Gigabyte's Odin GT 800W
A power supply with software

Gigabyte makes a little bit of everything. We're all familiar with the firm's motherboards and graphics cards, but it recently dipped its toe into the power supply market with the Odin GT. And this isn't just a me-too product; the Odin is packed with unique features and even accompanying software. The extra goodies don't come cheap, though. With a $200 street price, the GT is one of the most expensive PSUs in this round-up despite the fact that it's only rated for 800W of output power and has just three years of warranty coverage.

So where does all the money go? Certainly not into visual flair. The Odin looks decidedly plain, which is fine but certainly a departure from the garish color schemes that permeate Gigabyte's motherboard and graphics card lineups.

Like several other models in this round-up, the Odin is cooled by a 140mm fan mounted at the bottom of the unit. As one might expect, there's ample exhaust venting at the rear. That venting actually stretches across one of the PSU's "inner" walls, as well.

Spinning the Odin reveals a modular cabling system and neatly sheathed cables. Here we get our first cues that the Odin has a few tricks up its sleeve. Notice that among the large six-pin plugs for modular cables there is also a collection of five smaller outlets. And then, in the bundle of cables attached to the PSU, we find what looks curiously like a five-pin USB connector. Whatever could those be for?

To find out, we need to dig out some of the other goodies that come bundled with the Odin. First among them is a handy carrying case for modular cables that contains a few extras we haven't seen before: four temperature probes and a three-pin fan connector that all plug directly into the PSU. Scrounging around in the Odin's box also reveals an application CD that contains a copy of Gigabyte's Power Tuner software.

Power Tuner is what it sounds like: tweaking software for the power supply. Communication is handled over a five-pin USB connector that plugs into your motherboard, just like Nvidia's Enthusiast System Architecture. This isn't actually an ESA power supply, though; Power Tuner is entirely Gigabyte's creation, and for a first effort, it's very slick.

From the monitoring interface pictured above, we can keep tabs on the PSU's current and peak wattage load. Individual voltage lines can also be monitored alongside the current on the major voltage rails. Fan speed and temperature monitoring is supported, as well. This is where those four temperature probes come into play.

Power Tuner is more than just a monitoring app. One can modify the PSU's fan speed profile to set initial fan voltages and the temperature at which fan speeds begin to ramp up.

If you really want to get your hands dirty, Power Tuner can also be used to tweak individual voltage rails. Ranges vary from rail to rail, but there's enough on each for a little fine tuning. You might want to have a multimeter handy, though; Power Tuner's reported voltages for each rail were a little off those that we measured with our digital oscilloscope.

As if Power Tuner weren't stacked enough already, users can also set alarms tied to wattages, voltages, current, fan speeds, and even temperatures. Voltage and fan speed settings are also saved to the PSU, so there's no need to have the Power Tuner app running all the time. It only takes a couple of megabytes of memory, though, and registered just 1-2% CPU utilization with our test system's Athlon X2 5000+ processor.

Before discussing this first wave of Odin test results I should note that this PSU didn't entirely get along with The Beast. Everything was fine with 25, 50, and 75% loads, but things started flaking out with our 100% load, which called for 52A on the 12V rail. With the 3.3 and 5V lines fully loaded, we were only able to push the 12V line to 46A before the PSU would shut down. Dropping 3.3 and 5V loads to 2A each allowed us to get the 12V line up to 48A, but no further. The 12V line is rated for 62A on its own.

We emailed Gigabyte about the issue, and they were unable to replicate it in their labs with some very fancy test equipment. In fact, they said they were able to push an Odin's 12V line up to 67A—5A beyond its maximum spec.

The Beast, however, could only coax 46A from this Odin's 12V line with the 3.3 and 5V lines at a weighted 100% load, so that's how we tested it.

DC voltages are a little low on each rail, but they're well within tolerances and never short by more than a tenth of a volt.

Ripple results look pretty good, as well. There are a few deviations here and there, but AC content averages out to less than 20 millivolts per rail across each load level.

The Odin GT is the first PSU in this round-up to eclipse 80% efficiency across the board. It's nice to see a PSU live up to its 80 Plus badge, even if we had to back off on the 12V rail for our 100% load.