Preview: Take the power back

Graphics card maker Club3D has decided to enter the PSU market and has released a total of five power supply units. Our today`s test subject is Club 3D CSP-X1000CB, the strongest PSU from Club 3D Switching Power Supply family. As the name suggests, the PSU packs 1000W of total power and modular power cables.

CSP-X1000CB is aimed at enthusiasts with very high demands, but Club 3D didn’t forget about the rest either. The five PSUs in the series are 400W, 600W, 700W, 850W and 1000W. Note however that only the stronger PSUs have modular cabling whereas 400W and 600W do not.

Our today’s guest has four +12V rails with 38A each and its efficiency earned it 80 Plus Bronze certificate.

As you can see from the pictures, Club 3D CSP-X1000CB is quite the charmer with its blue fan. In fact, the 1000W unit comes with blue color scheme on the box and the color coding makes it easy to tell Club 3D’s PSUs apart – 1000W is blue, 850W and 700W are green whereas 600W and 400W ones come in yellow. Apart from getting that first impression, the fan color does not really matter since you probably won’t be seeing it too much.

Package contents for model No. CSP-X1000CB:

  - Club 3D CSP-X1000CM power supply unit
  - Modular cable set x1
  - User manual x1
  - Quick installation guide
  - AC power cord x1
  - Velcro wraps for cable management x3 (cable tie)
  - Mounting screws x4
  - Cable carry bag x1

The user manual reveals that the new Club 3D`s PSU series sports 5 different PSUs, starting from 400W all the way to 1000W.

Club 3D CSP-X1000CB is a standard sized PSU which will fit in all regular cases. It measures (W) 150mm x (L) 164mm x (H) 86mm.

The PSU comes with black matte paint job.

CSP-X1000CB features modular design and all the cables come in a black bag, except of course for the must-have cables – the motherboard 20+4 pin one, the CPU 4+4 pin one and 2x the PCI-e 6+2 pin. Club 3D decided to include two more cables in the must-have bunch – one cable with three SATA connectors and a cable with two MOLEX and one floppy 4-pin cable. As you can see, it’s a pretty thick bunch of cables but you’ll probably use them up relatively quickly. After all, why else would someone require a 1000W PSU?

Modular cables include:

  - one ATX12V/EPS 4 + 4 pin,
  - two  PCI-e cables with two conectors each (8-pin i 6+2 pin),
  - two SATA cables with three connectors each,
  - one peripheral with three 4-pin MOLEX connectors,
  - one peripheral with two 4-pin MOLEX and one floppy connector.

All the cables are displayed in the table below, split in two categories.

Length of the cables is standard, except for the CPU 4+4 pin cable that’s pretty short at 550mm. Enthusiasts and high-end users who intend to mount the PSU a tower case might have trouble routing the ATX cable from the back.

CSP-X1000CB features multi rail design with four 12V rails with 38A each.

The fan is 135mm in diameter and runs pretty quiet. The fan is blue, which in Club3D’s CSP series means that it’s a PSU intended for triple-VGA configuration. The PSUs with 800W and 750W (green fan) are intended for dual-VGA configuration whereas 600W and 400W (yellow fan) are for single-VGA ones.

Club 3D CSP-X1000CB is a 1000W power supply, classified on Club 3D web portal as triple-VGA ready. To be honest, 1000W is quite a lot but today’s high-end hardware is not quite easy on power bills either. For instance, Nvidia recommends a 1200W or higher for a tri-way SLI setup with GTX 580 cards. If you’re looking to build a tri-way SLI configuration, you might want to check the power requirements here. 

CSP-X1000CB is 80 Plus Bronze certified, which means that it has to churn out 82%, 85% and 82% efficiency for respective workloads of 20%, 50% and 100%. Since we down have the kind of equipment to test for that kind of efficiency, we’ll have to go with practical application tests. For the same reason, we called this a preview rather than a review, as you'll have to find detailed measurements elsewhere.

