The Andyson Platinum R 1200W PSU Review
by E. Fylladitakis on April 24, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- 1200W
- 80Plus Platinum
- Andyson
When it comes to high performance >1 kW computer power supplies, almost every reputable OEM has released at least one design to serve as their flagship. This is not necessarily because the companies expect high revenue because they are well aware that this segment of the market is very small and overly saturated. They do this because the flagship serves as a symbol of the company's capabilities and competence, enhancing their profile on all fronts in order to produce that halo product, hoping the performance of the high end results in trickle-down sales. In this extremely competitive and saturated market, we have a new contender - Andyson.
Introduction
Andyson is a Taiwanese manufacturer, established in Taipei. Although they are not very well known as some of the other brands, they are neither small nor a new company. Andyson has been around for 18 years nowand they have sufficient production capabilities. Their reputation suffered because of Hiper, a company that shut down years ago, whose products were reported as having very high failure rates. The Platinum R 1200W PSU that we will be reviewing today represents their power supply engineering high end, at least as far as power is concerned, since the company also has four 80Plus Titanium units available.
Andyson currently has nine 80Plus Platinum units on their books, yet only three models (including this particular unit) have an official 80Plus certification. The same goes for their 80Plus Titanium series, where only one model has been officially certified. This tactic is somewhat common among manufacturers, getting only the most powerful unit of the series certified that is.
On paper, the Platinum R 1200W PSU has it all: modular design, very high efficiency, excellent reliability and top performance. Andyson boasts that it is very cost-effective as well, since it has an MSRP of just about $200. However, Andyson is going to have major opposition from brands like Seasonic, Flextronics and Super Flower in that segment of the market. We will see if the Platinum R 1200W has what it takes to meet such opposition head on.
| Power Specifications ( Rated @ Unknown °C ) | |||||
| AC INPUT | 100 - 240 VAC, 50 - 60 Hz | ||||
| RAIL | +3.3V | +5V | +12V | +5Vsb | -12V |
| MAX OUTPUT | 20A | 20A | 100A | 3A | 0.4A |
| 100W | 1200W | 15W | 4.8W | ||
| TOTAL | 1200W | ||||
Packaging and Bundle
Andyson supplies the Platinum R 1200W PSU in a relatively plain cardboard box. The artwork is very simple and formal, rather uninteresting and unlikely to draw attention if showcased on a store shelf. However, it is very sturdy and the PSU is well protected with polyethylene foam pieces, offering effective protection during shipping.
The Platinum R 1200W comes with a broad and very effective bundle. Thumbscrews, regular screws, small and large cable ties, cable straps, an anti-vibration silicon frame, a typical AC cable and a manual are supplied alongside the PSU itself.
The Platinum R 1200W is a fully modular PSU, including the main ATX 24-pin cable. All of the cables are made using only black wires and are covered with black sleeving. They are supplied inside a tall nylon bag. The following table lists the total number of connectors:
| Connector type | Hardwired | Modular |
| ATX 24 Pin | - | 1 |
| EPS 4+4 Pin | - | 2 |
| PCI-E 6+2 Pin | - | 10 |
| PCI-E 8 Pin | - | - |
| SATA | - | 9 |
| Molex | - | 6 |
| Floppy | - | 2 |
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joex4444 - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Worth pointing out is this PSU, and many others in the 850W+ category, features two EPS 4+4 pin connectors. What's this good for? Dual CPU motherboards, which in today's market means dual LGA-2011(-3) Xeons. Workstations are the target, not your gaming machine.DanNeely - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Some high end gaming boards use more than a single 8 pin EPS connector. MY MSI MPower MAX 1150 board has an 8 and a 4 pin in the CPU area; and a 6 pin PCI connector just above the first slot for if you're maxing out the x16 slots.It's a modular design so they can go bucket list on extra cables; from the markings on the side of the PSU itself you could plug a 6th PCIe cable in there if you bought one from a 3rd party.
