Super Flower Leadex Platinum 750W Power Supply Review

Overview

 

The last time a Super Flower Power Supply passed through the pcG office was when pcG Mike took a look at the Super Flower Leadex Gold 650W back in January. That particular Gold rated example impressed us all and walked away with a well deserved Gold award. This time around Super Flower have chosen to send us not only a more powerful Power Supply but a Platinum rated one too!

This then ladies and gentlemen is the Super Flower Leadex Platinum 750W Power Supply, a fully modular power supply with a maximum rating of 750W and a Platinum 80 Plus rating, meaning that this Power Supply can deliver 90%+ efficiency, even at full load! The Platinum series is available in both black and white and in the following wattages 550, 650, 750, 850, 1000, 1200 watts (also 1600W and 2000W – black only). All of the examples listed above come with Supper Flower’s illuminated sockets, that’s right folks those clear plastic sockets on the back of the PSU actually light up! 😉

 

 

 

The Super Flower Leadex Platinum 750W Power Supply arrived at pcG in a smart white box (hence the black background) adorned with Super Flower’s butterfly logo. Other than the butterfly there’s not much to see on the front of the box other than the Brand, Product Name and the Platinum efficiency logo in the top right corner.

Looking at the back of the box there’s far more to take in. On the left there’s a section highlighting various features of the PSU and on the right we have the main Specifications (see Specifications/Features below) and Patents, including one for the ECO Intelligent Thermal Control System. Also lurking near the bottom left we see the British flag denoting that this PSU is a UK spec PSU and comes with a UK style power lead.

 

 

On the left side of the box, we have a list of the PSU’s key features (see below), below this is an image of the Power Supply itself which is partially transparent to show off its innards.

★100% Full Modular Cabling Design For Easy Cable Management
★80 PLUS ® Platinum Certified, 90% 92% 89% Efficiency At 20% 50% 100% Rated Load
★Full Range Auto Voltage Detection Design 100V~240V (Active PFC)
★Comply With ATX 12V. V2.2, EPS 12V. V2.91 & SSI EPS 12V. V2.92 Specification
★Comply With Energy Star Standard & EuP (Energy Using Products) Regulation
★Over Voltage Protection / Over Current Protection / Over Power Protection / Short Circuit Protection / Under Voltage Protection
★Support All Intel/AMD Multi-Core CPU & ATX/BTX Compatible Motherboards
★Support NVIDIA® SLI™ & ATI CrossFireX™ High Performance Graphic Card
★Patented Easy To Use & Install Crystal Clear Cube Connectors with LED
★More than 2,000 times On/Off test
★Unleaded Green Materials with RoHS/WEEE Compliance
★Perfect For Professional & High Performance Gaming System

Exclusive Patents
(Taiwan & China Patents Approved, USA, Germany & Japan Patents Pending)
1. ECO Intelligent Thermal Control System
2. High Power Vertical Double Layer Main Transformer

(China Patent NO.:ZL2009 2 0273193.2 ; Taiwan Patent NO.:M381155)

Then on the right we have two angled images of the Leadex Platinum, showing the available colours (white or black) and power outputs (550W, 650W, 750W & 850W) with the yellow dot indicating which version we have, our review sample is the black 750W version.

 

 

On opening the box we can see that the Super Flower Leadex Platinum 750W Power Supply is well packaged and presented, with all of the modular cables in a bag and the Power Supply itself sealed in a plastic bag and protected by two soft cell foam bumpers.

 

 

As you cab see from the image above left the Power Supply itself was well packaged and protected. In the box other than the PSU we find a bag of modular cables a user guide and a small bag of thumb screws.

At the time of review the Super Flower Leadex Platinum 750W Power Supply is available for approximately £113 from Overclockers UK and comes with an impressive 5 year warranty.

 

Specifications/Features

courtesy of Super Flower

* Additional details available here

 

First Impressions

 

 

First impressions of the Super Flower Leadex Platinum 750W Power Supply are very good, first off it looks good and is likely to look even better once powered up! 😉 Next it’s a good size, with the advent of smaller cases (MATX, MITX etc) and smaller ATX cases in general none of us want to be installing super long Power Supplies into our cases. The Platimum 750W measures in at 86mm(H) x 150mm(W) x 165mm(D) (interesting the manufacturers details seem to indicate a length of 200mm) meaning that it’ll fit in most modern Cases. It also features a nice matt black paint that also seems to be of a high quality. Overall there’s really nothing to moan about here, let’s take a full tour around the outside…
 

