Choosing a Fully Modular PSU in 2013

Want easy cable management and better airflow throughout your case? In this post I'll give you my top ten full modular power supplies. Rankings will be taken from my own personal experience as a PC builder as well as customer reviews and ratings throughout the web. After time, this top ten will be determined by the reader poll at the end of this post, which lists several other fully modular power supplies.

Is your favorite modular power supply not listed? Be sure to leave a comment in the guestbook below.

When I build a PC I generally try to purchase a power supply that's 80 Plus certified for bronze, gold, or, occasionally, platinum. Having this certification simply means that the power supply is more than 80% efficiency under a 20%, 50%, and 100% workload. The better the efficiency, the higher the rating. For example, platinum has a 90%, 92%, 89% rating for those 3 capacities.

Is an 80 Plus Certified PSU Worth It?

Over the course of a year you might save anywhere from $5-$30. Considering that companies offer a 3-7 year warranty on most of these types of products, it's usually worth the cost. This is especially useful for those using a power supply with high capacity. For additional information, I've listed my favorite gold, platinum, and bronze power supplies in this post on the best 80 plus PSU.

The Corsair professional series is one of my favorite fully modular Power supplies because of its high quality and efficiency. It recently received the Gold Award from HardOCP.com.

For a common capacity like 50% this particular power supply is 90% efficient saving you time in the long-run and dissipating less heat through wasted energy. Another key feature for this series is just how quiet the power supply itself is. When I have it plugged in to my PC I can't even hear it unless I stop what I'm doing.

Perhaps the best feature of this model is that Corsair stamped a 7 year warranty on it meaning you'll be good to go for a long time (MTBF is listed as 100,000 hours).

With the Seasonic G series you pay a little bit more for a Gold Certified power supply that will last you a long time. This particular model is only partially modular; however, I've noticed that any cables that you need to remove you'll be able to. Unlike some of the cheaper models out there it's made with the good stuff like polymer aluminum solid capacitors and uses other quality parts like gold plated terminals which reduce current transmission resistance in turn giving you better efficiency.

Overall:

Overall if you're buying for the long-term it's a good option. If you hardly ever keep your computer on, then you may want to go with something cheaper.

The OCZ ZX Series comes with a five year warranty and can be a great deal if you can find it on rebate. While the quality of the capacitors on this particular model are not as great as other pricier models, it's still 90% efficient and has a mean time before failure of 100,000 hours. To put that in perspective I have several OCZ power supplies and none of them have been returned yet.

Seasonic is known for their quality parts and hardware, but you can expect to pay a little bit more for their products at any level. Whether its worth it or not I'll leave up to you, but their M12II seems reasonable enough to consider.

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