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ABS / Tagan BZ900 900W Power Supply Review

by Michael "SKYMTL" Hoenig     |     March 18, 2008

Cables and Connectors

- Molex: 7 Connectors (modular)
o 2x 30” length (3 Connectors each)
o 1x 21” length (1 Connector)

- SATA: 8 Connectors (modular)
o 2x 36” length (4 connectors each)

- PCI-E 6+2 pin: 2 Connectors (modular)
o 2x 20” length

- PCI-E 6-Pin: 2 Connector (modular)
o 1x 20” length

- Floppy: 2 Connectors (@ end of 30”Molex cables)
o 2x 36” length

- 24-pin ATX Connector: 19 1/2” length

- 4-Pin CPU Connector: 19 1/2” length

- 8-Pin CPU Connector: 19 1/2” length


Even though all of the cables are as described on the exterior of the packaging this is one area in which the BZ900 falls flat for us. While the cables are beautifully sleeved and there are more than enough connectors to go around, it is (once again) the cable lengths that we have an issue with. Anything less than 21” for the CPU connector as well as the ATX cable means that a power supply will have issues fitting in an enclosure with a bottom-mounted power supply. At 19 ½”, the ATX and CPU connectors on the BZ900 are woefully short for a 900W power supply and the same goes for the PCI-E cables. This is a power supply that is supposed to cater to enthusiasts and these cable lengths just don’t cut the mustard. To make our point even more apparent, the recently-reviewed Seasonic M12II 500W power supply had 21" CPU and ATX connectors.


Unlike some power supplies on the market (namely Silverstone’s modular units), the BZ900 does not have a fully modular interface. Rather, the ATX, 8-pin CPU, 4-pin CPU and a single Molex connector are all fixed to the housing and are not modular at all. While the presence of fixed ATX and CPU connectors was to be expected, I have to say that I found the inclusion of the lone Molex connector to be slightly odd considering many people are moving to SATA disk drives and hard drives.

Another interesting inclusion on this power supply is a small gold-plated round connector that is supposed to be used to ground your power supply. This (in theory) is supposed to protect your power supply and other components against static discharge damage.


All of the cables are color coded to their corresponding LED color on the modular interface and this makes installing these cables a dream come true in a dark case. Basically, the red cables go with the red modular interface connectors, the green with the green and so on. While this system may work quite well, we once again encounter the hated “REMI” filters on the PCI-E cables which make cable routing a lesson in futility.


The modular interface on the BZ900 is quite unique and you all may remember this exact same interface from the Xion Supernova 600W we reviewed months and months back. At the time we found this interface both unintuitive and extremely hard to work with but believe it or not, nothing has changed this time around. We still have to screw on the heads of the connectors to secure them, and this is still a stab in the dark when trying to find which connector goes where when the power supply is installed in your case. If all of the LED would have illuminated sans installed connectors installation would have been so much easier in a dark computer case. Unfortuantely, there was more than one instance when we lost power to one component or another due to a loose connection.
 
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