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Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/2713
PC Power & Cooling - Visiting a Legend
by Christoph Katzer on January 23, 2009 8:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
If you're a PC enthusiast and care about power supplies, you'll definitely be familiar with the name PC Power & Cooling. The company has been around a long time now and is responsible for many innovations in the power supply industry, particularly in the USA. In May 2007, Doug Dodson, the founder and owner of PC Power & Cooling, sold his company to the OCZ Technology Group; with that move, the brand also entered the European Union. What many users don't know is that PC Power & Cooling has been around 24 years, bringing inventions to market like no other company in this field. They were building power supplies when most of today's enthusiasts weren't even born.
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After this year's CES, we took the chance to drive down to San Diego where PC Power & Cooling has resided for the past 17 years. We met up with Doug Dodson, the CTO of the OCZ Technology Group, and James Dickensen, the Quality Engineer in charge of Quality and Testing. If you are a reviewer like us and received a PC Power & Cooling unit before, you might have seen his name on the Chroma report that came with the unit.
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James Dickensen in his lab; you can see that he does more than sharpening pencils in here.
Today PC Power & Cooling helps OCZ with RMA, testing, and development, but OCZ continues to do much of this on their own for OCZ branded products. OCZ has a product development team that develops for both OCZ and PC Power, and Doug's role in this is more consulting based now. The differences between the two companies is still large, since PC Power was always and still is a high-end power supply vendor that cares less about prices and focuses primarily on components and best quality merchandise. OCZ as a brand caters mostly to other parts of the market where the price wars are more taxing.
Inside PC Power & Cooling
PC Power showed us their facility, which contains of a huge R&D center, an area where they customize power supplies, an RMA area where power supplies are also refurbished, and the warehouse. Several electricians in the RMA area are testing power supplies that came back for whatever reason. The larger area is being used to customize power supplies. PC Power & Cooling allows end-users to get additional cable harnesses or connectors, and if you choose this option it will be done by hand in this area for each customer. You may recall our review of the Turbo Cool 860 that came with six PCI-E connectors and extra SATA connectors. That wasn't something PC Power did specifically for AnandTech; it's a service they offer to any customer (for a price). PC Power has many commercial customers and most of them require customization, which is done here as well.
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A small room contains another Chroma 8000 ATE together with a small thermal chamber. PC Power is using this Chroma to perform the R&D work and tests on upcoming power supplies. We saw quite a few power supplies from different vendors that made their way down here for evaluation. We tested a few power supplies along with the new UPC PC Power showed in Las Vegas. Pictured above is the sine wave on the scope from when we were testing the UPC waveforms.
From Humble Beginnings to Huge Success
Before success comes hard work. That holds true for every company earning money today. Doug was the driving power behind PC Power & Cooling over the years, and their success came with a lot of hard work and some good ideas. We got some old pictures that show some of the history behind the company.
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Here's a picture of Doug Dodson in 1992 at his Comdex booth in Las Vegas. Note how large the power supply is in the chassis. Also notable are the freebies under his left hand. Those are actually the same caps they are still using on some power supplies today.
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Here's another booth at a convention with Doug showing what he has to offer. Notice the poster of a cooler on the right side of the wall. That was one of the first CPU coolers available at a time when all CPUs were passively cooled.
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Which company claims to have had the first 120mm fan in a power supply? This photo shows PC Power & Cooling already had such a fan in 1986. Note the name of the power supply: Silencer. Can you imagine this name is already 22 years old? Today, the Silencer series - including the 750 Quad - is still one of the best power supplies available.
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Here's the first Turbo Cool power supply from the successful series. This power supply made PC Power & Cooling what it is today. When other companies had bad ventilation and only one small fan, PC Power decided to use two fans that blew fresh air onto the components. Since the 5V rail fed most of the components back then, it was rated at a then massive 20A. In contrast, the 12V rail only supplied up to 8A. Another advantage PC Power had over the competition was the angled fans; the competition blew air straight at the components while PC Power angled the fans to improve airflow. There was simply no competition for these power supplies, which is where the company started its huge success.
The difference between the two power supplies in the above gallery is easy to see. While other manufacturers used very simple designs with few components, PC Power provided more - and better - components. Innovations such as these helped pave the way for modern power supplies.
That wraps up our visit with PC Power & Cooling in San Diego. Thanks to Doug and James for their time, as well as a nostalgic trip down memory lane.