Zippy Gaming G1 (GSM-6600P): Hybrid or Fence-Sitter?
by Christoph Katzer on August 3, 2007 2:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Conclusion
With the results we've just presented, it's pretty easy to come to a conclusion. Zippy's origins of being a server and redundant power supply maker are clear in many aspects of the G1. Everything is built to survive even in difficult operating environments, but it needs to be cooled efficiently. To help cool it down, you need a lot of airflow, and if with an 80mm fan that means high RPMs to suck the air through the PSU as fast as possible. Many rack servers are built in this fashion, with numerous small, high-RPM fans. Needless to say, such servers are anything but quiet.
So what sort of people would buy this kind of power supply? It will surely not be the silence enthusiasts or those looking to build a decent HTPC, and neither will it be somebody building a PC for the living room that will run 24/7. Those who would be willing to buy this power supply and stomach the high buying price will need to be real performance enthusiasts that don't care about noise. If you want a stable and reliable power supply that will perform well under just about any circumstances, the Zippy G1 is worth a look. In most other areas, it unfortunately falls short.
From the efficiency point of view, we the results aren't spectacular. With just 81% efficiency using 230VAC, the Zippy doesn't break any new ground in the high-end PSU market. The standby efficiency was quite low as well, generating results as low as 14% (albeit at loads that make such a result less critical).
Zippy is producing all of their power supplies in Taiwan, and this is clearly visible in the build quality. The 12V rail is the most stable we have seen so far. We would have liked to see more PEG connectors instead of only two 6-pin connections, particularly for a "gaming" PSU, but for upper midrange or lower high-end configurations this should still be sufficient. With this 600W power supply you can definitely run higher-end systems, but you might want to look elsewhere if you're interested in quad core processors, overclocking, and dual high-end GPUs. (Ed: as in, all three at the same time - such configurations can pull over 750W at load!). If you're looking at running a setup with a lot of hard drives, however, you do get plenty of peripheral connectors, and lengths of up to 75cm are sufficient for use with most tower cases.
Availability in the market is not where we'd like it to be, and we hoped to see this PSU at more resellers by now. Unfortunately, we have been unable to find any major shops that stock this power supply at present. A quick search with Google did result in a couple hits, but with prices starting at $170 we have to say that there are certainly better options. The Zippy G1/GSM-6600P certainly performs well and we can recommend it to people looking to build a high-end system who don't care about the noise levels and the lack of PEG connectors. We're not sure many individuals actually fall into that category, however, and there are definitely other vendors with similar or better products.
With their gaming series Zippy has made a first attempt at catering to the retail market and created a hybrid power supply that sits somewhere between gaming and server needs. It ends up not quite satisfying either market, and it needs a lot of tweaking before it can become a true gaming power supply that we can fully recommend.
With the results we've just presented, it's pretty easy to come to a conclusion. Zippy's origins of being a server and redundant power supply maker are clear in many aspects of the G1. Everything is built to survive even in difficult operating environments, but it needs to be cooled efficiently. To help cool it down, you need a lot of airflow, and if with an 80mm fan that means high RPMs to suck the air through the PSU as fast as possible. Many rack servers are built in this fashion, with numerous small, high-RPM fans. Needless to say, such servers are anything but quiet.
So what sort of people would buy this kind of power supply? It will surely not be the silence enthusiasts or those looking to build a decent HTPC, and neither will it be somebody building a PC for the living room that will run 24/7. Those who would be willing to buy this power supply and stomach the high buying price will need to be real performance enthusiasts that don't care about noise. If you want a stable and reliable power supply that will perform well under just about any circumstances, the Zippy G1 is worth a look. In most other areas, it unfortunately falls short.
From the efficiency point of view, we the results aren't spectacular. With just 81% efficiency using 230VAC, the Zippy doesn't break any new ground in the high-end PSU market. The standby efficiency was quite low as well, generating results as low as 14% (albeit at loads that make such a result less critical).
Zippy is producing all of their power supplies in Taiwan, and this is clearly visible in the build quality. The 12V rail is the most stable we have seen so far. We would have liked to see more PEG connectors instead of only two 6-pin connections, particularly for a "gaming" PSU, but for upper midrange or lower high-end configurations this should still be sufficient. With this 600W power supply you can definitely run higher-end systems, but you might want to look elsewhere if you're interested in quad core processors, overclocking, and dual high-end GPUs. (Ed: as in, all three at the same time - such configurations can pull over 750W at load!). If you're looking at running a setup with a lot of hard drives, however, you do get plenty of peripheral connectors, and lengths of up to 75cm are sufficient for use with most tower cases.
