BFG ES Series ES-800 800 Watt Power Supply

BFG Company Info: (Source: BFGTech.com)

"BFG Technologies is a privately held U.S. based supplier of premium power supplies and 3D video cards based on award-winning NVIDIA graphics technology. The employees of BFG Tech are dedicated to bringing the latest high quality, high-tech multimedia products to PC and gaming enthusiasts at competitive prices." and "BFG Technologies' brand of power supplies and NVIDIA-based 3D graphics accelerators are designed to appeal to the PC enthusiast and hardcore gaming consumer." 

BFG has been releasing products in the power supply market for a couple of years now, with each new product being improved from the last. Today, we are going to take a look at the ES series ES-800 from BFG.  The ES-800 is a 800 Watt power supply, featuring four PCI Express connectors, four 12v rails, and a lifetime warranty along with 24/7 Tech Support.  The lifetime warranty and 24/7 Tech Support is rare among power supplies and it is great to see BFG offering it.

Upon opening the box, you will find the manual, screws, power cable, and some velcro straps.

Here are some of the main features and specifications from the box:

The Power Supply:

The power supply features a mirror graphite colored housing, which looks great, but is prone to fingerprints and scratches.

A BFG logo is imprinted on each side of the power supply

Looking at the top of the power supply, there is a BFG label with their logo on it, the model number and a condensed specification list.  Note that there are four +12v rails, with the +12v1 and +12v2 rails supplying up to 22A.  The +12v3 and +12v4 rails supply up to 36A of power, which is good for peripherals requiring more power such as multiple graphics cards. Note that the +12v3 and +12v4 rails supply the PCI-Express power connectors.  It is also RoHS compliant. 

There is an large grill on the back which allows the 138mm fan to exhaust hot air, an on/off switch and AC Power Input.  This power supply does feature Active PFC, so there is no need for a  switch to select the input voltage.

This power supply features the following cables:

-A 24-pin ATX power connector with removable 4 pin for backwards 20-pin compatibility.

-A 4-pin CPU +12v Power Connector and a 8-pin +12v EPS Power Connector

-2x  6 + 2 Pin PCI-Express Power Connectors and 2x 6 Pin PCI Express Power Connectors

-6x Molex Power Connectors

-6x Serial ATA Power Connectors

-2x Floppy Power Connectors

Cooling:

There is a 138mm fan on the bottom of this power supply.  During testing, at idle loads, this fan is whisper quiet, which is great and unexpected with an 800 Watt power supply.  With loads, the fan slowly sped up to what I would call a medium speed, which was still bearable.

Inside the Power Supply:

* Taking this power supply apart will void the warranty.

Inside the power supply, there are three thin black finned heat sinks that offer a dense amount of fins to cool down the voltage rectifiers. There is a large transformer in the middle.  Note the unusual design of the internals.  There appears to be a small secondary board on top, perhaps it is used to supply power to the +5VSB rail.   That blue capacitor in the middle is made by Hitachi.  The Primary capacitor is Panasonic branded, while the secondary capacitors are Nippon-Chemicon branded.  Overall, we can see that this power supply uses high quality japanese capacitors, which is great.  This power supply appears to be built by Andyson.

The Primary capacitor is Panasonic branded.

The fan inside is a Globe Fan. It has the model number RL4Z B1382012H with a draw of .40Amps.

Testing:

For this power supply, the test system consists of the following:

-Antec Nine Hundred Case

-Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Quad Core Processor @ 3.2 GHz

-ZeroTherm Nirvana 120 Heatsink

-eVGA nForce 680i SLi Motherboard

-2GB (1GB x 2) of Mushkin XP2-8500 DDRII-1066 Memory

-320GB x 4 Western Digital 16MB Cache Hard Drives

-2x nVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS (G92) Video Cards @ 715MHz Core / 1000 MHz Memory

-Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Digital Sound Card

-Sony 16x DVD-RAM / 18x Samsung DVD-RAM Drives

-4x 120MM fans, 1x 200mm fan

-2x CCFL Lights

(Multimeter Results)

*For additional / larger pictures of the BFG ES-800, Click Here

*Voltages are at 'Max Load', running 3DMark06 CPU Test 1 and 2 / Deep Freeze HDR test, and read with a Multi-Meter.

The results are great for this power supply. Everything ran fine during testing, the system was stable and performed the tests as expected.  During the tests, the fan speed varied from low to a medium-high speed. When the system is idle or doing simple tasks, the fan runs quietly and is not noticeable at all.  I was satisfied with the noise characteristics during the testing. Installation of this power supply also went well and the velcro straps helped tie up unused or overly long cables within the testing case.  Overall, the BFG ES-800 offers  great performance.  This power supply would be perfect for anyone looking to build a quad core system with multiple video cards, especially because it offers SLi certification for up to two NVIDIA 8800 GTX's.  At around $170, this power supply has great performance combined with high quality parts; with the lifetime warranty and 24/7 technical support, it is hard to find another power supply that offers the same peace of mind and performance.   

Pros +

-Great power output

-Quiet 138mm fan

-Lifetime Warranty with 24/7 Tech Support

-High quality capacitors

Cons -

-A modular version of this PSU would be nice

Techaddicts.net would like to give this power supply the Editors' Choice award.

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