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Chieftec Navitas 650W GPM-650C Review

Published by Marc Büchel on 03.12.14

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A Look Inside

You can get a first solid hint for a high quality power supply, when you look at its exterior. In this case we find a nice looking enclosure, which has been well manufactured. Apart from that there is a fan from Y.L. Tech which falls into the high-end category. Removing the top of this unit we quickly see that this PSU is based on CWTs PUQ(G) platform. One can tell this by the green transformer. Despite the fact, that this isn’t the youngest platform it can still be considered state-of-the art. The reason for that is, that the primary side features loss-less LLC conversion as well as interleaved PFC circuitry and on the secondary side we find DC-DC conversion.

First things first: the transient filtering stage, comes with two X and two Y capacitors right behind the AC receptacle. On the main PCB there is a pair of Y caps, another pair of X caps, two CM chokes and one MOV. The transient filtering stage is therefore well done.

Continuing we find two parallel rectifiers. In case of the APFC unit there is one large capacitors from Nippon Chemi-Con, which features 390uF capacity at 400V and they are specified for 105°C. Still on the primary side, we find a thermistor, which has been placed right next to the main transformers. Having the thermistor here makes perfect sense, since the transformers demand cooling.

Meanwhile we’ve arrived on the secondary side. All MOSFETs taking care of the 12V rail are on a small and vertically mounted daughter PCBs. Most of the capacitors are from CapXon, which is a chinese manufacturer. A Weltrend WT7502V chip is taking care of all the protection mechanisms, like for instance OCP and UCP. Furthermore the large daughter PCB hosts the connectors for the partially modular cable management.

Last but not least a few words about soldering quality. Chieftecs OEM (CWT) is making sure, the soldering quality matches the overall quality of this unit, which means it’s pretty well done.