A Zippy PSU taken apart

Zippy have been a class apart when it comes to building reliable and rugged PSUs. Zippy would be my fist choice. Unfortunately, they seem to be a bit hard to find in the United States and are rather expensive. I purchased my unit from myaopen.com for $169. Quite a hefty price-tag for a 600W unit. But, I wouldn't mind dropping the extra $50 on something I know is among the best in its class and satisfies the quirks of an unreasonable customer like me. :)

Other worthy competitors include Wintact (PC Power and Cooling/OCZ Turbocool series) and Etasis. Wintact built units are rugged, but if I'm paying top dollar for a PSU, I expect all Japanese caps. Teapos seem to be o.k on PSU's but hey OCZ how about pleasing even the most unreasonable of your customers? :)

Etasis is another solid player in the market. The closest unit, Zeus ST56ZF retailed for about $136 when I bought my Zippy. Again, if I were to be picky, I'd expect independent regulation and Nipponese caps on the secondary. I'm splitting hairs here.

Having owned all three units, I can safely say that no modern single video card system can stress either of these units.

JonnyGURU has reviewed this very same unit in detail. You can find that review HERE. Jon gives it a 9.5 for performance.


Note that this is a rather old and inefficient design. I would venture to speculate that larger valued components indicate a lower switching frequency being employed. Also, the output waveform on the secondary side in Jon's review would indicate this. You see the input transient/EMI filtering RLC bank (High & Low Corp), an MOV and a rather elaborate snubber network on the secondary side. I have no idea regarding the topology employed here because the components are really packed tightly in.

A few pictures of the packed innards (forgive the crappy pictures, I had to make do with a poor camera).