OCZ are famous for making some of the highest quality memory on the market and over the last year ive had the pleasure in reviewing many of their modules, they have also been diversifying their product range with heatsinks, ram-sinks and most recently they have made a bold step into the power supply enthusiast sector. I am taking a look at the new PowerStream 420 (OCZ-420ADJ) PSU.

The Powerstream 420 arrived in a plain white box as these units are not yet ready for retail (at time of press), the supply itself however is built to the standard everyone expects from OCZ, first class, also internal component placement has been well engineered, taking full advantage of the units dual fan setup. The fans glow when in use - another aesthetically pleasing touch.

Cables provided - 6 pin BTX motherboard power supply connector with a 4 pin ATX on the same line, two braided cables labelled VGA/HDD, two 12v Molex with two additional 12v molex and a floppy connector - total of six devices. Aux connector, SATA connector, and the BTX 24 pin, with 24 pin to 20 pin adapter all included with the package.

The Powersupply is built to the highest standard with great attention to detail throughout and weighs quite a considerable amount, always a good initial sign. Creating high quality units is no easy task, if it cant hold its rails its not really that important how "pretty it looks". The insides of these units are produced by an external company unfortunately OCZ are quite elusive in detailing who. This power supply, as you can see from the statistic sheet below, is capable of peak loads of 520w for up to a minute, it will be interesting to see how the higher powered 520w supply will handle at a later date with peak loads of 620w.

Removing the cover from the Powerstream 420 under close examination reveals quite striking similarities to Tagan Units - the colour, internal design and mini circuit board layouts. Internally this power supply is of a very high standard with typical OCZ design and flair shining through.

OCZ have chosen a high quality manufacturer to source many of the Powerstream 420 parts, and have produced a very clean, proficient internal layout. Quality at its best.

As you can see from the internal views above, the placement is indeed very well thought out, so the internals are as attractive as the outside mirror finish - its one of the most attractive power supplies ive seen, almost in the league of the globalwin sapphire 520w which resides in my main rig.

The Powerstream 420 has controls to allow "tuning" over the pots, the pleasure with the OCZ setup is you dont need to have a voltage meter for a truly accurate adjustment, this supply has three LEDs, each corresponding to 3.3v, 5v and 12v rails. If the current on a specific rail drops under spec, the LED will glow yellow, if the rails are overvolting the LED will glow red, and green indicated the rail is in spec.

Instructions are not only explained in the manual but are also on the PSU itself - no adjustments were needed on my system even straight out of the box, all LEDS lit green immediately.

The heatsinks are made of sectional anodized black aluminium with massive coverage covering every area which generates heat, extremely impressive internal layout. This layout copes very well with air flow dynamics, as you can see by the heatsink placement. Testing with an external thermistor taped on each of the heatsinks and with the cover in place I registered temperatures no higher than 27c under load - this was after 1 hour of looping 3dmark03 nature test. Sectional design allows great air flow across all axis, the air isnt trapped into one direction, easy flow is achieved throughout the whole supply.

Along with the owners manual comes a complete 2 page test report from Fast Auto Electronic - this information is more than likely a reviewers "perk", but nonetheless every test was passed without fault.

Test System:

P4 3,4ghz @ 3.8ghz & Prescott 2.8ghz @ 3.5ghz, Abit IC7 MAX3, Zalman Reserator, X800XT Video card, 1 gig of OCZ 4400 ram, 2 Western Digital Raptors, 2 Western Digital 120 gig JB SE drives, 1 Western Digital 80 gig JB SE drive, 1 Liteon DVD player, 1 NEC 1300a DVD burner, 1 liteon 52x CD writer, Audigy 2, Promise IDE Raid card.

Running the system for a full two days in overclocked states and with both a Prescott and a Northwood gave excellent results with not a single lock, stall or reboot. Using a Volt meter the PSU gave almost reference results across the board all under full load situations - the figures above verified my findings. It is worth noting that using the prescott in this system in an overclocked state has caused many random reboots and issues with lesser power supplies - not so with the OCZ PSU, rock solid. Vcore was also extremely stable. The figures were not as good with the hot running Prescott as the Globalwin 520w Sapphire, but this is not an apples to apples comparison as the globalwin PSU has 100w more in reserve. I will hopefully have the option at a later date to test the higher end 520w OCZ model which would prove a much fairer match.

Conclusion:

The OCZ Powerstream 420 is a superb and reassuringly weighty powersupply - from the wonderful exterior finish to the superlative internals with focus being put on the meaty heatsinks and air flow. I have used many power supplies in my time and many have buckled under the massive power drain of my high end main testing and gaming rig, the OCZ performed without a hiccup even under extreme and prolonged load conditions, it even held ground with the top end 520w Globalwin Sapphire which in itself is some feat. A wonderful touch are the LED voltage sensors which provide a clear indication of rail loads and any possible problems which may arise, along with the options to fix any forthcoming issues on the fly with easy to understand visual representations. The Powerstream is also futureproof with its support for BTX. Highly recommended and another first class product from the ever expanding OCZ.

 

Thanks to Andy Talamantez at OCZ for supplying the review sample