ABS-Tagan TG800-U88 BZ 800 Watt Power Supply

 

Approximately two weeks ago we were contacted by a representative of ABS Laboratories, a well know company in the gaming world, who both collaborated and certified the ABS-Tagan TG1300-U33 ITZ 1300 Watt power supply for extreme gaming. The ABS Labs marketing rep asked if we’d be interested in reviewing ABS-Tagan’s newest product. We had two questions: 1) Is it modular? and 2) Did you certify this PSU as well? After receiving affirmation to both questions all we could say is, “How quickly can you get it to us?”.

 

INTRODUCTION

Back in September, 2007 we reviewed the ABS-Tagan TG1300-U33 ITZ 1300 Watt power supply and found it to be one of the best of the new generation of high-output power supplies. Our only functional concern with the ITZ 1300 was that it did not use a modular design. Modularity in power supplies has become extremely important to computer enthusiasts as it allows them to only use the wiring necessary to facilitate their system’s operation. As one might expect, modular cabling further aids in the efficient management of your cables as it can vastly decrease that mass of extra wires that you have to deal with in the top/bottom of your case.

After our review was published we took the liberty of relating this consensus to Tagan’s representative. As it turns out ABS-Tagan was a step ahead and he assured us that in the near future they would fill this void in their product line. We’ve heard this type of answer before from other product manufacturers about various recommendations we’ve made, only to be disappointed, so we didn’t hold our breath. Approximately two weeks ago we were contacted by a representative of ABS Laboratories, a well know company in the gaming world, who both collaborated and certified the ABS-Tagan TG1300-U33 ITZ 1300 Watt power supply for extreme gaming. The ABS Labs marketing rep asked if we’d be interested in reviewing ABS-Tagan’s newest product. We had two questions:   1)  Is it modular? and 2)  Did you certify this PSU as well? After receiving affirmation to both questions all we could say is, “How quickly can you get it to us?”.

Today we have the distinct pleasure to review the newest addition to ABS-Tagan’s power supply line of products, the TG800-U88 BZ. Does this unit live up to the quality and performance that we’ve found in previous ABS-Tagan products? Join us as we begin our quest to find out.

Tagan: The Company

The spirit and philosophy of TAGAN´s birth: To carry out state-of-art technologies for the best quality power supplies and to offer them to all users.

Our simple reason to give TAGAN’s birth:

We are a group of professional technical guys living in different countries –Germany, Japan and Silicon Valley (USA). All of us have had a couple of negative experience implementing Power Supply (PS) into systems. It is frustrating, time consuming and risky! By a very valuable opportunity, 2001 in Taipei`s Computex show, all of us met each other at a dinner party, we occasionally sat together and discussed about the power supply problems.

Based on our professional background and know-how, we suddenly all decided to study more about power supply and conduct some testing for finding out the best one. After almost a year`s teamwork in discussion, design, and developing, our team of international experts have designed some of the best and reliable power supplies for the PC as well as all the various systems. Consequently, all of us have become the founders of TAGAN. We are more than happy to share these products and experiences with you.

TAGAN´s strongest foundation – The best international professionals

• The best power supply thermal-cooling and low-noise professional from Germany
• The best power supply design professional from Japan
• The best system-level power supply technical advisor from Silicon Valley (USA)
• The best power supply manufactures from Taiwan and China

TAGAN offers – The power supplies state-of-art technologies

• Quiet enough! To make you sometime forget a power supply is working in your system
• Cool enough! Not only cool the power supply itself also cool your system
• Durable enough! So we can grant 36 month of warranty without problems
• Efficient enough! To save your cost and energy
• Low radiation emission! To protect your health and environment.
• Value for your money! EMI Shield, PCI-Express socket capacitor, and many extras.

That is why TAGAN is coming to serve you!!

