Chieftec Polaris Pro 1300w 80 PLUS Platinum ATX 3.0 PSU Review

Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

Today, we will look at Chieftec's second product they sent over, the Polaris Pro 1300w ATX 3.0 PSU. Chieftec boasts an 80 80-plus platinum efficiency rating with all Japanese capacitors using an LLC half-bridge converter with DC-to DC-technology. The Polaris Pro is also fully modular and has a 600w 12VHPWR cable for those thirsty GPUs. Pricing is scarce, with only eBay and a few other sites from which to purchase.

A quick look at the Chieftec Polaris Pro 1300w ATX 3.0 PSU

So, let's see what the Polaris Pro 1300w ATX 3.0 PSU has under the hood and if it performs within the 80 PLUS Platinum certification.

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Packaging

The packaging that the Polaris Pro came in is straight to the point, here is a PSU, what it looks like, and here are the certifications.

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The backside of the packaging shows all the cables with lengths and the PSU specifications.

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Opening up the packaging, we are greeted by a user manual and a black bag full of all the modular cables.

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A closer shot of the modular cable bag, which is nice to see companies doing.

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Moving to the Polaris Pro PSU itself, two pieces of black open-cell foam protect most PSUs from any impact damage. The Polaris Pro is also inside a clear plastic bag to ensure no other debris gets inside.

Outside the Polaris Pro 1300w ATX 3.0 PSU

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Opening up the black cable bag are all the flat ribbon-style cables that come with the Polaris Pro. Starting from left to right is an EU power cable, 20+4 Pin ATX cable, 16 Pin PCIe Gen5 12VHPWR cable rated for 600w, two 8 pin EPS cables, six 8 pin PCIe cables, 12 connections for SATA devices, a single cable with 4 MOLEX connections, and a floppy adapter (that's still a thing?), and lastly four hex/Phillips mounting screws.

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Removing the Polaris Pro from all its shipping packaging is the Polaris Pro PSU itself. Fitted in a black exterior frame is a compact yet powerful powerplant of a PSU. An old-school black and gold grille and a 135mm fluid dynamic bearing fan with zero fan mode protect the fan from overuse.

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Now, looking at the input section of the Polaris Pro, starting are five inputs for peripheral/SATA, two inputs for 18-pin and 12-pin motherboard inputs, two CPU/EPS inputs, three 8-pin PCIe inputs, and lastly, the 600w 12VHPWR input.

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And now we come to the nomenclature sticker, where we can see on the 12V rail the total max power is rated at 1300 watts at 108.3 amps.

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The rear of the Polaris Pro PSU is uneventful, with only the power plug input, a power rocker switch, and a switch for the Zero Fan mode.

Inside the Polaris Pro 1300w ATX 3.0 PSU

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Opening up, the Polaris Pro is a 135mm fluid dynamic bearing fan made by Globe Fan, model number RL4Z B1352512EH. This fan runs on 12V at .5a while running at an RPM range of 1700 rpm +- 10% unless the Zero Fan mode is enabled via the switch on the back.

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Now, moving inside the Polaris Pro with an overhead view, which looks messy by the power input section, with what it looks like about 1 in or 25mm worth of wasted space. The rest of the board layout seems reasonable.

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The fully Japanese capacitors, made by Rubycon, are each rated for 420v with 820?F, for a total of 1640?F worth of capacity, which in itself is quite a hefty amount of capacity.

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To the right of the Rubycon capacitors is the VRM section, which is pretty neatly laid out

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The main transformer, which seems unfinished, is located right behind the power input section.

Test System, Installation, and Finished Product

Final Thoughts

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Using the PSU test bench for this review, the CPU, which is the Ryzen 9 7950X, was set to auto vcore to allow the CPU to boost as high as it thermally can. The 16-core, 32-threaded CPU maintained a 5.2 GHz boost clock during most of the test period. The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X's wattage ran up to a max of 235 watts but averaged out to about 213 watts. The AM5 motherboard used here is a B650 AORUS Elite AX. The test RAM is a 32GB kit from Patriot, specifically the Viper Venom running at DDR5-5600.

To control the system wattage, the test GPU, NVIDIA RTX 3090 FE, was power limited at 97% via MSI Afterburner. On average, the NVIDIA RTX 3090 FE drew on about 279 watts, peaking as high as 293 watts. The power drawn from the wall was measured with a Killawatt P3 digital electrical usage monitor, reading the total system wattage, which read between 640 and 686 watts during the duration of the testing, with the average usage being 663 watts.

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This time, however, I am using the OBT/ElmorLabs BenchLab, which will be reviewed very soon, is a hardware power monitor interface that uses real-time system telemetry to monitor temperature, power usage, and voltage levels and manage ARGB and fan speeds. BenchLab also has its own standalone software, which can be imported straight into HWiNFO.

All testing was completed using Aida64 Engineer's System Stability Test version v7.35.7000 for over 8 hours; the ambient temperature was 23C. Other monitoring software used was HWiNFO64 v8.04-5470, TechPowerUp GPU-Z v2.60.0, and CPU-Z 2.12.0.x64.

Surprisingly, the Chieftec Polaris Pro 1300w ATX 3.0 PSU did quite well in the 50% load test in various categories and metrics. Managing to draw about 645 watts of the rated 1300 watts, the Polaris Pro attained the 80 PLUS Platinum rating and then some. While this method of testing is more accurate than spitballing the wattage usage that was previously done, it's still not approximate. Pricing for the Polaris Pro is also a mixed bag, with the only reputable online retailer being eBay, which is not very comforting when keeping the short 5-year warranty in mind.