SMPS or PSU 80 Plus Certification Explained in Detail

I have written many useful articles regarding SMPS or PSU in this blog, which includes; how you should choose a good power supply, best SMPS or PSU brands, importance of 12V rail in a SMPS, difference between single and multiple 12V Rail power supplies and so on. But here in this post I will explain you about the various types of 80 plus certification that you must have seen or heard of in good power supplies.

What does 80 Plus Certification means?

80 Plus Certification in a PSU signifies the efficiency of a power supply. Higher is the certification level, the more efficient your PSU will be. Technically Efficiency is measured by the formula given below:-

Efficiency = Output Power (W) / Input Power (W)

Here W stands for Watt, Output power is the power delivered by the SMPS or PSU to your Computer and Input power is the amount of power consumed by the PSU. For example if you have a power supply of 400W and its efficiency is 70% then your PSU is consuming about 571 Watt (approx) of power, and the remaining 171 Watt of power is lost or converted into heat. It means that your electricity bill is going to be high if your PSU has lower efficiency. Also your Power Supply will run a lot cooler if the efficiency of your PSU is higher.

The efficiency of a PSU / SMPS is inversely proportional to the power consumption at a given load. So if the efficiency of PSU is higher, then the electricity consumption by the PSU / SMPS will be lower and you can save decent amount of money on your electricity bills.

Different Types of 80 Plus Certifications for Power Supply

Here are the different types of 80 Plus Certification levels that are granted to Power Supplies based on their efficiencies. Below certifications are arranged in the decreasing order of their efficiencies i.e. from highest to the lowest.

80 Plus Titanium

80 Plus Platinum

80 Plus Gold

80 Plus Silver

80 Plus Bronze

80 Plus

Here 80 Plus Titanium is the highest level of certification for a Power Supply and 80 Plus or 80 Plus White is the lowest certification.

Efficiency Table for Different Certifications at different loads

It must be noted that efficiency of a power supply does not remain constant and varies or changes according to the load. Here below is the table for efficiency of different certifications at different loads for two different input voltages i.e. 115V and 230V. For example in USA the supplied input voltage for home is 115V and for India it is 230V, where V stands for Volt.

Here in the above chart and graph you can see that the efficiency of a PSU varies according to different levels of system load. It must be carefully noted that the efficiency of a power supply is significantly greater if the input voltage applied is 230V as compared to the 115V.