The MSI MEG Ai1300P PCIE5 1300W PSU Review: The ATX 3.0 Era Has Begun
by E. Fylladitakis on December 8, 2022 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- PSUs
- MSI
- PCIe 5.0
- ATX v3.0
Hot Test Results (~45°C Ambient)
The resistance of the MSI MEG Ai1300P PCIE5 unit to adverse ambient conditions is astonishing, with the unit hardly affected at all while operating inside our hotbox. There is a practically negligible efficiency degradation of 0.2-0.3% depending on the load, a figure four to six times lower than other similar designs. There is very little additional degradation under heavy loads, suggesting that the components of the MSI MEG Ai1300P PCIE5 are not thermally stressed at all.
Despite the exceptional resilience of the PSU against high ambient temperatures and its 80Plus Platinum efficiency levels, the losses of a unit this powerful sum up to over 100 Watts under high loads. These losses do increase the internal temperature of the PSU significantly but the cooling system of the MSI MEG Ai1300P PCIE5 proves to be more than adequate, as the temperature of the critical components does not get anywhere near critical levels during our testing. As a matter of fact, the MSI MEG Ai1300P PCIE5 delivers lower temperature figures than many units with significantly larger bodies and fans do.
The sizable heatsinks of the MSI MEG Ai1300P PCIE5 seem to be collaborating excellently with the 120 mm PowerLogic fan at keeping the temperature of the critical parts low. With the PSU inside our hotbox, the fan started quicker and sped up even faster, reaching its maximum speed while the PSU was at just 70% load. Regardless, the internal temperatures of the unit kept rising almost linearly and were kept within safe levels.
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Arbie - Friday, December 9, 2022 - link
An impressive piece of engineering, and high quality construction.I think the fan noise is a non-issue. It only starts running at ~400W (!) load by which time all case and graphics card cooling will be working hard. It's 40 dBA at 800W (!!) when everything else will be howling. With this buried in a case you probably will never even notice its noise contribution.
As for the price - the point is made that this should last for quite a few years and PCs. So, not bad, and you are getting what you pay for. In the hugely unlikely event that I ever build a digital space heater, this looks like a great choice.
Oxford Guy - Friday, December 9, 2022 - link
40 dB at 500W in the hot test, and up up from there.Arbie - Friday, December 9, 2022 - link
The hot box had intake air at 45C. That tests the design limits but isn't applicable to a desktop, where very few people will even be at 29C ambient. The "cold" test at 25C is far more relevant. And that's the basis for my opinion that fan noise will be a non-issue.GreenReaper - Tuesday, December 20, 2022 - link
Perhaps. 2023 is meant to be warmer, and it is likely to continue to warm over the lifetime of the unit. Of course if you have A/C, maybe that is not an issue, but it is relatively uncommon in Europe.quorm - Friday, December 9, 2022 - link
Can you elaborate on patent restrictions for 135mm fans in psu?PeachNCream - Friday, December 9, 2022 - link
Yeah so I rather dislike the marketing style of this article which holds back on listing the price until the last page. Please stick that at the start of the article so I can decide in the first paragraph if I'm going to read it because its affordable and worth considering or if I'm going to just read for fun. (I'll still read either way as will most of us, but for the cost, this is a hard no since its basically the cost of an complete, capable laptop and all you're getting is AC to DC power conversion, not even processing capability.)Arbie - Saturday, December 10, 2022 - link
Yes, I too want to see prices up front, for the same reason.Ryan Smith - Sunday, December 11, 2022 - link
That's fair criticism. We're certainly not trying to hide the price; it just didn't come up in the natural flow of trying to write an interesting introduction.I've gone ahead and added it to the specs table.
Kaggy - Sunday, December 11, 2022 - link
ATX should really refresh, I don't get why GAN isn't more common in such power supplies and go for a smaller form factor.Do people really still get full sized ATX and use all the available bays?
Glock24 - Monday, December 19, 2022 - link
Some GPUs are larger than an ITX case, and some ITX cases are so large thet they are called ITX because they'll ony fit and ITX motheroard.It's been more than 10 years that I only use SFF computers, but a lot of people apparently like humongous cases with lots of leds.