Codegen P-Case 460W - Low Price, Poor Quality

Conclusion

It's clear that some PSUs should never see retail shelves in Europe. The Codegen P-Case 460W belongs in this classification if you want a 460W PSU. In fact, the Codegen is a ~230 watts power supply without power factor correction--not to mention the fact that the efficiency is always below 74%. If you just need a cheap power supply that will function at loads under 250W, perhaps budget products will fit the bill, but we'd suggest looking elsewhere as long-term power costs (and the risk of damaged components) makes this a gamble at best. In our case, the PSU died at 50% load.

Codegen offers nothing more than a few short cables and no PCIe connector. Moreover a cable sleeving would be a nice extra, but we'd like to see better electronics first. Overall the PSU provides two SATA and two HDD connectors on two 20 AWG cables. Additionally, you get a 4-pin CPU connector and a 30cm long 24-pin cable. With 45-60cm the peripheral cables are short too.

Internally, the PSU has a single-layer main PCB. Codegen only uses cheap capacitors and the main caps are common types with only average endurance at 105°C. Most components are undersized. Transient filtering is inadequate and there's no MOV (as an AC overvoltage protection). The SD6109 IC has some important safety functions including OVP and SCP but this is not enough since OCP is missing. +5V and +12V are connected to the same controlling and share one output choke which gone into saturation during our test. Overall, the component selection and build quality make this a low-end offering.

+12V is always higher than 12.31V (12.60V is the ATX limit) while the other rails are lower. The voltage regulation is bad--even for such an affordable product. While efficiency is only 73% at high load, the ripple results could have been worse. The power factor is very low on 230VAC since there is neither a PFC choke nor an active PFC circuit. Another disadvantage is the high fan RPMs at 50% load. The PSU is relatively silent from 5 to 10% load and still quiet at 20%. However, it does get too loud at higher loads--nothing unusual for a PSU like this, but you'll want to ensure your PC doesn't reach high loads if white noise bothers you (and that your PC won't die).

In summary, the Codegen P-Case 460 from Q3335-A2 bundle is one of the worst PSUs we have seen so far. It doesn't have any special features beyond an acceptable noise level (at low load). We can hardly recommend a 460W PSU with 230W real power and no power factor correction. In addition the PSU died during our test. The whole bundle costs about 30 EUR in Europe.

You get what you pay for!