FSP Group Everest 900 Watt Power Supply Author:  Jack Wells Date:  2008.10.01 Topic:  Audio Provider:  FSP Group Manufacturer:  FSP Group

FSP Group Everest 900 Watt Power Supply

Testing

The stability of your power supply is vital to the health and stability of your computer system.  Most people don’t realize how closely linked voltage stability and system stability are.  The other thing is consistently over-volting your computer parts can lead to a reduction in their lifetime. Transistors and capacitors aren’t made to constantly withstand higher than normal voltages and this can lead to a significant reduction in their lifetime

Test rig:

Test equipment:

• AMD Overdrive
• Digital Voltmeter

From the above charts you can see that the voltage provided is slightly above what I was hoping for out of this power supply, but it is well within the tolerances of most electronic devices and should not cause problems.  The one thing I should note is that while they were slightly off the ideal voltage, they remained rock solid at the voltage and the spike that loading gave was minimal.  This means as far as stability is concerned this power supply performed well, but in terms of the life of your computer parts it was not as stellar of a performer.

Conclusions

The FSP Group Everest 900 is a feature packed power supply that doesn’t leave much to be desired.  This power supply has a lot going for it: it’s stylish, efficient, modular, and quiet. There really are a lot of reasons to at least consider it in your next power supply upgrade.  The price isn’t that bad either, at a list of $219.99 on newegg you can’t argue too much with the performance you get at that price. Or you can buy the FSP Everest Series Power Supplies as well any other FSP products at www.shopfsp.com.

There are only two complaints I have against the Everest 900.  The first is that they aren’t very clear anywhere about what their features mean.  If you don’t know what PFC is you really have no idea how much money that feature can save you over the long run.  A feature like that can drastically improve the amount of power consumed by your computer. I feel FSP Group could really benefit by marketing their product better and making sure people are aware of the features they’re trying to have you pay for.  Secondly, the 12V rail was 2.4% - 2.9% off of the expected value.  While this fits within the ATX standards it doesn’t quite reach the level of excellence we here at techwarelabs look for.  The 5 volt rail was dead on target, so I’m not sure what happened to the 12 volt rail. All in all this is a good power supply for the money; the only ones that I could see for cheaper were off brand power supplies. Never, ever buy an off brand; it’s just not worth the potential long term damage it can cause to your hardware.