BFG 800W Power Supply Review

Conclusion

This power supply presents me with a bit of a head scratcher now that I have reached the point of having to write a conclusion. While the BFG 800W displayed good performance across our tests and its lifetime warranty is a huge selling point, there is nothing about this power supply that made me stop and say “wow”. Even though it seems capable of outputting its stated 800W, other than its good price there isn’t much to keep it from being mentioned as an also-ran in the power supply race. I was actually more than happy with the build quality and its showing in the efficiency tests but it is the many small issues I have with it that keeps me from recommending it. I was actually expecting a bit more from BFG considering they bill this as the “power user’s choice” but those expectations never really materialized.

As I have already mentioned, there are a number of things which contribute to drag this power supply down. One of those things is the extremely short length of the cables which are some of the shortest I have come across on ANY power supply. If a company is searching for ways to decrease the cost of their power supplies, shortening cables is not something that should be even considered. Then there is the issue I have with the actual connectors themselves. You would expect an 800W power supply to be able to natively run a pair of 8800GTX or HD2900XT cards but the BFG 800W doesn’t. It only has a pair of PCI-E connectors and none of the new PCI-E 8-pin connectors which have become (in my opinion) mandatory on all power supplies over 600W. Finally, there is the noise output of this power supply that may annoy some people. If you like playing your games at louder volumes of if you have some of those neato noise-canceling headphones then you are all right. But, if you want a quiet computer then you should definitely look elsewhere.

Trying to like this power supply isn’t hard at all since it performs better than I expected and its new lower price will have many people looking at it very closely. Unfortunately, there are several areas which need some attention in order to bring the BFG 800W into contention as a good choice for a high-wattage power supply.


Pros:

- Good performance
- Lifetime Warranty
- Price

Cons:

- Cable lengths are far too short
- Only 2 PCI-E connectors
- Quite loud at higher loads
- No 8-pin PCI-E
- Finish is a magnet for scratches and fingerprints






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