Overview of the ASUS ROG-STRIX-750G 750W power supply. Replenishment in the owl family

ASUS continues to expand its range of power supplies and following last year’s ROG Thor, it introduced a new series for the mass market – ROG Strix with 80 Plus Gold certification. Our oldest device has already been tested and left only positive impressions, now it’s up to the little one to check the novelty. We got a 750 W model for testing, while the company has other 550 and 650 W devices in its portfolio. Let’s see how the “owl” can surprise after the quite good “Thor”.

ASUS ROG Strix 750W Gold (ROG-STRIX-750G)

* — the average price in the Ukrainian market is indicated in brackets

The power supply comes in a colorful package, the design of which is typical of the Strix series. On the back of the box, the features of the device are indicated, and on one of the faces there is a description of the electrical characteristics and the number of connectors.

The package bundle is quite good, not as impressive as the Thor 1200W, but not as scarce as the competitors. Here the user will find two power cords (one for a British socket), instructions for the device, a brochure on the use of complete “applications” and the stickers themselves, nylon ties, four Velcro ties and a set of detachable cables in a case.

The unit has a modular design, so all cables are detachable, including the power supply of the motherboard and processor. Their number is as follows:

• one to power the motherboard (62 cm);
• two with one 8-pin (4+4) connector for processor power (100 cm);
• two with two 8-pin (6 + 2) connectors for powering a PCI-E video card (68 cm);
• one with four power connectors for SATA devices (46+12+12+12 cm);
• one with four power connectors for SATA devices (41+15+15+15 cm);
• one with three power connectors for IDE devices (45+12+12 cm).

The processor power cable turned out to be one of the longest we have ever seen – a whole meter! Enough to wrap the motherboard tray in the Full-Tower case once. The rest of the cables are not far behind in size, although not as big. Two different cables for powering peripherals are due to the use of different SATA Power connectors: on one they are located perpendicular to the wires, and on the second they are already parallel. All cables are black and nylon-sheathed except for the drive cables.

With the design of the novelty, the manufacturer excelled here. Following the concept of diagonal line arrangement, which began with the Thor series, the engineers went even further, making the slots as large as possible, which should minimize the resistance to airflow. This should have a positive effect on the noise level. Ultimately, the device looks very unusual.

Adds originality to it and perforation on the side and back walls. True, the holes on the side are purely decorative, since they are sealed from the inside with a transparent material. On the back wall there is a network connector, a switch and a button for activating the hybrid mode, familiar to us from Seasonic solutions.

With complete stickers, you can customize the power supply by sticking one small (three options in total) on the back wall and installing either the ROG series logo on a magnet or large magnetic stickers on the sidewalls.

On the inner wall there are connectors for detachable cables, all of them are signed and have different sizes, so it’s impossible to confuse when connecting, in theory.

According to its characteristics, the unit fully complies with modern standards, when all power is concentrated on the 12-volt line. On the + 12V line, it is capable of delivering almost all of its power, namely 744 watts. The combined power of low-voltage channels is 100 W, 15 W is provided for the standby voltage, and 3.6 W are content with -12V. The sticker with the characteristics is designed in the style of originality and is a triangle. We definitely haven’t seen this before.

ASUS ROG Strix 750W is highly efficient, equipped with active PFC and supports a wide input mains voltage range. Of the declared protections, there are: from power overload, from increased output voltage, from short circuit, from current surges and overheating. Automatic fan speed control available.

Originality continues to thrive. Now, when disassembling the device, the fan grill is first removed, combined with the side walls, and the fan itself is attached to the L-shaped plate, which is part of the back wall.

Having analyzed our ward, we see that it is made on the basis of the “golden” Seasonic platform, namely Focus Plus. Its circuitry uses a resonant converter in the high-voltage part and a synchronous rectifier in the low-voltage part with independent output voltage stabilization.

ASUS used black textolite from its own and added heatsinks of the original form. Like the original Seasonic solutions, the device in question is perfectly executed.

The input filter is partially implemented on the network connector, there is a relay that turns off the thermistor, which limits the charge current of the input capacitance.

The largest radiator with angular fins is responsible for cooling the APFC elements. For diode bridges, a slightly smaller cooler was used, which can be accidentally mistaken for a radiator for key transistors. But this is not so, it simply covers a small cooler of one pair of transistors and it seems that they are a single whole. The second pair of transistors is cooled by a small radiator also with diagonal fins. For a synchronous rectifier, a pair of bars with ribs screwed to the plates soldered to the printed circuit board in the area of ​​the transistors are additionally provided.

The CM6901T6X controller is responsible for the resonant converter and the synchronous rectifier, the active PFC block is made on the CM6500UN chip, and the WT7527A is responsible for monitoring. “Duty room” is implemented by the EM8569 chip.

The DC/DC converter for low voltage voltages is made on a separate board, which, apparently, is controlled by the APW7159 PWM controller.

