For all hobbyists and the less hardware savvy, the 80 Plus certification in one of its many variants is usually an indication of whether or not a power supply is good. Is this font 80 Plus Platinum certified? Then it sure is high-end! The reality is quite different, and in this article we are going to tell you how the 80 Plus certification process works and why it is not always a synonym of reliability in terms of the efficiency of the power supplies we buy for PCs.
The ultimate purpose of this certification is to guarantee that a power supply has a minimum of energy efficiency, something that always interests us in the hardware world because it means that we will not be spending more electricity than necessary. For example, if a power supply is 90% efficient it means that if it is delivering 500 watts of power, it is actually drawing about 556 watts, so 56 watts of consumption are being wasted.
How 80 Plus certification works in power supplies
After paying quite high registration fees, a manufacturer sends a sample of its new power supply to the entity to verify its efficiency. At that time, the source is subjected to certain load tests in which its efficiency is measured at different load levels and, based on the results, it is given one or another 80 Plus label that defines its minimum efficiency. Here you can see as an example the certification report of an Antec SG-1200 power supply:
As you can see, voltages are measured in the different channels, as well as the input and output watts (and with these, the efficiency is calculated) in situations of 20%, 50% and 100% load (in recent times also measures efficiency at 10% load). You can see in the example that to give 1202 watts of output, this source needs 1382 watts of input, delivering an efficiency of 87% at 100% load.
These tests are quite rigorous and reliable, and they effectively denote the efficiency of a given power supply and give us an idea of how good or bad it is.
Is this certification reliable?
The short answer is no, and it is unreliable for a number of reasons. To begin with, the manufacturer sends two power supply units to the entity and they are the ones used for testing, but the result is simply a reference and this means that not all the manufacturer’s power supply units pass the test ; In other words, only two units pass the test and the rest of the units that are manufactured (which will easily be thousands of units) do not pass, assuming that as they are manufactured the same they will give the same values.
The reality is different; Obviously, if a source is manufactured with the exact same process as another, the normal thing is that it gives the same result, but the problem is that the environmental conditions can change, as well as the internal components used, the material batches, etc. To give an example, let’s say that a manufacturer uses a certain copper supplier to manufacture the components of its source, but over time it changes from one supplier to another that makes it cheaper.
Obviously, copper is copper but it depends on the supplier it can have some properties or others and change the final performance of the power supply. This is just an example with copper but it can be applied to other components such as transformers, capacitors and other internal components, and even though things have changed at the source, they will still carry the same 80 Plus certification seal that this family initially obtained.
80 Plus has become a mere marketing hallmark
This example that we have given you is just the tip of the iceberg regarding the 80 Plus seal. At present and as we have said in the introduction, most users take it as a synonym of quality, and this was the case in the beginning but now it is nothing but a plus that manufacturers must pay as part of their marketing program , and it is that if nowadays any manufacturer launched a power supply to the market that does not carry the 80 Plus certification seal, it is quite likely that not many users would venture to buy it no matter how good it was because they would not trust it .
Any manufacturer that wants its power supply to carry the 80 Plus seal will have to pay a series of fees that are not exactly cheap, and that make the cost of the product quite expensive. For example, there is a $ 5,000 fee just to enroll in the certification program, and then an additional $ 6,000 must be paid for each of the individual models for which you want to become certified. Thus, if, for example, a manufacturer launches a family of sources that consists of models with 500, 600, 700, 800 and 1000 watts, you will have to pay a total of $ 30,000, plus an additional 5,000 if you were not previously enrolled in the program.
An additional factor must be taken into account: rebranding. As you know there are manufacturers that manufacture power supplies for third parties, such as Channel Well (CWT) that manufactures sources for DeepCool or Corsair. CWT will pay its fees to obtain the corresponding 80 Plus certification, but third-party companies will only have to pay $ 3,500 to obtain the seal in their sources despite the fact that they have introduced changes in these, changes that are often only aesthetic but also many sometimes they include internal changes.
These sources do not go through the certification and evaluation process again, they only “go through the box” to obtain the right to bear the 80 Plus seal and nothing else, despite the fact that they have made substantial modifications that will obviously affect the performance of the power supply.
In short, currently the 80 Plus certification is a mere marketing cost that manufacturers assume because, as we have explained before, otherwise users would not trust when buying a power supply, but the reality is that nor does it provide peace of mind or reliability regarding power supply performance.
