The days of the meager 300W PSU are most certainly over.  The advent of multicores and power hungry graphics cards have sent the minimum power requirements for systems soaring to levels that were unthinkable just a few years ago.  To this end, today we will be taking a look at a new Power Supply Unit (PSU) from BFG Technologies.  BFG is a company traditionally known for their high end graphics cards and close relationship to nVidia.  If anyone knows about power requirements in a gaming enthusiast system, it’s these guys.

Inside the box, protected by bubble wrap, is the PSU itself.

Not surprisingly, the PSU takes up most of the space in the box, but BFG threw in some extra goodies as well.  Naturally, there is a power cord rated at 18A.

Screws and some zip ties...

And some velcro straps to cut down on the bird nest effect.

It's nice to see a few extras like this included.  Little things like this are definitely appreciated.

Now that we have everything out of the box, let's take a look at the PSU itself.

Here is a shot of the back end of the PSU.

The blue button in the picture is an override for the fans which causes them to run at full speed.  This could be used to test fans and make sure they are working properly, but it is relatively useless feature.

Here we have a nice list of all the rails and the specs of each individual rail.  Of course there is the standard "opening this box will release the evil lizard men to practice their electrosorcery" warning.   Oh, how we hate the lizard men.

As a wise man once said, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."

Now that we have the cover off, we can see the guts.  The fans are both standard 80mm case fans, the rear being a typical 20mm thick and the front one a slim 10mm.  The really nice thing is that both fans use a standard two pin connector and are easily replaceable.  There are the typical heatsinks and thermal control circuitry.  All in all, it has a very clean look.  Unlike a lot of cheaper PSUs these days, you can tell there was actual effort in designing the layout.

Here you can see the SATA, molex, and aux power connectors.  Nothing special here, other than the odd (but nice) blue colored plugs on the aux rails.  It would have been nice to see these cables loomed though...

Here are the ATX and PCI-E rails.  The ATX connector is adaptable from 20 to 24 pins simply by attaching or detaching the extra 4 pins.  It is such a vastly superior way of managing 20 and 24 pin ATX plugs that it should be the only kind of connector used in modern power supplies.  Unfortunately a lot of companies have yet to get this memo, but once you use a PSU with this feature, you won't want to go back.

The PCI-E cables were a little different from the other rails.  Rather than looming traditional wire or leaving them bare, BFG used manufactured and shielded multi-wire cable.  This is something I haven't seen in non-modular PSUs before.  I just wish all the wires were like this.