 

NOTE: There may be some debate as to what is the top of a PSU as the physical top often features a fan, but when installed the fan normally faces down, now suggesting that this is in fact the bottom! So, from now on I’m calling the side with the fan the top! 😉

Looking at the Top of the Super Flower Leadex Platinum 750W Power Supply we can see that it is dominated by the white 135mm silent DBB PWM Fan, that actually looks pretty darn cool hiding beneath that hexagonal grill. In the centre we have a nice silver Super Flower logo and on the top and bottom Platinum and the brand name Leadex. It’s a good looking design with a very purposeful look, it’s a shame then that we don’t get to see much of it… 🙁

There’s nothing to the back of the Power supply, all we can do here is marvel at the nice matte black paint finish.

 

 

On the left side of the Power Supply we find the white Specifications sticker, detailing various aspects of the PSU, including part number (SF-750F14MP), input, outputs, current and wattages etc. While I understand that this sticker has to go somewhere in my honest opinion, it’s on the wrong side! As, if you use the PSU with the fan facing down (as is the norm) this is the side you’ll see and not the other side…

that actually features a rather nice punched out Super Flower logo and brand name! 🙁

 

 

The back of the Leadex Platinum 750W Power Supply is dominated by the honeycomb mesh that covers 90% of the surface, this allows the warm air within to escape. To the right of this we have the usual power switch and auxiliary power socket, what is a little unusual about this is they are both horizontally mounted. Unusual, unless you have a Super Flower PSU that is…

As we have seen before on our previous look at a Super Flower PSU, when looking at the front of the PSU, not only is it modular, but all of the cables other than the main 24-pin all feature the same Universal 9-pin socket. This means that any cable can be plugged into any socket, now that seems helpful! Also note that all of the sockets are the same way up, no guesswork either, I like it! 😉 Of course the sockets themselves are also all made from transparent plastic, as don’t forget that they all illuminate when the PSU in On. In the lower left we also find the ECO Intelligent Thermal Control System switch (AUTO/ECO). This switch while in Auto mode allows the fan to spin according to the internal temperature of the PSU. Eco is the same (from what I can see) but the fan will remain stationary at start up, in an attempt to remain quiet, increase the lifespan of the fan and to lower energy consumption.

 

 

Now we get to take a look at all of the modular cables supplied. First (working left to right) we have the main 24-pin power cable, and x2 8-pin CPU power cables. These are the ones with the blue plugs. Then we have x2 flat SATA power cables and a flat combined SATA x2 and Molex x2 cable. Finally completing the top row we have a flat x3 Molex and x1 Floppy power cable. Finally we have the x2 split (8-pin (6-pin + 2-pin)) PCIe power cables followed by the all important (as it’s often not supplied or it’s a EU plug) UK power lead. It’s all good stuff but I have to say although I understand that colour coding the plugs helps identify them, if you’re designing your Rig build around a specific colour then a random Blue or Red plug could well upset the balance, I know it would bother me!

 

Cable Details

 

 

Overall then a good First Impressions for the Super Flower Leadex Platinum 750W Power Supply; it looks good and it’s a good size too and I cant wait to see those sockets illuminate. But the position of the specifications sticker on the left and those coloured plugs are a little bit of bugbear for me…

 

Hardware Installation

 

Test Rig Setup

Case	Cooler Master HAF XB	Power Supply	Super Flower Leadex Platinum 750w
Motherboard	ASRock Fatal1ty Z97X Killer	CPU	Intel Core i5-4690K
CPU Cooler	Raijintek Themis	RAM	HyperX Savage 2400MHz 8GB Kit
Graphics Card	XFX AMD Radeon R9 290X DD Black Edition	SSD	HyperX FURY 120GB

 

 

Installation of a Power Supply is usually a straightforward and simple task. However installing into our HAF XB Test Rig case is usually made even easier, courtesy of a secondary PSU mounting bracket which allows for an additional 28mm to literally hang out of the back of the case.

Super Flower have also (thankfully) seen fit to shorten their Power Supplies since the last 650W one we saw was a bit of a whopper at 200mm! The Leadex Platinum 750W is only 165mm by comparison (despite what the specs say), meaning that it’s basically the same size as our regular test PSU the Corsair AX760i.

 

 

With the Leadex Platinum 750W power supply in position it was time to add the cables necessary for the build. Our Test Rig install requires just four cables; the 24-pin power cable, the 8-pin CPU power cable, a single PCIe power cable (thankfully the Super Flower cable is split so providing two 8-pin plugs) and finally a single cable to power up the back of the hot swap drive bay. This requires a single Molex plug so I opted to use the Molex/Floppy cable for this purpose.

