Power Supply Roundup: 730W to 900W

OCZ ModXStream - 780W

OCZ sent their ModXStream 780W power supply. It has modular cables to help with cable management. The housing comes in black and as the picture shows fingerprints are easily visible. The exhaust at the back is quite open and allows for good airflow. The 120mm fan is installed on the bottom of the unit. Everything comes packed in a very small box, with the standard accessories like screws, a power cord, and the user manual.

The label shows 20A for each of the four 12V rails and a combined power of up to 755W. As we saw on the Amacrox power supply, the ModXStream also contains a table with 12V distributions for the different connectors. OCZ made some changes here and places one ATX connector on 12V1; a PCI-E connector and the second CPU rail are on 12V2. The peripherals are on 12V3, and the main graphics card gets 12V4.

Cables and Connectors

All the cables are sleeved and the cable management system allows the user to detach cables that aren't needed. The sockets on the PSU have different pin-outs so the user can't attach the harnesses to the wrong jack. Like the 730W/770W Hiper, the ModXStream is a little short on connectors for a 780W unit. It only has four Molex and six SATA connectors.

The internals are nice and clean, like we saw on another unit. The ModXStream looks a little empty inside because of the enormous housing length; the extra length is unnecessary and actually makes the ModXStream unable to fit in certain cases. There's also enough space on the sides for eddies to occur in the airflow. The temperature results of the heatsinks during testing confirm this, as we measured up to 90°C at the middle heatsink. With a 50°C exhaust temperature, clearly the airflow isn't working properly.