Protection Features Evaluation

Every PSU should be equipped with a set of protections, which will not only protect the PSU, but the whole system. You can learn more about PSU protections if you read the corresponding section of our "A Detailed Look Into PSUs" article.

In a snap, the most important protections for PSUs are the following:

Over Current Protection (OCP)
Over Power Protection (OPP)
Over Temperature Protection (OTP)
Over/Under Voltage Protection (OVP/UVP)
Short Circuit Protection (SCP)
No-load Operation (NLO)
Surge and Inrush Protection (SIP)

We should note here that OCP isn't usually offered in single +12V rail PSUs, especially high capacity ones. In such units, OPP partly takes over. OTP is very important, and we won't mess with OVP/UVP until we find a way to safely evaluate it.

There are indeed four +12V rails, and they are configured properly. The OCP on the other rails is properly set as well. However, the over temperature protection's triggering point should be lower since we noticed some strange behavior at 5VSB with anything beyond 150 °C ambient on the secondary side.