KAlmquist - Sunday, April 26, 2015 - link
Even if you installed two Xeon E5-2687W v3 processors, that's only 320 watts of TDP, so you would need to have some other power hog in the system to justify an 850W+ power supply.Samus - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
I hope they make a 600w version almost identical to this. I have nothing against teapo caps, my old PC power and cooling unit is littered with them (pre-ocz pcp&c) and it's been running solid for 8 years. It was sent in for warranty at 4.5 years because I overloaded it on my coin miners, but the repair indicated it was just a fuse.Back to the point, this thing looks really good on paper for the price and I'd pay half as much for half the output since my gaming pc maxes out at 500 watts at the wall. At 80% load a 600 watt unit would be over 90% efficient and near silent at high ambient temps.
My cases have no window, so asthetics? Lets just say I care more about the clean braided cables and no flashy colors.
romrunning - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
If we click on Case/Cooling/PSU section on Anandtech & look for all of the PSU reviews, there has been a notable dearth of "normal" PSUs being reviewed. In fact, of the last 6 listed spanning some months, the lowest one was 650W, along with a 850.I understand that mfgs supply their "best" and we are supposed to reason that the same tech trickles down to lower end models, but the end-user (us) also have said we want to see those reviews of the low-end models. We want to see where mfgs cheap out on lower-end components in the 450-550W range rather than the 1000-2000W behemoths. We want to know the best graphics card we can get to run on the lowest amount of power in single GPU setups. We want to know which ones we can buy online that are good value for the money in our single GPU setups.
E.Fyll, I hope you can ask for some 450-600W units to review, or even better, buy some of the best-sellers online & let us know the results. That would be the most informative & useful to me as I buy one for my new system
chlamchowder - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
I have to second this - I can't imagine many people running more than two graphics cards (which is what you'd need to make a 600 or 850W supply inadequate).Also, I don't get the trickle down argument.
"this 1kW PSU looks good, so I'm going to buy the 600W model because it has the same sticker" <- said no one, ever
Samus - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
It's funny you mention that becAuse my gaming PC has a gtx970 Sli setup with a Xeon e3-1230 and 3 drives...still tops out at 500w at the wall in occtDanNeely - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
I'd actually like to see a few from even lower down the power level. Eg my nas box is normally sub-50W. On Newegg the smallest 80+ platinum PSU is $84 for 400W; gold is either $62 for 360W, or $50 + an adapter to mount an SFX PSU in an ATX case; bronze would get me 300W for $37; going all the way down to just 80+, I could get 300W for $39 (which obviously doesn't make any sense) or 220W for $57 in the even smaller Flex ATX form factor.Assuming I stick with good brands I don't anticipate any power quality problems; but which would actually be most efficient at that low a power level. Only the 80+ 220W actually has an efficiency guarantee at that low a load. Only 80+ titanium is speced at 10% load; but from past history probably won't trickle down to tiny units for a while; and at least initially will probably be so expensive that it only makes sense if you're living somewhere with really high electric prices (Hawaii, Germany, etc) or trying to go off the grid completely.
I'll probably be replacing my current NAS at the end of the year; and I'd really like some data here to help guide my build vs buy decision.
Laststop311 - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
I would go with just 80+ broze for a low power nas box. Even if you are 10% less efficient at such a low wattage you are only talking about 5 extra watts of power thats like .005kw/h of extra electricty vs a platinum unit. Just get a high quality top brand of a 300 watt 80+ bronze for 35-50 dollars. You can;t go wrong with seasonic i believe they have a nice 300 watt bronze unit. the newer SeaSonic SSP-300SE is a very nice choice for 36.99. Going to be pretty hard to find less than 300 watts and 37 dollars is already very cheap.TurboTastic - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
I quote the author as of 6 months ago:> Even though there are plenty of >1kW consumer power supply units available today, it is well known that these represent a very small portion of the actual market, as the power requirements of a typical home or office PC are far lower than that.
and before that, in the SilverStone NJ520 review:
> Are you tired of reading reviews of high output power supply units? It's true that 99% of personal computers out there do not require something capable of outputting more than 500-550 Watts, and even that may be overkill for quite a few people.
YES WE ARE. And that was 9 months ago...
"Normal" PSUs are on the order of $50, so even if you're not getting low-wattage PSUs from the manufacturers, order a SeaSonic SS-300ET for $35 from Newegg, stick it (and a few similar ones) in the test bench, and show the graphs!