Introduction

Today we are reviewing a power supply from a company we have had the pleasure of working with before. The company is Xclio, the reviews we have done previously are for their computer cases, including these models Godspeed, Blackhawk and Xclio 1000.

All of these case proved to be top of the line enclosures and we see no reason why the power supplies that they make should be any different.  Some of the features of the power supply are its 80 Plus rating, SLI compatibility an the 140mm fan that will help keep the power supply operating at a safe temperature.

About Xclio

With continued research and development companies keep providing new technology that enhances components used in computers and consumer electronics (i.e. CPU, Hard Drives, video card, etc). Intel and AMD continue to introduce new processors that exponentially increase computing capabilities. Manufacturers of hard drives are providing drives with larger capacity, increased cache speeds and even the revolutions per minute has increased to 15,000 for SATA drives. Both nVIDIA and ATI manufacturers of video cards have increased their graphic process performance while requiring faster and larger memory. But, with all of these electronic components performing more, a great amount of heat is generated.

XCLIO's philosophy on designing cases is one of simplicity and practicality. XCLIO design group combines the expertise and ideas from designers locally and aboard. Our designs are verified against guidelines from the CE/FCC testing lab, temperature-testing lab, noisy testing lab, so we can achieve the following:

1. Simplicity and Practicality
2. Unique Designs
3. Super Quiet
4. Absolutely heat sink
5. Worldwide safety regulations

So our customers receive the best product design and unique options available in the market.

Packaging

The packaging on the Xclio Great Power 1000 is in one word "Colorful", but yet it is done in such a way as to be very tasteful and and actually very attractive when you take the time to look at it closely.  The artwork use a straight line motif and it allows all of the information about the power supply to be readily readable easy to follow the word flow of the comments.

On the front of the package you will find the words "Real Wattage PSU" which makes reference to the fact that Xclio states that their power supply are not over rated, but instead are the actual wattage at which they are advertised and from what we have found in our tests we would have to agree when them 100 percent.

It also states that it has an extremely stable DC output, we will either verify or take note of this later in the review.  The unit also feature cable management instead of the old style "Mile of Wire" type power supplies still on the market today.

You would think that this cover would be the front of the carton with the wealth of information that it has upon it. On the left-side is a very complete list of the features of the Xclio Great Power 1000. In the next compartment we have the General Specifications and finally we have Applications for which this power supply can be used.   The general specs are the ones we want to speak to for a moment. Things such as the fact that the unit has an input voltage range of between 100 - 240 Volts DC.  Also worth mentioning is the unit has a PF rating of .99 at full load with an efficiency of 84%.

The only way you can tell what the actual wattage of the power supply without taking the unit out of the case is look at the end panel of the carton.

Packaging for the Xclio Great Power 1000W Power Supply can best be described as more than adequate, the power supply itself is wrapped in bubble-wrap and then sandwiched between to halves of Styrofoam. The modular cable are packaged in a very nice heavy duty canvas bag while the power cord is placed in a cardboard carton to keep it from rubbing on the power supply.

As far as the cabling goes the power supply goes it is broken down into regions marked as V1 through V4,  V1 is where all of the peripherals are connected, V3 and V4 are for the VGA card connectors.

A Closer Look

Here in the first view of the Xclio Great Power 1000 you can see the added safety measure they took to insure that the unit arrived in one piece and great shape.  The wires you see coming out of the power supply are the 20+4 power cable, a 4+4 - 8-pin cable and another 8-pin cable.

The front of the power supply does not use a fan to ventilate the inside of the unit but instead it has a series of holes arranged in such a way as to provide the maximum amount of air flow out of the power supply with the least amount of resistance.  The 140mm fan located on the bottom of the unit is what also helps pull the warm air from out of the top portion of the case and then forces it out through the power supply.

Looking at the placard on the side of the unit you can see how the voltages are arranged in such a way as to draw a balanced load across all of the circuits. There are a total of four 12V rails and two of them provide 20 amps while the other two provide 36 amps each. The 5 Volt and 3.3 Volt rails each have 30 amps per rail.

Here you can see the connectors for the Xclio Great Power 1000, the black connectors are for the peripherals and the blue connectors are for 8-pin and 6-pin cables and the same applies to the red connectors.

Opposite the placard side of the power supply you will just find a sticker placed on the unit that has the name of the power supply on it.

One nice touch that helps accent the very nice paint job that has been applied to the power supply is the gold accented fan guard.  From this angle you can also see the large and easy to find power switch for the power supply, the fact that the switch lights up when power has been applied makes it easier to find in the event of an emergency.

Going Inside

Looking inside the Xclio Great Power 1000 you can better understand what I mentioned earlier about the power supply being broken down into two sides. One side has 12V Rail 1 and 4 and the 3.3 Volt rails while the other side has 12V Rail 2 and 3 and 5 volt rail connections.

Looking at the power supply from this angle you can see that it basically made up of two identical halves each having its own transform and filter capacitors and regulating circuits as well.

You can also see at the rear of the power supply where all of the modular cables attach the unit has a large circuit board with wires from one half of the power supply going to one half of the circuit board while the other half of the wires go the other half of the circuit board.  This is all related to having the power supply split in half as it is.

The fan used on the Great Power 1000 is a Yate Loon Electronics model D14DH-12 fan, rated at 12 volts @ 0.17 amps.

Testing and the Results

Test Setup

Motherboard:  Asus P5Q Pro
Processor:  Intel Q9450
Memory:  OCZ Reaper DDR2 4GB
Heatsink:  Zalman CNPS 10X Extreme
Video Card:  HIS 4890
Optical Drive:  Pioneer DVD-111
Software:  Winstress DVD Version

Test Equipment:  USB Instruments Stingray Oscilloscope
Voltmeter: Sinometer USB Digital Meter with temperature probe a max/min tape feed

To test the power supply we ran one instance of Sisoft Sandra's Burn'in Test along with a copy of Ultra-X's Winstress at maximum CPU utilization.  These two programs can keep the CPU running at 100% utilization 100% of the time.

Conclusion

The Xclio Great Power 1000 proved itself to be a contender for one the best high wattage power supplies we have tested. If there is one thing we would have liked to have seen is the 12 volt rail voltages to be a speck higher, yes 11.80 volts is well within spec so it really is no big thing.  We do like the way the power supply uses two 12-volt rails to handle half of the duties of the power supply while the other two 12-volt rails handle the remainder of the work.

To sum it up for you if you need a dependable power supply than can handle just about anything you can toss at it then look no further than the Xclio Great Power 1000 Power Supply. I mean think about it who really needs more than 1000 watts of power these days?

A special thanks to Xclio who provided use with this sample.