Rosewill Fortress Platinum 450W
by Martin Kaffei on September 14, 2012 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- PSUs
- Rosewill
- 80Plus Platinum
- ATNG
- Fortress
- 450W
Rosewill Fortress Platinum 450W
We've recently had a ~40$ PSU roundup, so we felt it might be time for another "expensive" PSU review. The Rosewill Fortress Platinum 450W is an 80 Plus Platinum certified power supply with fixed cables. On the following pages we will see if Rosewill ranks among the best.
Those looking for maximum efficiency can now set their sights on 80 Plus Platinum PSUs, though they are very expensive. Especially the MOSFETs inside create high costs as a low drain-source resistance is difficult to realize. It's still questionable if there is a large market for these products, taking into account the many affordable 80 Plus Bronze/Silver/Gold solutions.
Going from 80 Plus Bronze (82-85% efficiency) to Silver (85-88%) to Gold (87-90%) to Platinum (89-92%) is a case of seriously diminishing returns when you look at pricing. You can find 80 Plus Bronze units for under $50 for 450W (give or take), but the jump to Silver kicks the starting prices north of $80 at Newegg while giving users 700W or more power—certainly not something most users need. Gold brings back some lower power ratings, but Rosewill and Seasonic are the two least expensive offerings at $60, with 450W and 360W respectively. Rounding out the options, Platinum power supplies like the Fortress series currently start at $90 for 450W.
In short, Bronze gets you 95% of the efficiency of Gold for about 2/3 the cost, and 92% of the efficiency of Platinum for about half the price. A typical system that draws around 75W at idle would save 8W going from Bronze to Platinum. At that rate and paying $0.10 per kWh, you save $7 per year when running the PC 24/7. For servers and other PCs that are on 24/7 already and consume a lot more power, efficiency can make a lot of sense (e.g. power savings of around $40 per year for a 500W server using the same $0.10 per kWh), but for home users there needs to be something more than just pure efficiency to make the increased cost worthwhile. Does the Fortress have that something extra, or is it simply a higher cost PSU with an incremental increase in efficiency? Let's find out.
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benji720 - Friday, September 14, 2012 - link
Not to be a dick but there are so many grammatical errors and awkward or fragmented sentences in this article that it made it hard to read."convert to an 6-pin connector"
"According to that Rosewill stands up to Antec."
"At best GlobeFan is slightly better than Yate Loon, but we don't want to overdo things." ??
"All cables got the same black cable sleeving."
These are just a few examples. Maybe I'm being nit-picky but one of the reasons I read this site is for well written, well thought out articles and I did not feel this article was either of those.
pattycake0147 - Friday, September 14, 2012 - link
Seconded. I had to re-read the first sentence "Since we've had a ~40$ PSU roundup of late" I questioned if it should have read "we haven't had." Perhaps "Since we've had a ~$40 PSU roundup recently" would have made it more clear.TrackSmart - Friday, September 14, 2012 - link
We know from previous reviews/comments that English is a second language for the author. Most of us would be hard pressed to be write as fluently in a language outside of our native tongue.I appreciate the author's considerable knowledge of power supplies, including fans, bearings, and internal components - minor grammatical errors or awkwardness aside.
aliceyoung - Friday, September 14, 2012 - link
I also get agitated when I read poor English, especially when sentences could be interpreted in two different ways depending on how I try to "fix" then in my head. But you know what? Screw it. It's a great review from someone who knows their stuff, and I'm paying for it with little more than my free time.Keep on writing articles like these, grammatically correct or not.
JarredWalton - Friday, September 14, 2012 - link
Sorry -- Martin posted without going through one of the native-English speakers. I'm editing/proofing the article now, but it will be a couple hours before I can finish. Thanks for your patience!extide - Friday, September 14, 2012 - link
The Ripple Results link at the very end is wrong, it goes to the admin side, instead of the public side. It should be http://www.anandtech.com/show/5698JarredWalton - Friday, September 14, 2012 - link
Fixed, thanks! I didn't check all the URLs as I didn't expect any to link to our admin pages. :-)The0ne - Friday, September 14, 2012 - link
Agreed. This is quite bad.JarredWalton - Friday, September 14, 2012 - link
Still? I just finished editing, so if you find any major grammar/spelling issues remaining please let me know.benji720 - Friday, September 14, 2012 - link
No, it is much better! Thank you for your editing prowess, sir.