 

 

With the rest of the Test Rig installed and the system cabled up it was time for some power! With the power on we get to take a look at the white illumination of the Power Supply’s sockets, damn cool it looks too IMHO! I wonder who will be doing RGB lighting on a PSU next, imagine that, now that would be cool… 😉

 

Testing Methodology/Setup

 

When it comes to testing Power Supplies there’s very little else you can do other than put the PSU under load and measure the voltages. As this is not a very real world test (as it only takes seconds to setup and record), we have employed a more real world test. For more details on our thoughts regarding Power supply testing check out this article.

The Power Supply is put under a real world load for 1 hour, while running both Unigine Heaven and running Prime 95 (Blend) simultaneously. Power Supplies over 750W are tested using x2 AMD Radeon 290Xs to ensure the PSU gets a real workout. The Super Flower Leadex Platinum 750W of course is a 750W Power Supply which means we’ll only require a single Graphics Card for this particular stress test.

 

Hardware Performance

 

 

As you can see from the above image, the Super Flower Leadex Platinum 750W Power Supply did well in our burn-in test, with all voltages (12v, 5v & 3.3V) remaining stable at (12.096v, 5.064v & 3.296v) and well within the ATX guidelines which allow for a 5% fluctuation. Throughout testing and during the week long test period no signs of instability were encountered.

 

 

Final Thoughts

 

There’s no doubt that the Super Flower Leadex Platinum 750W Power Supply is a damn good Power Supply, but is it a Platinum award winning Power Supply? Well I can tell you it certainly comes as close as any Power Supply that we have seen before…

The Super Flower Leadex Platinum 750W Power Supply arrived at pcG in a smart white (makes a change!) box with the contents within well packaged and nicely presented. Once out of the box the beauty of the Power Supply could be appreciated, no really, this is one good looking Power Supply. The black powder coated exterior seems to be of a high quality and that 145mm white fan really sets the whole thing off, and we’ve not even powered it up yet, that’s the best bit! 😉 There’s also a nice set of cables supplied with the PSU, all of the cables are black and all of the primary power cables (24-pin, 8-pin & PCIe) feature black sleeving, the rest of the cables are flat. There’s even a UK mains power cable and plug supplied, which is always nice to see!

But it is in the area of aesthetics where the first (and only) criticisms of the Supper Flower Leadex Platinum 750W crop up. First up we have the CPU 8-pin and the PCIe cable plugs (motherboard end) that are blue and red respectively. No bad thing for identifying cable ends if you’re unsure, but if you’ve got a coloured Rig build planned a Red or Blue plug cropping up here and there may well spoil the overall look! I for one would much rather see Super Flower using black plugs across the board, for all of the Motherboard side plugs. The other (and only) aesthetic issue is that Super Flower have chosen to place the specifications sticker on the left side of the PSU, now as Power Supplies normally sit fan side down that means that you get to see that (somewhat unsightly) sticker on the left. Yet, on the other side there’s that beautiful powder coated black finish and a smart punched out Super Flower logo!?

With the concerns over some minor aesthetics out of the way we can look at the install, which as you would expect went well. I had no issues with cable lengths or plugs during install and all of the cables were nice and flexible, making cable routing simple and straightforward.

Of course when you turn this little power house on the interest in this PSU builds thanks to the illuminating (white) Power Supply sockets and damn good it looks too! Maybe RGB lighting controlled by software is the next step!? 😉

From a pure performance point of view there’s little (READ: nothing!) to criticise about this Platinum 750W Power Supply. First there’s the impressive 90%+ efficiency, even at 100% load, then there’s the impressively stable voltages that we saw during our stress test. With voltages of 12.096v, 5.046v and 3.296v the Super Flower Leadex Platinum 750W is well within ATX guidelines. To top all of this off, the Leadex Platinum 750W is nice and small too measuring in at 86mm(H) x 150mm(W) x 165mm(D), meaning that it will likely fit in all but the smallest of cases.

Overall then the Super Flower Leadex Platinum 750W ticks all of the boxes, it’s small, it looks good (especially when on!), it features top notch efficiency and is very stable. If Super Flower could just fix a couple of minor aesthetics, this Platinum rated Power Supply would surely be worthy of a Platinum award.

 

Verdict

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Many thanks to Super Flower for providing this sample for review