Aerocool Project 7 PSU 650 W Review 9

Aerocool Project 7 PSU 650 W Review

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Value & Conclusion

  • The ACP-650FP7 will retail for around $125. In Europe, you will find the entire Project 7 PSU line at Caseking.de, and the price of the ACP-650FP7 will be close to €125; the ACP-750FP7 will cost €150 and the ACP-850FP7 will go for €170.
  • Delivered full power at 46°C
  • High performance in all areas
  • Highly efficient
  • Among the quietest PSUs in its category
  • Excellent ripple suppression without using bulky caps with extra caps
  • High build quality, including good Japanese filtering caps
  • Complete protections set
  • FDB (featuring RGB LED lighting) fan
  • Fully modular
  • Compatible with the optional RGB controller hub
  • 7-year warranty
  • Not very affordable
  • We would like a better transient response at 3.3V
  • 5VSB OCP threshold should be lower
Aerocool's Project 7 line of PSUs makes for a strong re-entry of theirs into the PSU market. They even chose to cooperate with TechPowerUp for the development of the ACP-650FP7 based on Andyson's high-end platform, and thus, a lot of modifications were made to make sure most of our requirements are met. A basic demand we initially set was the presence of over temperature protection since the original Andyson platform doesn't have OTP, which stalled the project for a while, but OTP is essential, and we wouldn't even consider recommending a PSU that doesn't have it. Aerocool and Andyson met most of our demands, and after numerous beta-testing hours sunk into testing a significant number of PSUs, we were left with one of the best PSUs in its category, and while there is still room for improvement since nothing is perfect in this world, the things we aren't fully satisfied with when it comes to this platform aren't terribly important. The most important of these is the 3.3V rail's sub-par transient response - but modern systems should hardly use this rail, and there is no way this rail will have to cope with 5 A of transient load. We also didn't think fixing this rail's transient response would be worth it if it meant that Andyson would have to give up performance in another area (e.g. ripple suppression).

This is the first time we have cooperated with a brand in order to develop a PSU that meets our high standards, and we have to admit that the whole procedure was highly educational on both ends. We saw how things roll into the manufacturing field and now understand that you need a lot of patience and have to be as close to the factory as possible. Unfortunately, our lab is located in Europe, which had samples take a lot of money and several weeks to arrive. We thus lost a lot of time to shipping, and Aerocool had to sink a lot of money into shipping expenses, custom fees, etc., but we do believe that the final result is totally worth all the trouble.

In order to be able to cover the increase in development cost, Aerocool had to set quite high MSRPs for all Project 7 units. We will try to persuade them to keep these prices as low as possible, but every company needs income in order to survive. At least when a PSU is worthy of its increased price tag, its buyers won't regret having made the purchase. The ACP-650FP7 not only offers high performance in all areas, but is a dead-silent PSU, which makes it perfect if you need to keep your system quiet as well. We didn't measure any electronic noise (coil whine) at even below 6 dBA and tried various load combinations under those conditions, thanks to a special custom-made loader we built for this very purpose, which is passively cooled to make sure it doesn't increase ambient noise levels. If you want something different from the usual PSU offerings, you now have an alternative that performs well, sports a nice external design, and is compatible with the RGB controller hub Aerocool offers as an optional accessory for its entire Project 7 product line.
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Apr 25th, 2024 02:55 EDT change timezone

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