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As you hopefully have seen by now, things didn’t turn out quite the way we expected with regards to some of the power supplies on test. A good power supply is key to a reliable PC because if your components don’t get enough power, they won’t function properly. Although your average PC will never push the PSU above 50 percent during normal usage, newer PCs with the latest generation of processors and graphics cards will need something substantially better than what has been the norm so far.

This is especially true when it comes to off-the-shelf PCs, as the power supplies fitted in many of those have been designed only to cope with the supplied components rather than the power demands of any future upgrades. Therefore, if you’re considering upgrading your own PC, you want to make sure that you have a power supply that will cope with the new components.

Many cases these days cost less than £25 and the PSUs within them are rated at 300W. This would work fine with an entry-level computer, but a cheap power supply is rarely a good option for delivering enough power for a gaming system. However, the old adage that you get what you pay for has also been disproven as we’ve found examples of expensive units not doing what they claim they can do. This makes a thorough test such as this all the more important, as we’ve shown that you never really know what you going to get from a power supply.

There are many myths surrounding PSUs and hopefully after reading this group test you'll have a clearer idea of what to look for when purchasing a power supply. It might not be the most exciting product in your PC but without a decent PSU you'll never get the most out of your PC.

The Winners

With a number of decent contenders taking part, the hardest part of this group test was picking the final winners. We didn’t divide the PSUs into different categories and although you can’t really compare the passive PSUs to the fan cooled ones, we decided to keep the results together for easier comparison.

The winner of the Editor’s Choice award was won by a hair’s breadth, but taking everything into account the Tagan TG480-U01 took the honours. This was due to a combination of good test results, its wide range of connectivity options and a reasonable price considering what you get for your money.

Our first recommended award goes to the Akasa PaxPower 460W AK-P460FG BK, which is a more affordable alternative to the Tagan. It delivers slightly less power, but it conforms to the latest ATX spec by having dual 12V rails, something the Tagan units don’t. It wasn’t perfect, but very few PSUs on test were.


Our second recommended award went to an unexpected candidate. In our tests the Jeantech JN450W-120F-AP performed beyond our expectations and scooped an award mainly due to its affordability. It’s slightly weak in terms of features, but it is less than half the price of the winner of this group test.


The final recommended award goes to the Etasis EFN-300, which is an amazing product considering that there is not a single fan in this PSU. It was a close call between the Etasis and the SilverStone, but the Etasis won out thanks to its lower price.


There are several other good power supplies on test here although you’ll have to read their reviews to see why they didn’t win an award. Of these the Tagan i-Xeye, the FSP Blue Storm, the Seasonic Super Tornado, the SST-ST30NF and the Vantech Stealth all deserve a mention.

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