80Plus Gold certified power supply suited for multi-GPU setups

Apr 2, 2010 07:38 GMT  ·  By

NVIDIA's new GTX 400 series graphics adapters, as the first DirectX 11 video boards from the company, excel in two main areas. One is, obviously, performance, especially tessellation rendering, and the other is performance scalability when in SLI setups. In fact, NVIDIA claims a 90% performance boost when in dual-GPU configurations.

As such, enthusiasts, since they generally have no budget restrictions, will likely find two-way or three-way Fermi SLI intriguing. Unfortunately, the cards' power consumption will reduce these customers' freedom of choice when considering a viable PSU. Xilence seems bent on providing one such product.

Since the GeForce GTX 470 and especially the GTX 480 have thermal design powers (TDPs) of 215W and 250W, respectively, a two-way and three-way SLI setup will, naturally, require a power supply with a very high wattage and, preferably, a high efficiency. Xilence means to address this need with its newest XQ unit, a PSU with a power output of 1200W.

The power supply has four 12V rails, a 135mm fan and will keep up with the demands of even the most power-hungry configurations, mainly because of its very high efficiency rating. For those interested in specifics, on the 80Plus certification system, the newest Xilence XQ 1200W PSU is marked with an 80Plus Gold rating. This is the highest recognition a PSU can achieve and was enabled by its efficiency of no less than 92 percent.

In addition to having enough fuel to support top-tier systems, the PSU also boasts a number of safety functions that will protect the parts it supplies power to. The list of such built-in elements includes protection against under-voltage, short-circuit, over-voltage and over-current.

Unfortunately, enthusiasts will have to wait until the middle of the month before the device becomes available. The price tag it will carry is currently suggested at 249 Euro.