BFG 800 W Power Supply Review

Conclusions

This power supply from BFG can truly deliver 800 W of power at 50° C, which is outstanding. The level of electrical noise on the +12 V outputs is the lowest we’ve seen to date (36 mV against 90 mV on Corsair TX750W, for example), but on the other hand we’d like to see a lower noise level on the +5 V and +3.3 V outputs, even though they were within specs.

In the USA the "Limited Edition" version can be found for only USD 130, while the first version that has only two cables can be bought at Tigerdirect.com for only USD 100.00 (just as a reference Corsair TX750W costs around USD 180) – and a lifetime warranty in the US (or 10 years in Europe) make this a very attractive product, being a power supply with one of the best cost/benefit ratios in the world today.

Once again we’d like to remember that the very first version, BFGR800WPSU, doesn’t offer four video card power cables, what doesn’t make sense for an 800 W product. On this model the cables may be too short depending on the video cards you have (BFG provides an extension that solves these two problems if you call their support department and provide the power supply serial number). BFGR800WPSULE ("Limited Edition") model corrects this problem adding two extra longer cables. Anyway, both products use 6-pin connectors, not 6/8. Competing products may also offer more SATA and peripheral connectors.

Another problem with this unit is its efficiency at full load, below 80% – even though it reached an efficiency between 80% and 85% during lighter loads.

But what for us was the real bummer was the fact that we burned this power supply when we overloaded it (probably due to an overheating on the secondary heatsink). Some can argue that if a power supply works within the manufacturer’s proposed specs it is a good product, but we don’t agree. We think this unit needed to shut down instead of burning. We know that you can replace this power supply for free for the rest of your life (if you live in the US), but nobody likes to wait some days to get his (or her) computer back working. Anyway, we need to give BFG the benefit of doubt and maybe we got the bad luck of getting a defective unit.

Because of the flaws described above we can’t give it our “Golden Award” seal, but because of its very low price for an 800 W product and its insane warranty, we are awarding it with our “Silver Award” seal.