probably is indicative of better quality components but not always it's kind of the same way that with a car or something you might be able to measure by horsepower to some extent or miles per gallon or any other metric but it's just one small aspect of it there's an enormous amount of faith that gets put into the NUMBER_TOKEN plus sticker on a power supply we've already shown that obviously the sticker can be fraudulent or maybe at one point it was valid but it has become invalid as they've changed components since they sampled the power supply for testing we've also shown that it doesn't test for protections or safeties and it also doesn't test for things like voltage ripple so now you're just getting into more of just straight up quality of the power supply in general how stable it might be for certain high end components or overclocking or whatever so NUMBER_TOKEN plus it gets a lot of credit that it probably shouldn't get and we think the reason it gets that credit is because a power supply is probably one of the most misunderstood components maybe next to memory that's up there too and because of that it's difficult with especially a dearth of reviews to know what marks a good power supply and the easiest marker on a power supply is the sticker that almost all of them bear which is NUMBER_TOKEN plus something and so that becomes a tiering system for a lot of people a lot of system builders where they'll search based on a certain expectation of NUMBER_TOKEN plus gold is probably safe but it's not always so an NUMBER_TOKEN plus does not test protection it doesn't test short circuit protection under voltage protection over power protection over current protection any uh over temperature protection none of that gets evaluated in the NUMBER_TOKEN plus process the only thing that gets evaluated in NUMBER_TOKEN plus is the efficiency the efficiency check is really just ac wall power to dc component power and that's sort of about it other than power factor NUMBER_TOKEN plus was formerly ecova and plug load solutions as well but now it's run by clear result which defines NUMBER_TOKEN plus as follows it's a performance specification that requires power supplies in computers and servers to be NUMBER_TOKEN or greater energy efficient at NUMBER_TOKEN NUMBER_TOKEN and NUMBER_TOKEN percent of rated load with a true power factor of NUMBER_TOKEN or greater NUMBER_TOKEN plus certifications include these levels there's NUMBER_TOKEN plus blank we sometimes call this NUMBER_TOKEN plus white because of the sticker color followed by NUMBER_TOKEN plus bronze silver gold platinum and titanium silver is incredibly rare at this point normally they're very close to either bronze or gold so they just go that route titanium is newer than the others and it's the only level that requires NUMBER_TOKEN percent load test and while the other levels only require testing at NUMBER_TOKEN NUMBER_TOKEN and NUMBER_TOKEN rated load a power supply is not a fixed percentage efficiency at all load levels this chart from a previous test of ours helps illustrate that efficiency at say two percent or ten percent would commonly be lower than at fifty percent for example and that's why NUMBER_TOKEN plus tests against multiple load levels as for power factor that's evaluated so that the power supplies aren't pulling a disproportionate amount of apparent power for the amount of true or real power that's being used if you'd like a quick primer on this we give you the beer glass analogy we encourage you to attempt to replicate this at home via URL_TOKEN with one of our gn cobalt blue beer glasses with a pc component style bar runner spill guard underneath the glass represents the apparent power in its entirety or what
START_SELFPROMO_TOKEN we encourage you to attempt to replicate this at home via URL_TOKEN with one of our gn cobalt blue beer glasses with a pc component style bar runner spill guard underneath END_SELFPROMO_TOKEN