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Apr 21, 2023

FSP's 10

FSP must be highly confident in its new PTM line, because it's offering them

FSP must be highly confident in its new PTM line, because it's offering them with a ten-year warranty. So far, only EVGA and Corsair have dared to offer the same in this category. Only Seasonic offers a longer period (12 years) on its Prime units. That's all well and good, but such long warranty periods might backfire if the PSUs are used under extremely tough conditions (eg, for mining purposes).

This new PSU line is called Hydro PTM, which is a rather odd name given that those PSUs are air cooled and not water cooled like the Hydro PTM+ that we saw during Computex 2017. Of course, FSP has used the "Hydro" name in the past for other lines as well, such as the Hydro G).

In any case, the Hydro PTM units come in three capacities: 550W, 650W, and 750W. All use a fully modular cable design, are 80 PLUS Platinum certified, and the strongest model is equipped with a couple of EPS connectors in order to be compatible with high-end mainboards that need more juice in the CPU area. The cooling duties are handled by a 135mm FDB.

In addition, all necessary protection features are present, including OTP (Over Temperature Protection). FSP didn't equip those units with a semi-passive fan mode, something that won't be a problem from the moment the fan spins at low speeds under light loads and normal ambient temperatures. Finally, FSP chose high-quality Japanese filtering capacitors, which will improve the reliability of these PSUs. There are lower-quality Japanese caps, and to be clear, FSP opted for the better ones.

We had to search the product's manual to find the temperature rating of this PSU, which is lower by 10°C than the threshold that the ATX spec recommends. This is not such a great spec, so it's perhaps unsurprising that FSP buried it in the product manual and didn't even mention is on the online product page.

All PTM units utilize a modern platform featuring a half-bridge design along with an LLC resonant converter and DC-DC converters on the secondary side.

On Amazon, the HPT550M is listed for $105, the HPT650M is $115, and the HPT750M is $125. Those prices are quite high and put the new FSP units in direct comparison with models like the Corsair HX, so they'll need to offer particularly strong performance to entice buyers.

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Aris Mpitziopoulos is a Contributing Editor at Tom's Hardware US, covering PSUs.

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