Two AMD HD 6970 graphics cards in CrossFire will help us put enough load on Club 3D CSP-X1000CB, so that we can test for fan loudness and stability of entire rig.

Fan Noise

Club 3D CSP-X1000CB’s fan was pretty quiet in idle mode. We could hear the fan but it’s not particularly noticeable.

The following three photos show Club 3D’s CSP-X1000CB in BitFenix Colossus case. The fan is on the bottom but aimed upwards in order to draw in fresh air.

CSP-X1000CB uses a 135mm fan that turned out to be quiet even under high loads. Truth be told, if you're looking to build a three way graphics card setup, the PSU fan will be the least of your noise troubles.

Stability and Efficiency

Our test rig ran entirely stable during our testing. Our tests revealed that Club 3D CSP-X1000CB is somewhere in line with CoolerMaster's Silent Pro 1000W. Note however that these kinds of tests require more expensive equipment, and thus the differences might be down to the imprecision of our measurement device. Having said that, you can see that a high end rig with two HD 6970 cards and not many additional devices (SSD and DVD drive only) consumes about 700W while playing Metro 2033 at 2560x1600. It makes it pretty clear that three HD 6970 or three GTX 580 will benefit from an even stronger PSU.

Testbed

Motherboard: EVGA 4xSLI
CPU: Core i7 965 XE (Intel EIST and Vdrop enabled)
Memory: 6GB Corsair Dominator 12800 7-7-7-24
Harddisk:   OCZ Vertex 2 100 GB
Power Supply: CoolerMaster Silent Pro Gold 800W
Case: CoolerMaster HAF X
Fan Controler: Kaze Master Pro 5.25"
Operating System: Win7 64-bit
AMD Driver Catalyst 11.1 CCC

Club 3D CSP-X1000CB PSU is classified as triple-VGA ready, but let us look at the included cables. Two PCI Express 6+2 pin connectors are among the non-modular cables whereas connecting two modular cables will give four additional PCI Express connectors (8-pin and 6+2 pin). This is enough for a triple VGA setup.

However, we could not connect the second PCI Express modular cable as we used the PSU’s other 8-pin out to connect the CPU’s ATX12V cable. To be honest, we didn’t need the fourth PCI Express cable for dual-CrossFire, nor did we have to connect the second ATX12V CPU cable, but high-end users might need these. It looks like Club 3D made an oversight here by including more cables than you can actually connect.

If many graphics card manufacturers haven't started selling motherboards, PSUs, projectors and other equipment, we'd be surprised at seeing Club 3D launching PSU series. It might've been wiser if the company jumped in the PSU market earlier, but better late than never. A brief internet search reveals that the PSU market currently boasts at least hundred 1000W models and many brands, but something tells us that this number was much lower up until one year ago.

Club 3D CSP-X1000CB PSU is 80 Plus Bronze certified, which means this is one quality piece of hardware. If you're looking to purchase an 80 Plus Certified PSU, then the offer isn't as rich. We've seen that there are around 30 models of 80 Plus Bronze certified PSUs currently available in Europe.

Club 3D CSP-X1000CB is available at €141 here, which means that it's similarly priced to the rest of 1000W units. Club 3D obviously thought the entire thing out and offers six models in its series -- from 400W to 1000W. The PSUs are neatly color coded by packaging and fans - 1000W units come with blue fans and are recommended for triple-VGA setups (be careful here, as Nvidia and AMD are recommending 1200W PSU for three GTX 580 cards or for three HD 6970 cards), 850W and 700W have green fans and are recommended for dual-VGA setups whereas 600W and 400W ones have yellow fans and are recommended for single graphics setups.

Many users prefer modular PSUs and Club 3D responded by offering modular 750W, 800W and 1000W units. The 135mm fan found on the CSP-X1000CB is pretty quiet and you probably won't even notice it, especially when using high end graphics cards.