A Closer Look – Interior
The Be Quiet Power Zone 1000W power supply is manufactured by FSP, one of Be Quiet’s most preferred OEM partners. The design makes use of a Active Clamp Reset Forward (ACRF) topology for the primary side and synchronous DC to DC converters for generating the minor rails. Despite it’s modest 80 Plus Bronze certification this platform is used by a handful of 80 Plus Gold rated units so we’re expecting Gold performance from it.
The provided fan is far from quiet with an operational speed of up to 2900 RPM. We are not sure why this is so aggressive given the high efficiency of the unit.
The input pathway features a single X cap and pair of Y caps for filtering with additional components on the PCB that include: two CM chokes, one X cap, two Y caps and an MOV.
The two primary hold up capacitors offer 450V, 270uF and up to 105 degrees celsius operation, these are manufactured by Teapos.
All the used electrolytic capacitors are manufactured by Teapo and are rated for 105 degrees celsius operation – this means they are of high quality.
Teapo are high quality? Things have certainly changed since the days I used them.
When I worked on the bench back in the mid 80’s to late 80’s repairing switching PSU’s was my job and Teapo were a cheap and nasty brand of cap we used to buy use because they were far cheaper than Nippon Chemi-Con and a lot easier to obtain. Generally they were good for about 9 months then they began to swell, leak and pop but those PSU’s were not PC PSU’s but heavy duty PSU’s used in large mainframes, in fact so much current ran through them that they buzzed and it was nerve wracking to to thread a screwdriver past the heatsinks and exposed coils to tweak a potentiometer.
Anyway I’m rambling on now. What I’m getting at is Teapo have been around for a long time and I guess their components have improved considerably because a lot of reputable manufacturers use their caps.