3rd June, Taipei. Many editors travelled to Taiwan to visit manufacturers at Computex. A stressful week comes to an end. This is a perfect time for sightseeing -- or to visit a manufacturer's headquarters. We met FSP to take a look at their newest PSUs: The Aurum CM series.

The FSP Group was founded in 1993. FSP is a large Taiwanese OEM/ODM who builds adapters, PC power supplies, open frame power supplies, LCD TV power supplies and much more. In fact they are able to produce up to 1.5 Million power supplies per month in four factories. All of them are in China mainland, while the R&D department is located in Taoyuan/Taipei, Taiwan. From a grey adapter to a modular 1200W PSU; FSP delivers all kinds of products for different applications and prices.

We met Albert Liang (PM) at the Nangang Exhibition Hall and talked about current products and new ideas for the market. Especially smartphones are a focus for many companies. FSP built some new adapters for these kind of mobile phones. In addition FSP reduced the size of many current adapters and added some USB plugs. This step has a simple reason. If you have a smartphone, a camera and equal stuff it might be interesting to charge them with one device instead of using different gagets for each product. Their new solution is less expensive and a light-weight.

After that short look to their exhibition stand we drove to the FSP HQ in Taoyuan, a part of Taipei there the international airport is located. Here you can find all kinds of power supply manufacturers such as Enermax (they are just 20 minutes away from FSP). The City itself is not very beautiful so we spent most time in the building. In this pricture you can see the marketing/PM department.

This is the place where the technicians are working. They do the development and many quality tests for FSP products. However they also check the functionality of all ODM products there. We have seen many Zalman and be quiet! PSUs --- made by FSP. You can definitely see that they do more than gnaw one's nails here.

This is the testing equipment with software where we have tortured an Aurum CM 750W sample. In fact FSP has many ATEs in his HQ in combination with an acoustic and EMI room with a very large antenna. Note that all following results are measured at an ambient temperature of 40°C.

Voltage Regulation

First we take a look at the voltage regulation. All rails start relatively close to their optimal values. +3.3V and +5V reached about -2% during overload which is decent. The four +12V rails show even better results. Even the worst rail stays over -1% at highest load. FSP has btw. no problems with dynamic loads. We saw some tests from 50Hz to 10KHz where the load current decreased after a small duration with satisfying voltage results.

Ripple and Noise

These ripple & noise measurements tell us that this Gold series was planed as an affordable offer while most other 80Plus Gold PSUs show better results -- for much higher prices. +5V and +12V are very close to 1% ripple & noise. However all rails are within ATX specification and most PC systems shouldn't reach 100% load or more. Those results from the +3.3V rail with 26mV at low load and 23mV at a higher load are very unusual.

Noise Levels

In the FSP HQ we were able to measure the Hold Up Time at full load. With minimum 21-22ms all rails reach more than the required ATX values (>17ms). +3.3V is able to deliver stable power during a 24.52 ms long power failure.

Efficiency and PFC

Here we can see more uncommon results. At 10% load the PSU reached a high efficiency with 115V input voltage while the 230VAC measurements are worse. Lower current is usually easier to handle. With more than 0.904 the power factor is very high in all power grids. In addition up to 92% efficiency is a good result -- even for an 80Plus Gold power supply.

Neutral

Line

Finally we added some EMC charts from the Audix Technology Corporation. These graphs show the EMI emission in dBμV over the phase and neutral conductor. Note that the X-axis is divided in different frequencies and not time like an oscillogram. As you can see the interference level is low and within the EN55022 EU standard. AV stands btw. for the arithmetic average of an envelope while the upper red line shows the QP limit. The QuasiPeak value is an "impression" of the overall emission (quantity and quality of the amplitudes).

This is an interesting aspect since most editors can't measure such things. Not entirely coincidental I know some results from other PSUs. The Sirtec 80Plus Gold design e.g. failed in these EMC tests many times and most cheaper PSUs have one or more frequency where they got problems with these limits. EMIs are a difficult problem. A single component can change everything here.

All Aurum CM models (550, 650, 750W) use flat peripheral cables while the fixed ones have a common cable sleeving. FSP offers 5 years warranty and a special case design with arrowy ventilation holes, which took a long time for planning. FSP uses a 120mm fan with a fluid dynamic bearing. These kinds of fans live long but they also have one disadvantage. During the start there is not much pressure which induces mixed friction.

With a decent voltage regulation and its unusual looking case the FSP Aurum CM models are the first real consumer products from FSP which could be very intersting for customers who want to get a high efficiency on the cheap. Of course the ripple & noise results should be better and the cooling could be semi-passive but for a first serious step into the consumer market FSP made a very good job.

Pricing on the Aurum CM 750W currently sits at around $155, while the lower wattage 650W model goes for a slightly lower $140. (Also note that the new Aurum CM series isn't the same as the previous Aurum series.) If you want to get the Aurum technology with another case we can recommend the new Straight Power series from be quiet!, a German brand that uses many FSP designs for their products.