FEATURES & SPECIFICATIONS

Features

• Up to Quad Card Support.
• Patented 20+4 Cable Design.
• Environmentally Friendly at Over 80% Efficiency.
• TURBO Mode to combine all Six +12 Rails to one for ultimate stability. Perfect for high end system demands.
• Gold Plated connectors.
• Thermal Control Cooling Fan.
• REMI Technology for EMI Reduction.
• Extra Ground Wire to Further Reduce Static Noise.
• Advanced Pull-n-Push Heat Dissipation Architecture for Maximized Cooling and Noise Reduction.
• 13.5cm LED fan is the best cooling system and keep silence.
• Low ripple and noise.
• 100% Hi-Pot Tested.
• Black Anti-scratch painted chassis

Specifications

Let’s Talk Turbo Mode

If you read our last review of the ABS-Tagan TG1300-U33 ITZ 1300 Watt power supply you’ll remember that ABS-Tagan offered a unique feature called “Auto Combine”. Auto Combine recruited the power of all six 12V rails into a single rail when the system’s 12 Volt output exceeded a 28A demand on a single 12V rail. On the ITZ 1300 this features was both seamless and automatic and was quite impressive. On other models in the ITZ series there was a manually operated Turbo mode button on the rear of the power supply adjacent to the power switch that implements the auto combine feature manually.

This feature was kept intact with ABS-Tagan’s new BZ modular series of power supplies or at least we assume it was. We say this as we are reviewing a midline 800 Watt product in that series and it has the manually operated “Turbo Mode Switch” switch on the rear of the power supply. We in fact like this approach better as it allows the user to make the decision on which mode of operation best suits their needs.

One might ask themselves just when should they switch to “Turbo Mode”?  A good, rule of thumb is if your calculated (i.e.; 12V calcualation software) shows the voltage demand within 10% of the maximum rail voltage then you should probably consider using “Turbo Mode”.  If you are more industrious and actually did direct measurements of your equipment’s 12V load demand and it’s within 3-5% of your maximum 12V rail voltage then again “Turbo Mode” migh be a good option.  The main thing to remember is that most power supply manufacturers that produce multi-railed 12V power supplies generally underrate the voltage that each rail will yield, generally by as much as 10%.  However, we at Bjorn3D feel it’s better to be safe than sorry. 

CLOSER LOOK

Packaging

The ABS-Tagan BZ 800 Watt power supply arrived at our doorstep in excellent condition due primarily to the excellent packaging that ABS-Tagan affords this product.

The inside of the outer package is compartmentalized with the upper section holding a protective case that houses the cabling and other accessories.

In the lower compartment, is the BZ 800 Power supply housed in it’s own protective case and surrounded it by approximately 2 inches of additional cellular foam protection.

External View

It has long been our position at Bjorn3d that your system’s power supply is one of it’s singular most important devices. Because of both the power supplies purpose and location we don’t feel it has to be aesthetically pleasing as long as the functionality you spent your hard earned $$$ on is present. The ABS-Tagan TG1300-U33 ITZ 1300 Watt power supply was an exception as we found it not only to be extremely functional but also quite pleasing to the eye.

The TG800-U88 BZ returns to a black painted chassis that is allegedly scratch proof, we say allegedly as we didn’t test this aspect. We would assume there is something special about the components in the paint as ABS-Tagan supplies a pair of mesh gloves in the package.

Internal View

Inside the case we see a component view of the TG800-U88 BZ 800 Watt power supply. There are two large aluminum heat sinks each horizontally configured for optimal heat dissipation. These heat sinks shown in the  image depicted below are proportionately smaller than those we discovered in the TG1300-U33 ITZ 1300 Watt power supply but then again this PSU has just over half the power output.

ABS-Tagan describes all of their internal components as “industrial grade”.

We were also interested to see what type of 135mm fan Tagan used to cool the TG800-U88 BZ. As the image below illustrates that fans carry the Tagan label but are most likely OEM from some other manufacturer.

Included Components

The ABS-Tagan ITZ 1300 includes the basic complement of supplies you would expect to find with any power supply plus a few extras. The supplied gloves are still a bit of a mystery to us, are they to prevent fingerprints on the chassis or to protect your hands? Nevertheless, a nice touch!

• 1 – ABS-Tagan TG800-U88 BZ 800 Watt power supply
• 1 – Users Manual
• 2 – Wire ties
• 1 – Rubber anti-vibration mask
• 5 – Chassis Screws
• 1 – Screwdriver
• 1 – Pair mesh gloves
• 1 – “Certified BY ABS” case badge

Cabling:

All cables are fully sleeved with high quality mesh sleeves except for the PCI-E cables which are sleeved with thick solid vinyl sleeves.