Availability in the market is not where we'd like it to be, and we hoped to see this PSU at more resellers by now. Unfortunately, we have been unable to find any major shops that stock this power supply at present. A quick search with Google did result in a couple hits, but with prices starting at $170 we have to say that there are certainly better options. The Zippy G1/GSM-6600P certainly performs well and we can recommend it to people looking to build a high-end system who don't care about the noise levels and the lack of PEG connectors. We're not sure many individuals actually fall into that category, however, and there are definitely other vendors with similar or better products.
With their gaming series Zippy has made a first attempt at catering to the retail market and created a hybrid power supply that sits somewhere between gaming and server needs. It ends up not quite satisfying either market, and it needs a lot of tweaking before it can become a true gaming power supply that we can fully recommend.
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crimson117 - Monday, August 6, 2007 - link
The last two paragraphs in the Conclusion are in italics.http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.a...">http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.a...
JarredWalton - Monday, August 6, 2007 - link
Sorry - fixed now. Missed the closing > of the "turn off italics" tag. That's what I get for inserting a quick comment after posting. :|irev210 - Saturday, August 4, 2007 - link
From a build-quality standpoint... it is hard to find another PSU that can touch these.I hope that anandtech looks at more zippy units.
lopri - Saturday, August 4, 2007 - link
I, like many others, am loving the new PSU review series from AT. The articles so far are superb and full of good information, and best of all is that the information is largely based on the end-users' point of view. I'd like to thank AT for these reviews. Keep up the good work!Duraz0rz - Friday, August 3, 2007 - link
Are there no separate graphs for different ambient temperatures anymore? On page 5, you say you test for two different temperatures: 25C and 50C, but I only see one graph per rail and I have no clue which temperature that is for. You do mention in one of your paragraphs about Zippy being worried about testing @ 50C, so I'm confused.Nice review, nevertheless, but like you said, it is a little expensive.
JarredWalton - Friday, August 3, 2007 - link
The second graph (with higher temperatures) starts at 25C and ramps up to 50C by 100% load - just like in previous PSU reviews. Note the subtitle on the first temp graph - "Tested at Room Temperature".Duraz0rz - Friday, August 3, 2007 - link
That's the thing...there's only one graph per rail on page 5.JarredWalton - Friday, August 3, 2007 - link
The 230VAC-Room is done at room temperature (25-26C). It's present on all the charts except for the 5vsb (where it really doesn't matter much). We combined all four results into one chart because that seemed to be more useful for comparing the results and condensing the article into 8 pages instead of 22. :)Super Nade - Friday, August 3, 2007 - link
You won't recommend it for overclocking or a rig with a quad-core CPU? Why? Very strange conclusion after stating that it regulates like no other. Would a real enthusiast care about noise or the 5VSB and standby efficiency when breaking records or pushing the envelope of his machine?"In most other areas, it unfortunately falls short."
Apart from the electrical characteristics does the "failure" in "other" areas really matter?
JarredWalton - Friday, August 3, 2007 - link
This statement has been edited for clarity. Overclocking on it's own isn't a problem, and neither are quad cores or (certain) dual GPU configurations - don't try dual HD 2900 XT, most likely, since besides two PEG connections per card they can also use an 8-pin PEG as one of the connections. You can basically do two of the items in that list, but if you try to do all three you're going to go WAY over 600W.8800 GTX SLI (using factory OC'ed models) and Q6600/6700 @ ~3.47 GHz with two or three hard drives and idle power use will be in the neighborhood of 400-450W. Load up the CPU (say, Folding@Home SMP) and you can easily hit 600W or more. Play some games that load up the GPUs, and you really ought to be running a 1000W PSU - assuming maximum efficiency as usual comes in the 50-80% load range.
It falls short in noise, cooling performance, connections for certain devices. As an enthusiast, I definitely don't want a PSU that cranks out that much noise, considering there are other PSUs (SeaSonic) that will match the Zippy in all other ways and do it at lower noise levels.