The input circuit uses a 560µF Rubycon capacitor, 400V operating voltage, 105°C. The rest of the circuits contain containers from the same company and Nippon Chemi-Con. There are polymer capacitors in the output circuit.

The detachable cable board is connected directly to the main PCB via busbars. It has several electrolytic capacitances and solid capacitors.

The power supply in question is assembled with high quality, the PCB is also soldered. No flux, no “snot” was noticed. Everything is just perfect.

The device is cooled by a 135 mm Everflow FB14025BH fan, based on a pair of ball bearings and with a two-pin connection. A feature of this “turntable” is a ring that connects nine blades, designed to improve air flow.

If you do not activate the hybrid cooling mode, then the fan always rotates at a speed of about 820-830 rpm, without showing any noise. If you turn on the hybrid mode by pressing the button on the back of the power supply, the propeller stops rotating even with a gaming load with one video card. A couple of “monsters” in the idle system after the load required periodic activation of the fan, but the average frequency was about 220 rpm, but the full load brought the speed to only 872 rpm, which can be called a good result.

Test Methodology

The power supply was checked using a conventional system assembled from the following components:

• processor: Intel Core i5-8600K (4.3 GHz);
• motherboard: ASUS Maximus X Apex (Intel Z370);
• Cooler: Prolimatech Megahalems;
• RAM: HyperX HX429C15PB3AK2/16 (2×8 GB, DDR4-2933@3200, 16-18-18-36-2T);
• video card: GeForce GTX 1080;
• drive: Kingston SSDNow UV400 480GB (480 GB, SATA 6Gb/s).

Testing was carried out in the Windows 10 x64 environment on an open stand. To create a gaming load on the system, the Valley benchmark was used with maximum graphics quality, and for additional load, LinX 0.6.7 was launched in parallel.

Also, for maximum load, the following system was assembled:

• processor: Intel Core i7-975 (3.33@4.02 GHz, Bclk 175 MHz);
• motherboard: ASUS P6T7 WS SuperComputer (Intel X58);
• cooler: Noctua NH-D14;
• RAM: Kingston KHX2000C8D3T1K3/6GX (3×2 GB, DDR3-2000@1750, 8-8-8-24);
• video cards: ASUS ENGTX295/2DI/1792MD3/A and Inno3D GeForce GTX 295 Platinum Edition (GeForce GTX 295);
• hard disk: Samsung HD502HJ (500 GB, 7200 rpm, SATA-II).

Here testing was carried out in the Windows 7 x64 HP environment on an open stand. The Tropics benchmark with 4x anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering enabled under game load was used to load the system, and the LinX program with a 1024 MB task was used for additional load, while Tropics was launched with AA2x and AF16x.

To measure the total power consumption of the system, the Seasonic Power Angel was used, which can also measure the power factor, voltage and frequency in the network, the consumed current and the amount of energy spent per unit of time. Net power consumption calculated based on 80 Plus certification – i.e. possible efficiency of the device. Errors in such calculations can be 5%. The voltages were checked with a UNI-T UT70D digital multimeter.

The temperature was measured using the Scythe Kaze Master Pro panel, the sensors of which were located on the radiators inside the block and at a distance of 1 cm in front of the fan (#1) and behind the outer wall (#2).

For fan speed results, a UNI-T UT372 non-contact tachometer was used. The maximum speed was fixed for each of the power supply testing modes.

It should be borne in mind that such a technique at this stage is far from ideal and will be supplemented and changed as it is used.

Test results

The obtained data are entered in the table. In brackets for voltage are percent deviations from the norm, for power consumption – the approximate net load on the power supply.

*- without load.

The Seasonic platform, perhaps, cannot be confused with anything – the voltage is too high on all channels, but within tolerance and does not even go beyond 3% at the required 5% norms. Good temperature performance, even at a relatively low fan speed. It didn’t work to load the power supply in excess of the nominal value, the system immediately rebooted, so it’s very difficult to judge the power reserve of ROG Strix, but it’s definitely enough for games even with a couple of video cards.

conclusions

The desire to assemble a system from components exclusively from one vendor is already quite feasible. Some manufacturers offer the full range of PC components, but ASUS does not yet have enough memory and SSD drives for this, and the range of cases leaves much to be desired. But now there are plenty of power supplies to complete both top-end builds with several powerful graphics adapters and more affordable gaming machines. The considered ROG-STRIX-750G offers the user an original appearance and excellent equipment with excellent characteristics. The power supply can be customized with complete stickers, which will appeal to fans of various decorations. The number of cables is minimal, but enough for a powerful configuration, and two cables for powering the processor with a length of one meter generally deserve all kinds of praise. The characteristics of the novelty are determined by the capabilities of the Seasonic Focus Plus platform, so you don’t have to worry about the stability of the power supply and the longevity of the device. Connoisseurs of silence will be able to use the hybrid mode and hear the fan running, at best, only at maximum load. In general, the ROG Strix 750W Gold turned out to be excellent, and the overpayment of 30% relative to the original is not so great if the ASUS brand impresses.