• 1 – 500mm 20+4 pin main power connector
• 1 – 500mm +12V 4+4 pin EPS cable
• 1 – 500mm +12V 4 pin cable
• 2 – 500mm 6 pin PCI Express cables
• 2 – 500mm 6+2 pin PCI Express cables
• 2 – cables each with 4 SATA power adapters (SATA adapters at 150mm increments beginning at 450mm)
• 2 – cables each with three 4 pin Molex power adapters and 1 floppy adapter (adapters at 150mm increments beginning at 450mm)
• 1 – 500mm ground wire

As the first image shows all of the PCI-e power cable are sleeved in a high-grade vinyl. The ABS-Tagan TG800-U88 BZ comes with two sets of PCI-e cables labeled “A” and “B”. In each set there is a standard 6 pin PCI-e cable and the newer 6+2 pin cable that can facilitate the needs of the newer AMD Radeon graphics solutions. Images two and three show the sleeved Molex and SATA cables

ABS-Tagan also includes a single ground wire that when connected to the case will help dissipate static electricity preventing the loss of a component from a high level static electrical discharge.

TESTING

 

 

Test Platform
Processor	Intel E6850 Core 2 Duo @ 3.6 GHz
Motherboard	EVGA 680i SLI
Memory	4GB of Mushkin XP2-6400 DDR-2
Drive(s)	3 – Seagate 750GB Barracuda ES SATA Drives
Graphics	XFX 8800 GTX XXX & Foxconn 8800GTX in SLI (Both fans @ 100%)
CPU Cooling	Enzotech Ultra w/Delta 120mm 90CFM fan
Case Cooling	6 – Scythe 120mm 1200 RPM fans all at 12V
Power Supply	Test Item # 1:  Tagan TG800-U88 BZ 800 Watt Power Supply Test Item # 2:  Tagan ITZ 1300 Watt Power Supply Test Item # 3:  PC Power & Cooling 1KWSR 1000 Watt Power Supply
Case	Large HSPC Tech station
Operating System	Vista Ultra 64 Bit

Test Methodology

Let’s face it, with a power supply this is the real meat of any review. Power supply pictures and verbose descriptions mean absolutely nothing without the ability to produce the desired results. We decided to compare our test results for the ABS-Tagan TG800-U88 BZ 800 Watt power supply against those of the ABS-Tagan ITZ 1300 Watt power supply and the PC Power & Cooling 1KWSR 1000 Watt power supply. We are planning to really try and drive the ABS-Tagan ITZ 1300 to the limits our test rig will provide, for that reason none of our previous test results will be used.

To act as a break-in period for the ABS-Tagan TG800-U88 BZ 800 Watt power supply I ran it for several days in the above described test system case and allowed it to run virtually undisturbed during normal everyday use ranging from surfing the Net to some hard-core gaming. To establish load conditions we ran a variety of different processes on our test system to create as much power demand on the ABS-Tagan TG800-U88 BZ as the components of the test system will allow.

Because of the complexity of changing out a power supply 6 different times we decided to test the components using a recently acquired large HSPC Tech station. While this test environment doesn’t completely simulate the results in a case we feel that using it uniformly with all test components should make the results relative. All electrical measurements were measured using a Velleman digital multimeter and a Seasonic Power Angel. Sound/noise measurements will be acquired using a new Omega HHSL-1 digital SPL meter.

As most of you are aware it is virtually impossible to drive a 800 Watt PSU to its maximum load capabilities using even the most sophisticated test rig even with the number of components we have added to increase power draw. Unfortunately, at present Bjorn3D doesn’t presently own an electronic load simulator to drive these devices to their maximum output. Hopefully we’ll have one of these devices in the not to distant future. While measurements taken using one of these devices show the true and ultimate capabilities of the power supply being tested, it’s not “real world”. By this I simply mean other than for bragging rights, why measure something you’ll probably never practically attain. The question then arises why buy a power supply that provides more than you need? Most computer enthusiasts subscribe to the premise that a power supply should never be driven in a real life environment to more than 75% – 80% of it’s capable output for obvious system performance reasons. I personally feel the 60% – 70% range gives you more of a performance comfort zone not to mention keeping your system nice and cool which also translates into quiet.

With our system tuned and ready to go we did initial power consumption measurements at both idle and full system load. With every component tweaked to draw the maximum power possible we were able to achieve power consumption levels of 350 Watts (± 5%) at idle and 500 Watts (± 5%) at load. The demand would have been higher if we had been able to run our SLI configuration with two XFX 8800GTX XXX graphics cards. Since we only have one and had to substitute a Foxconn 8800GTX that was clocked at normal speed as the second card in our SLI configuration. As you are probably well aware when running SLI with cards of two different speeds the system will default to the clock speed of the lowest clocked card.

