OCZ Fatal1ty 700 W Power Supply Review

Introduction

OCZ Fatal1ty 700 W promises to be a high-end gamer-grade power supply, labeled at 50° C and featuring a 120 mm fan, active PFC, single rail design but not a modular cabling system. Is this a good product? Can it really deliver 700 W? Let’s see.

You can have an overall look at the external appearance from this power supply on Figures 1 through 3. OCZ added a nice Fatal1ty logo that glows in red when the unit is turned on (see Figure 3), what will certainly please some gamers. However, we expected more on the aesthetic side, especially because this unit is branded as a “Fatal1ty” model and for us this should mean above-the-average quality and performance for the gamer. We think this unit should have come with a modular cabling system (this feature is available on the 550 W model, however) and a better attention should be given to the nylon sleevings that cover the cables. As you can see in Figure 2, our sample came with one of the sleevings (the bottom one) out of the place. We also didn’t like the hole used to pass the cables – too big in our opinion, allowing things like this to happen.

Figure 1: OCZ Fatal1ty 700 W power supply.

Figure 2: OCZ Fatal1ty 700 W power supply.

Figure 3: OCZ Fatal1ty 700 W power supply.

But our surprise really came when we disassembled the unit: this power supply was going to be sold by OCZ as EliteXstream 700 W. Interesting enough OCZ retired their EliteXstream product line – with no good technical reason, by the way, because we reviewed their 1,000 W model and it performed exceptionally well.

This power supply is manufactured by Impervio, a company that is also in charge of some of the power supply units from SilverStone. It is important to note that OCZ uses several different companies to manufacture their power supplies.

Figure 4: OCZ Fatal1ty 700 W was going to be marketed as EliteXstream 700 W.

This power supply is small, being only 5 1/2” (140 mm) deep, featuring a 120 mm brushless fan on its bottom that glows red when turned on and active PFC circuit.

The main motherboard cable uses a 20/24-pin connector and this unit comes with two ATX12V connectors that together form an EPS12V connector.

This power supply comes with six peripheral cables: Two cables with a 6/8-pin video card auxiliary power connector each,  two cables with four SATA power plugs each, one cable with four standard peripheral power plugs and one cable with four standard peripheral power plugs and one floppy disk drive power plug.

We think the number of connectors is satisfactory even for the high-end user.

All wires are 18 AWG, which is the correct gauge to be used nowadays.

Now let’s take an in-depth look inside this power supply.