Testbed and Methods
Test Setup

• Case: Antec P182
  
• Power Supply: Antec NeoHE 550W | PCP&C Silencer 610 EPS12V
• Motherboard: eVGA Nvidia 680I
  
• Processor: Intel E6700
  
• Hard Drive: Western Digital 150GB Raptor, 10,000rpm, 16MB Cache Buffer
• Video: Diamond Viper Radeon HD 2600XT 256MB GDDR4
• Memory: 2048MB (2x1024MB) Crucial Ballistix 1066MHz
  
• Optical Drives: Nec 3500a / Lite-on SOHR-5238s
• Cooling: Arctic Freezer 7 Pro
  
• Audio: Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic
• NIC: Killer Network Interface Card

Software Configuration

• Motherboard BIOS: P28
• Operating System: Windows Vista Ultimate full updated
  
• Video Driver: ATI/AMD Catalyst 7.9 WHQL Certified
  

We realize this rig isn't the most demanding; we had hoped to have a 8800GTX on hand in time to help push the system but no dice. Hence the reasoning for really pushing our clocks speeds almost near the max this system has seen. It should help us get a better idea just how stable this system will be across the rails, which is the key aspect to test a power supply on. Speaking of which, ideally you want to test all three rails - the 12V, the 5V, and 3V - at varied instances of system use. There are 4 phases we like to test at: initial start up, system idle, gaming load, and full load. Gaming load here consisted of a fresh start up with average background resources running; Trillian Astra, Outlook, mIRC, and Firefox while playing Team Fortress 2 and pwning n00bs like Shoes with my rocket launcher. Full load consisted of all that while also running utorrent, and Orthos on blend. We do this on both power supplies to test just how reliable these well renowned PCP&C power supplies are and how it compares to a slightly less expensive competitor.

So while we may not fully be able to stress the two power supplies to their limits with a high end demanding quad core machine with Quad SLI or the like and find the limits of where it may or may not falter, we can give a accurate comparison between two solid brand new power supplies and determine which one comes out on top.

Overclocked system settings consist of the following:

• Processor Clock Speed: 3.60 GHz (roughly 26% overclock)
• Processor Voltage: 1.50 (1.35 stock)
• MCH Voltage: 1.65 (1.50 stock)