What is 80 PLUS

80 PLUS is an innovative, electric utility-funded incentive program to integrate more energy-efficient power supplies into desktop computers and servers. Participating utilities and energy efficiency organizations across North America have contributed over $5 million of incentives to help the computer industry transition to 80 PLUS certified power supplies.

To date, over 550power supplies have been certified and many local and majorcomputer manufacturers are selling qualified computers. Additionally, large commercial and institutional consumers are specifying 80 PLUS in their procurement policies at increasing rates.

What is the 80 PLUS specification?

The 80 PLUS performance specification requires power supplies in computers and servers to be 80% or greater energy efficient at 20%, 50% and 100% of rated load with a true power factor of 0.9 or greater. This makes an 80 PLUS certified power supply substantially more efficient than typical power supplies and creates a unique market differentiation opportunity for power supply and computer manufacturers.

In a nutshell it means your power supply is going to produce the correct voltages for your computer more efficiently thus saving you money and prolonging the life of you power supply.

The rear of the carton lists the features of the power supply along with the specifications and four pictures of various points on the power supply such as the quad-LED fan, the connection point for the cables, the LED power switch and the DIXX which is ready for PCI-e 2.0.

The carton also has a bi-fold flap on the top of it that allows you to see the cables makeup and the fan and fan guard on top of it. Overall I give AeroCool high marks for the design and presentation of the power supply.

A Closer Look

Looking at the rear of the AeroCool HorsePower power supply you can see that the entire surface has been punched out with a honeycomb of small opening that will allows the heat generated inside the case to be expelled by the 140mm fan on the bottom of the case.

A couple of the features that don't always get mentioned during power supply reviews are the fact that the 140cm fan used in the HorsePower supply is thermal controlled thus it will increase in speed at the temperature increases in the case.  The HorsePower 1020 is also protected against OPP , OCP and OVP.  You maybe wondering what all the 'O's' are referring to. OPP = Over Power Protection, OCP = Over Current Protection and OVP = Over Voltage Protection. The one item I would give a score of a 10 to is sheathing used on the cables, each cable has a shrink wrapped end that keeps the sheathing perfectly in place.