Power supplies with poor efficiency consume unnecessary amounts of power and produce excessive amounts of heat. This contributes to hotter systems and higher than necessary power consumption. To fight the problems with inefficient power supplies the 80 PLUS program was founded, which uses different levels of efficiency to grade power supplies depending on their respective efficiency.
The highly attractive 80 PLUS Gold certification have been the finest award a power supply can get, but now it has launched a new Platinum award for power supplies with 90% efficiency.
Energy efficiency at different loads | 20% | 50% | 100% |
80 PLUS | 80% | 80% | 80% |
80 PLUS Bronze | 82% | 85% | 82% |
80 PLUS Silver | 85% | 88% | 85% |
80 PLUS Gold | 87% | 90% | 87% |
80 PLUS Platinum | 90% | 94% | 91% |
80 PLUS Platinum requires that the power supply can maintain 90% at 20% load and 91% efficiency at 100% load. The only company that has jumped onto the Platinum train is HP that has started using 80 PLUS Platinum power supplies with its servers, a market where every percentage of power counts.
The retail industry is expected to follow with 80 PLUS Platinum certifications, while we continue to dream about the ultimate and perfectly efficient power supply.
