Packaging and bundle

The packaging of the ModXstream is not overly flashy, but far from plain at the same time. It is designed well enough to draw attention and small enough to keep transportation costs at a minimum. The protection it offers to the unit however is hardly existent. The unit is placed into the box wrapped in a simple bubble bag and not held in place by Styrofoam or anything of the kind. This certainly makes it prone to damage from transportation accidents, since once the cardboard box is penetrated, nothing protects the unit. While damage taken during transport is not the rule but rather an exception, secure packaging is always a good thing. That said, the unit we received was perfectly fine and unscathed. Inside the box, besides the unit itself of course, you will find an AC power cable, 4 black screws, the modular cables for the unit and a manual which cannot be considered bad but it certainly could use some improvement, specifically more data as only the bare essentials are written down.

The Unit

Oddly enough, the ModXstream unit is longer than the more powerful units from OCZ. This is not a design flaw however, it is because the unit is modular and the extra PCB and connectors require more space at the rear of the unit. This makes the unit slightly longer than normal power supply units. Somebody at OCZ must have made a typing mistake somewhere along the road, as the specifications of the unit indicate its length is 150mm, much like every typical OCZ unit. The unit is actually 170mm long and one should remember that the cables coming out from the rear will need additional room. You better make sure that you have at least 200mm available for installing the unit. The chassis of the ModXstream is painted with a good, matte black paint. The paint is not reflective at all and it is also solid and hard to scratch. The only cables which are pre-attached to the unit are a 24-pin ATX connector, a 4/8-pin CPU 12V connector and a PCIe 6-pin cable. Ignoring the PCIe cable you are certainly going to need the remaining two cables even for the most basic system. That said, buying a PSU like this for a system with an integrated graphics card is a bit of a waste anyway.

The unit is cooled by a large 120mm clear fan with blue LEDs. The fan is rated at 2500rpm maximum speed but it’s thermally controlled, so it will not make your PC sound like an aircraft during takeoff. A large sticker covers most of the right side of the unit with detailed specifications and certification data, as well as the serial number of the unit. At the perforated rear of the unit the only thing you will find is an on/off rocker switch. The blue LEDs of the fan are quite strong, even when the fan is not in full spin.

Besides the cables which are pre-attached to the unit, you will find several more in the package for your peripherals. There is a 12V PCIe 6-pin cable for a second video card and a 12V 8-pin power cable for multi processor motherboards, but you cannot use them both at the same time, so you will have to choose between a second video card and processor. There are also two SATA cables with three connectors each and two Molex connectors with two 4-pin Molex and a single 4-pin floppy power cable on each. Peculiar enough, the unit has three slots for Molex cables and only two are provided. Perhaps OCZ plans to sell extra expansion cables in the future.

The internals of the unit may leave hardcore users disappointed, as it is an urban myth among enthusiasts that a heavier unit (which means more components and more heatsinks) is a better unit and the ModXstream is a very lightweight unit. Built on a FSP group PCB and design, the heatsinks can be considered small for a unit with this kind of output and the used components are of fair quality but hardly top-notch. The ModXstream most obviously relies on the airflow from the 120mm fan rather than on the size of its heatsinks to cool itself. CapXon and Teapo capacitors dominate inside the ModXstream, which are not the best capacitors money can buy but they are a fairly popular choice.