TEST RESULTS

Power Test Results

 

Power Consumption Results(V) Measured with Velleman DVM850BL Multimeter
Power Rail	PC Power and Cooling 1KWSR 1000 Watt PSU		ABS-Tagan ITZ 1300 1300 Watt PSU		ABS-Tagan TG800-U88 BZ 800 Watt PSU
	Idle	Load	Idle	Load	Idle	Load
3.3v	3.355	3.354	3.345	3.340	3.350	3.345
5v	5.10	5.055	5.15	5.125	5.12	5.10
12v1	12.10	12.04	12.15	12.10	12.10	12.08
12v2	–	–	12.12	12.10	12.12	12.11
12v3	–	–	12.14	12.12	12.13	12.11
12v4	–	–	12.08	12.06	12.05	12.04
12v5	–	–	12.06	12.04	12.05	12.03
12v6	–	–	12.06	12.04	12.04	12.01
Wattage Used	350W(± 5%)	500W(± 5%)	350W(± 5%)	500W(± 5%)	350W(± 5%)	500W(± 5%)
ABS-Tagan TG800-U88 BZ Turbo Mode
	Idle			Load
3.3v	3.4			3.35
5v	5.10			5.08
12v1	12.14			12.11
Wattage Used	350W(± 5%)			500W(± 5%)

 

Power Factor Test Results
 

 

Sound Pressure Level Results
 

 

CONCLUSION

To say we are very impressed with the ABS-Tagan TG800-U88 BZ 800 Watt power supply would be a vast understatement! Even though it doesn’t bring the vast power output that its 1300 Watt sibling does, this power supply will more than meet the needs of the vast majority of computer enthusiasts out there.

We were also extremely impressed with noise levels or should we say lack of noise levels that this power supply produces. During the entire course of our testing, we never heard an audible difference in the fans; this was confirmed by our sound pressure meter showing no change in level between idle and load. Out of all the highly impressive features this unit brings to the market, we were most impressed with the manual Turbo Mode feature, in fact we like it better than the ITZ 1300 Watt’s Auto Combine feature. This element automatically balances the load and will convert the unit from six 12V rails to one monster 12V rail should the need arise and in this case the user can decide when the option should be used.

We used all of the popular price search engines as well as Google and were unable to find the ABS-Tagan TG800-U88 BZ 800 Watt power supply so we’re not sure if the entirety of the ABS-Tagan BZ series has been released. We were able to find the 700 Watt version of this series at New Egg and the price was $169 USD. So we would expect the 800 Watt version to retail for slightly more. Given our findings we feel this is an excellent price for the combination of features.

With every excellent product there’s always a few small niggles that a reviewer will find. In the case of the ABS-Tagan TG800-U88 BZ 800 Watt power supply there were just a few extremely small issues that we feel are worth mentioning. In the case of this power supply being modular, it’s only partially so as the main power connections are still hardwired. This normally would not be an issue but the 500mm size of the 20+4 pin power connector and the 4+4 pin EPS cable will prove to be to short for many of the larger mid-tower and most of the full-tower cases if PSU is mounted on the bottom. If this was a totally modular case longer or even shorter variants of all these cables could be easily made available to the consumer without them having to buy cable extensions.

ABS-Tagan has once again pulled out all of the stops with its BZ series of power supplies. We at Bjorn3D highly recommend this power supply to anyone looking for solid, powerful power supply that works great and is so quiet it’s barely audible.

 

Pros:

+  800 watts of clean, solid, and stable power
+  Six independent & dedicated +12V rails
+  Certified by ABS Labs for extreme gaming use
+  Manual “Turbo Mode” switch
+  Active PFC
+  High efficiency rating > 80%
+  Quad SLI/GPU ready
+  Compact case dimensions
+  Dual Core/Quad Core CPU ready
+  Next Generation 8-pin PCI-E connectors
+  All cables fully sleeved
+  Extremely quiet operation

 

Cons:

–  A fully modular design would have been better
–  The main power connection cables are to short for many of today’s current cases

 

Final Score: 9 out of 10 and the Bjorn3D Seal of Approval.