BFG LS Series LS-680 680 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 LS series LS-680 from BFG.  The LS-680 is a 680-Watt power supply, featuring four PCI Express connectors, four 12v rails, and a five year warranty.  This warranty is generous, but not as nice as the ES-800's lifetime warranty.  This power supply is more value oriented, while still offering good performance.

Upon opening the box, you will find the manual, screws, zip ties, 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 matte black colored housing, which looks great.

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 each supplying up to 20 Amps, which is good for peripherals requiring more power such as multiple graphics cards.

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, as noted by the sticker, 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/ 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

-4x 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 for a 680 Watt power supply.  With loads, the fan slowly sped up to what I would call a medium speed, which was still bearable.  Both the LS-680 and ES-800 have about the same noise characteristics.

Inside the Power Supply: s

* Taking this power supply apart will void the warranty.

Inside the power supply, there are three thin silver finned heat sinks that offer a sparse amount of fins to cool down the voltage rectifiers. There is a large transformer in the middle and a tiny one above it.  The layout and build quality of this power supply is good. The Primary capacitor is Panasonic branded, while the secondary capacitors are JunFu branded.  Overall, we can see that this power supply uses a 'good' branded primary capacitor, while the secondary capacitors are of a more questionable brand.  This power supply appears to be built by Panyu Big Canyon Corp, which i've never heard of.  Apparently, Panyu is just the PCB manufacturer.  It is actually built by Fore Point.

The Primary capacitor is Panasonic branded.

The fan inside is a Young Lin Tech branded fan. It has the model number DFS132512M with a maximum draw of 2.4 watts.

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 LS-680, 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 speed and could not be heard over the system fans which are somewhat quiet. 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 and zip ties helped tie up unused or overly long cables within the testing case.  Overall, the BFG LS-680 offers great performance at a reasonable price.  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 GTS'.  At around $120, this power supply offers a great value.  I feel that the price is about right and is competitive with other companies offering comparable wattage power supplies.  The five year warranty is also good.

Pros +

-Great power output

-Quiet 138mm fan

-Five Year Warranty

Cons -

-Lack of SATA power connectors will limit users to four SATA hard drives/optical drives.

-A modular version of this PSU would be nice

Techaddicts.net would like to give this power supply a 'Great' four out of five star rating.

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