Fractal Design Anode (550 W)
We will also take the Fractal Design Anode PSU to the external testlab to analyze its electrical properties. This one doesn’t really fit into the mosaic of the others, as it is a power supply with support for the older ATX standard, it also has significantly lower power compared to the others, and according to the 80 Plus Bronze branding, it is expected to have lower efficiency as well, but again, it will be a good one to illustrate how such a low-budget option compares.
If you read HWCooling regularly, you know that we’ve been gathering power supplies for larger comparison tests for some time now. Fractal Design was also interested in participating despite not having any ATX 3.0 power supplies on offer, which is the main variable we focused on for the other power supplies. From those, the FD power supply differs significantly in almost everything it could. The ATX standard of the Anode model (Fractal Design Anode) is “only” 2.52, it has 550 W of power (vs. 850–1000 W) and then there is the “cheaper” efficiency sticker (80 Plus Bronze), but also a significantly lower price (56 EUR vs. 150–200 EUR).
Fractal Design Anode with 550 W in fact represents a typical power supply that usually ends up in low-end builds and that will be what’s interesting – to see how a design like this will stand up against something significantly more expensive. Lower maximum load capacity is obvious, but what about the other parameters?
From the outside…
Fractal Design has cleverly conceived the design of the grille. The array of straight round wires combines the advantages of traditional circular grilles (low aerodynamic resistance) with the “modern” ones that meet the stamp in factories. There, again, lower production costs are a common denominator. Ultimately, the grille of the FD Anode power supply has all the makings of not reducing airflow while not significantly increasing noise.
The housing of the power supply is quite simple, decorated only with embossed Fractal logos, and especially short. At 140mm in length, there is also extra compatibility with some small cases, which will be more comfortable to work in when installing such a power supply (than with larger/longer ones).
The cabling is only partially modular. The 24-pin and 4+4-pin for CPU power are fixed, the rest of the connectors or cables are disconnectable. These also feature a flat profile, where the insulations of the individual wires are soldered together. They are separated (and in the mesh) only in the case of the hardwired cables. The wires of the 12 V rail have a slightly smaller cross-section (18 AWG) even in the case of connectors with a high current load (i.e. for GPU and CPU power), as is the case in the higher classes, but no expense has been spared on the length. In this reagrd, even the cable for CPU power has up to 700 mm, so it is also possible to conveniently route it behind the motherboard. With cheap, compared to Anode even cheaper power supplies sometimes this cable is too short for such maneuvering. FD Anode is not affected by this (you don’t have to pull its cable along a shorter route/forward and you don’t have to extend it in any way).
Remarkably, the power supply has (on the two Y cables) up to four 6+2-pin PCIe connectors. This theoretically also allows for the connection of graphics cards that will be at the edge of capabilities or in combination with a powerful processor and beyond.
Naturally, this power supply is in the mid-range, which includes the GeForce RTX 4070 or the Radeon RX 7700 XT. With more powerful graphics cards, this power supply will already be entering a band where its efficiency is trending downwards.
… and from the inside
The Poweryear fan (model PY-1225M12S) is in 120 mm format and uses ball bearings. Up to 40 percent load, fan speeds should be just over 500 rpm and at 100 percent power supply load, around 1400 rpm.
The heatsinks on the voltage transformers are more robust with respect to the performance of the power supply (not even many more powerful power supplies contain that much aluminium), which is usually associated with lower efficiency and higher temperature losses. But Fractal Design seems to have prepared for these responsibly.
It is worth noting in this price range that all electrolytic capacitors are “105-degree” ones, so with the expectation of a long service life. The input filtering is 420-volt TK (Toshin Kogyo) LGW with a capacitance of 390 μF and the secondary is handled by Taepo (SC series capacitors).
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
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- Fractal Design Anode (550 W)
