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PC Power and Cooling: A Practice in Perfection

Published

16 years ago

March 10, 2010

We were recently given a tour of the PC Power and Cooling facilities located in Carlsbad – near San Diego, California. PC Power and Cooling is considered to be one of the premier power supply manufacturers in the enthusiast and prosumer market. They have been around for quite a long time and they’ve always stuck to their guns when it came to their power supplies. While many people do agree, including PC P&C, that they are not the cheapest game in town, many people do agree that their methods are exhaustive and meticulous when it comes to power supplies.

Then again, do bear in mind that PCP&C products span beyond PC industry in a way we haven’t expected to hear. It isn’t unknown that commercial operations lure lucrative defense deals or similar. For instance, CoolIT’s TEC-cooled Freezone and Boreas are used to cool down laser heads that print wafers and are used in the hard drive industry. However, hearing that PCP&C products are used in various sensitive environments such as submarines certainly adds to how confident PCP&C employees feel in their products.

Following the introduction, we were given a tour by Bob Roark around the facilities and here are some photographs of our tour.

First we were led to the office of James who is in charge of their tech support.

As you can see in a picture below, we took a quick snapshot of what James uses as daily tools…

Nothing too exciting here.

After we went to his office, he showed us some power supplies that were currently being tested on the Chroma machine and showed us the testing methodology that they used whenever they shipped out a power supply. They also showed us how they tested the power supply’s ability to operate under extreme heat using what can simply be considered to be a power supply oven.

Pictured above, is the room where most of the load testing is done as well as heat chamber load testing.

Above is James holding a printout that is generated whenever the Chroma runs a test on a power supply. The paper prints out the printer in his office and then comes through that tiny little window.

Users of PC Power & Cooling products will probably recognize this, as PCP&C is putting this report for almost all high end power supplies. The service is available for some OCZ power supplies as well.

James running a test for us to show how the load tester works.

Here is a closer shot of the PCB designed to allow the connection of a PSU to the Chroma machine for effective load testing. Do bear in mind this tester just like any other, could not properly test triple GTX 280 setups. Unlike Topower and similar players, PCP&C builds significant power reserve, exactly to offset this potential mishap. Thus, users of PCP&C supplies are safe even in the case of power hungry boards such as the upcoming “Beyond PCIe power spec.”

Here James showing us the various voltages on the power supply while the chroma is testing.

Another picture of James messing with the oscilloscope’s settings.

Yet another shot of the cable mess that is the Chroma connection board.

A picture of the entire setup as it is, with a power supply attached for good measure.

Next, James explains to us the need to do load testing under high temperatures in order to make sure the power supply is capable of handling high heat situations.

James then proceeds to place the power supply in the aptly named Thermotron heat cabinet to demonstrate how high heat load testing would be done.

Here are the cables sticking out of the Thermotron which will inevitably be plugged into the Chroma testing board and naturally, the position of the power supply in the Thermotron [as pictured below].

This is the software that is used to run the Chroma tests and determine whether or not a power supply is up to muster to be shipped out to the consumer.

A print out of our testing results after we ran our own test on the Chroma.

It was nice having that little window there and not having to walk around. Quite a simple solution to resolve the printer issue without giving up space.

After we messed around with the new power supply that they were testing, we headed over to the main floor where the bulk of the work was done. Just as a mental note, that power supply pictured in those images is the first 140mm power supply that PC Power and Cooling will release. Unfortunately, we don’t have a release date but we were told it should be this year. This is part of PC Power and Cooling’s attempt to change with the market and satisfy consumer demands for quieter power supplies as well as ones that are still reliable. In addition to that, we were also told that they plan on releasing a new high end power supply with a modular design. This will also be their first power supply using a modular design, ever. This is a result of the fact that almost every other power supply manufacturer out there has a modular power supply nowadays and we were told that their customers kept asking for it, so they decided to do it.

PC Power & Cooling confirmed with us that they will still be sticking to the single rail design, but they say modular is coming very soon. This also shows a change of heart from back in 2005 where Doug Dodson, the President and Founder of PC Power and Cooling specifically acknowledges the popularity of modular power supplies but states that he is not interested. Doug stated, “For real pros in the industry, no way would they specify that kind of arrangement. This is a consumer-oriented gimmick.” Well, it looks like maybe it isn’t a gimmick anymore considering its market wide adoption and PC Power and Cooling’s possible adoption of modular power supplies.

Moving back on to the tour, we were next shown some of PC Power and Cooling’s very unique power supplies. These power supplies were custom ones that customers had ordered online and asked for certain features to be added or removed. For example, one of the power supplies pictured included an ESA connection which don’t come standard on PC Power and Cooling power supplies, but were added at the customer’s request. Another power supply had all of its cables modified to be all SATA connectors. And yet another had very specific sized cable lengths which any customer who orders a power supply direct from PC Power and Cooling can request. This would completely remove the need to worry about a cable being too long or too short when building a dream rig that needs to be perfect.

Next we walked around and got some shots of all of the new and recertified power supplies lying around. Needless to say, power supplies were in quite abundance and the cascades of power supplies almost looked like a waterfall of cables.

Here are some of the PSUs and UPSes that have come in either for repair or are to be sent out as new products.

Shown above is a Silence 610w power supply that was modified for a customer to only have SATA power connections.

A few other specialized server power supplies that the customer had very specific needs for because of the legacy connectors.

Here is the shot inside of an ESA modified Turbo Cool 860w. This power supply was modified by PC P&C to support the nvidia ESA standard.

Shown above is the USB connection that is soldered to the special PCB on the power supply in order to make it ESA ready.

This power supply was made for a customer to order because the customer wanted very specific cable lengths in order to avoid cable clutter and to make the build look as neat as possible. God knows how many of us have had to deal with 8 pin power connectors that were too short.

That monstrosity is a cart of power supplies, it vaguely reminds you of a cascade with all of the cables flowing downward like that.

Here is yet another table with more power supplies with their cables hanging off the edge like vines.

And yet even more power supplies hanging on the edge, do these pictures ever get old?

Since at the time of our visit, PC P&C had been doing internal inventory, it appeared as though someone had to be notified not to count the toys as inventory. We found these toys to be completely random and funny.

These are plastic caps designed to protect 4 pin Molex connectors from ever getting shorted out because their leads were exposed.

Here is a close up of one of those caps.

Another shot of the entire area we covered, nothing huge but definitely no small scale operation.

We then were given a tour of the area where all of the power supplies were re-worked and tested before sent back out. This area resembled the initial testing area we saw earlier in the tour, except with soldering equipment and magnifying glass.

A nice and big banner in the production area that lets you know where you are.

A long distance snapshot of the shipping and reworking areas.

One of the reworking stations where PC P&C employees fix problems with OCZ or PC P&C power supplies.

This is the other Chroma tester that they have, this one is for the reworking side of things.

Yet another tester that they use in their reworking lab.

This is what the bench looks like for a typical PC P&C worker who reworks power supplies.

From our tour with PC Power and Cooling, we got the sense that they really don’t have a desire to rule the entire market and that they are very comfortable with their position as a high end and quality power supply manufacturer that is unmatched in their methodology and attention to detail. In a way, we can compare PC Power & Cooling to supercar manufacturers such as Ferrari, Lamborghini and co. We hope to see these new products from PC Power and Cooling soon and look forward to using them in our systems.

Original Author: Anshel Sag

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