such as Rosewill's website. With the exception of the typical sleeved ATX 24-pin cable, the rest of the cables are "flat", ribbon-like, with black wires. There also is a very basic Molex to Floppy adapter, for those that still own legacy devices and want to power them with a $140 PSU.
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etamin - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
I'm still waiting for a high quality PSU that is:300-550W
80 Plus Gold/Plat
fully modular
active cooling (preferrably a hybrid fan)
available as SFX
I would imagine it is easy for a company like Seasonic to put out such a device. If only their lower wattage Plat models had some sort of active cooling, I would be less reluctant to buy one.
phantomferrari - Wednesday, March 25, 2015 - link
You mean like these :)http://silverstonetek.com/product_power.php?tno=7&...
Jahzah_1 - Wednesday, March 25, 2015 - link
Personally, I have always gone the opposite route. The power supply is the most underrated and unappreciated component in PC building. The first reason is upgrade path. you never know if you will add other components later. As an avid AMD user, they have stuck with one socket for awhile, so having a beefier PS unit that can handle a dramatic change in TDP (with overclocking) pays dividends.The second and most important reason is the strain on the PSU itself. My rule of thumb is to try and stay under half of the rated watts of the unit. Though truth be told, the Amperage is the more important feature to account for. If i calculate my power needs to be no more than 400 watts @ 30 to 40 amps, I will always go for a min of 800 watts @ 60-80 amps. the reason is again strain. Just my personal preference. I use the car comparison the most for people building for the first time. If my car can go 150 MPH, i can't expect to maximize longevity by going that fast continuously. but at 75 MPH all parts of the car can handle that for much longer.
SirGCal - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
There's more to power supplies then raw numbers. Actually I want to see how smooth and accurate the power is myself. Having more power then you need isn't bad, just cost money. Power supplies also lose power over time as they age but it takes quite a bit to make any real notice. Still, I like to keep them running well under their power band for both heat and noise. There are plenty of 500-1kW units out there that fit the budget lineup. I'm running an SLI setup now with a 750W unit and still have plenty of headroom.But what I am interested in is the power clarity and accuracy, especially in these gold and higher rated units. And unfortunately, the extremely low power supplies tend to be the cheapest, noisiest (signals), and more inaccurate units. Since power is the core of any system, stable and accurate power is paramount to a good and stable system. It's one area that I refuse to skimp on in any build. But still don't go insane at the same time. But I'd easily spend $100 for a solid, accurate, tested unit instead of a $40 Joe's Power Supply version...
chlamchowder - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
What I'd like to see is how that $40 supply compares to a $100 supply - and that would include power delivery characteristics. If Anandtech would test some of those cheaper units, maybe we'll find that spending $100 on a 500W power supply is really unnecessary.Also, note that a mildly overclocked i7-4790K with a GTX 980 fits comfortably within a 500W power envelope.
kmmatney - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
Between my wife and 3 kids, and my work computers (I work at home) I have 10 desktop machines at home, all fast and all used for gaming or running virtual machines or both. Most system are overclocked, and have hungry video cards. My system has a Corsair 650W system I bought 8 years ago, but most of the other systems have more modest PSUs, most of which I bought on sale for ~$40 (typically Antec Earthwatts or Rosewill 500W units). I've never had any stability problems with any of them. My server has a 500W PowerMan PSU with 6 hard drives, 2 SSDs, and a devil's Canyon i5 overclocked to 4.5 Ghz (can go higher) - this PSU came free with an InWin case I bought 5 years ago. If you have a single computer, then it makes sense to pay $90-120 on a good power supply, but when you have 10 computers to pay for, you'll find $40 (on sale) PSUs can work just fine. The motherboard already has plenty of power circuitry on it to deal with ripple, etc... I have the $45 Rosewill 450W PSU powering a hex-core OC AMD cpu + OC 560Ti video card on one system, and an overclocked G3258 + HD6850 on another system.KAlmquist - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
The Seasonic SSR-360GP is by all accounts a quality PSU, and costs $60, so you don't have to spend $100 to get quality unless you need higher wattage. People who want modular cables could go with the SSR-450RM ($80), which is probably equal in quality, although I haven't purchased it and therefore didn't read the reviews carefully. Neither of these products were reviewed by Anandtech. In fact, I've never consulted an Anandtech review when buying a PSU.E.Fyll - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
Well, the primary reason is that the manufacturers generally like to showcase the best they have. One company representative argued, and I partially agree, that "Someone who goes and buys a $30 PSU will not bother to check the reviews to begin with. If they are to spend >$100, they both know what they want and will check it out thoroughly before placing an order.". The other half, I will add it myself - manufacturers like to show the best they have because it reflects on their brand as a whole. If a 1.5kW PSU aces the tests, some people would (erroneously) think that their $30 unit is just as good.I do agree that the common home PC does not require more than a 500W PSU, tops. The problem is that there are actually very very very few such PSUs coming from any reputable manufacturer and even those are very basic units, based on designs and platforms that may be a decade old. There is nothing really interesting about them and the users will not actually care (although they should) if, for example, the maximum ripple is 80mV instead of 40mV.
I do try to source "small" PSUs when possible - hence the reviews of the Antec Edge 550W, the Nightjar NJ520, the Dark Power Pro 10 650W. It's not even half of the units I reviewed, I know, but it is not always possible to source small units, neither I can write a dozen PSU reviews per month.
chlamchowder - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
I disagree that people going for budget PSUs won't bother to read reviews. I for one tried, until I realized such reviews were nonexistent. If someone's going so far as to pick individual parts for a computer, there's a good chance they'll care about a component as important as the PSU.Even if you don't find them interesting enough to write a review on, making some test data available would be very useful.
chlamchowder - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
Also, like another poster said, there's more of a risk factor with low priced PSUs. That makes reviews (or even just raw data) even more critical.It'd be crazy to ask for 12 PSU reviews a month, but it'd be awesome if a PSU with a popular internal design gets tested, and models using the same design are just listed.
Finally, if a PSU does fail (http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/psus/2014/06/20/5... that'd be very, very good to know.