Kolink Continuum KL-C1500PL PSU review – one for miners!

1. Introduction2. Bundle & Cabling3. External4. Internal5. Testing Methodology and Results6. Closing Thoughts7. View All Pages

Miners may be the bane of the gaming community but it goes without saying that companies are finding this market very lucrative. Our readers constantly complain about the lack of availability of AMD Vega graphics cards for instance – and when they become available they are often selling for up to £900! With miners specifically in mind, Kolink have launched a monstrous Platinum rated 1500w power supply with several key options to cater specifically to the miners out there.

This focus means that Kolink have opted to incorporate a fan featuring a Double Ball Bearing fan (2BB) bearing. They considered FDB, HDB and rifle bearing fans but when it comes to longevity there is no denying that 2BB fan bearings are rated highest. Noise levels are likely going to be higher, however Kolink incorporated a semi fanless mode to keep the PC noise down at idle and lower load demands.

To ensure maximum stability over many years, Kolink told us they opted for 100% Japanese electrolytics with some solid state and ceramic capacitors. This should help improve heavy load stability and long term reliability.

To fully support the mining community, Kolink have opted for a design with support for 12 PCIe connectors. In practice this means you can use six AMD 580 / 1080 graphics cards without the need for adapters. They have also included single PCI connector based cables to cater for heavily overclocked systems.

The designers decided to get rid of the mechanical power switch. This helps improve airflow and also reduces RMA issues. I was told by a Kolink representative that switches can be an RMA concern and miners don't like those switches as they like to remote control their rigs anyway.

To be fair this power supply could be easily used for a myriad of tasks – for graphics based workstations, Render systems and scientific rigs. Yes, it will power your gaming system as well, but it seems somewhat overkill – even for a rig with two GTX 1080 ti's.

Interesting to see only a 5 year warranty with this unit, Seasonic are leading the way right now with 12 years warranty. Other companies such as Cooler Master, eVGA and Corsair are offering warranty terms between 7 and 10 years. Playing Devils Advocate – this is one of the cheapest 1500W Platinum power supplies you can currently buy so its likely part of the tradeoff.

Technical Details:

• Dimensions: 150 x 86 x 180 mm (W x H x D)
• Fans: 135 mm (automatic control, semi-passive)
• Colour: Black (PSU, fan)
• Efficiency: At least 92/90/89 percent at 50/20/100 percent utilisation. Meets the requirements of 80 Plus Platinum. Efficiency in the European 230V network is up to two percentage points higher
• Active PFC
• Form Factor: ATX12V 2.4/EPS12V 2.92
• Power: 1,500 W (continuous power)
  . 3.3V: 25 A
  5V: 22 A
  3,3V & +5V combined: 120 W
  12V: 1,500 W / 125 A
  12V: 3,6 W / 0,3 A
  5Vsb: 15 W / 3 A
• Manufacturer's Warranty: 5 years

Review photography handled in house at KitGuru with a Leica S series medium format camera and S series prime lens. Please do not use any of the images within this review without express permission.

The Kolink Continuum 1500W power supply arrives in a rather bland looking box with some images of the unit on the front. No mention of the high efficiency either which seems somewhat of an oversight.

The rear of the box features some information in multi languages.

There are plenty of cables included in the box including a total of 12 PCIe power connectors. Four of the connectors are available on single cables with the other eight available across four cables in dual configurations. The cables with the blue connectors are in fact the PCIe cables.

I liked the fact that the EPS cable is 70 cm long – it will work well inside larger chassis.

The cables are all flat ribbon style for ease of routing during the build phase. We didn't get a C19 power cable with this supply, which seems unusual. I asked Kolink about this omission and they said miners specifically asked them not to ship them as they use their own cables. I told Kolink that regardless, it seems a wise move to include a C19 cable and they may be offering bundle options via CaseKing (and subsequently Overclockers UK).

Motherboard: 1x 20+4-pin ATX12V/EPS12V (approx. 640 mm)
. CPU: 2x 4+4-pin ATX12V/EPS12V (approx. 740 mm)
4×2 6+2 pin PCIe (approx. 630 / 700 mm), 4x 6+2 pin PCIe (approx. 650 mm); 0 in total 12x 6+2 pin PCIe
. 8x SATA (up to approx. 1080 mm)
8x 4-pin Molex (approx. 630 to 1080 mm)

A big sticker with green trimming takes up one side of the unit. Its quite ugly to my eyes, although they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some people for instance find Lady GaGa quite beautiful. The dimensions are: 150 x 86 x 180 mm (W x H x D).

The other side of the unit has a big sticker on it as well with the company name, product name, and ‘fully modular/high performance PSU' written underneath. It wasn't stuck on perfectly straight either. Very unattractive to my eyes but I guess you could remove them with a bit of patience and effort.

The paint work on the power supply is alright, it will scratch fairly easily, which is perhaps why there are stickers all over it. I would expect a little more from a power supply costing almost £300.

The large fan can be seen behind the black grill with the company sticker in the middle.

As we mentioned earlier in the review, The designers decided to get rid of the mechanical power switch. This helps improve airflow and also reduces RMA issues. I was told by a Kolink representative that switches can be an RMA concern and miners don't like those switches as they like to remote control their rigs anyway. Some honeycomb vents are beside the connector.

The modular panel is colour coded, but not labelled. If you were paying attention on the last page you would have noticed that some of the cables have blue connectors. These PCIe cables match the power supply – making the install phase very straightforward indeed.

The sticker on this side actually started to peel away in the top corner later in the review. We also noticed an error on the technical sticker – instead of 125A it said 125W. We mentioned this to the company and they said it was going to be fixed on the next batch being made, so all good there.

Kolink Continuum KL-C1500PL PSU
DC Output	+3.3V	+5V	+12V	-12V	+5Vsb
Max Output	25A	22A	125A	0.3A	3A
Total Power	120W		1500W	3.6W	15W
	1500W Continuous Power

The single +12V rail is able to deliver 125 amps which is monstrous.

Kolink are using a 135mm Yate Loon double ball bearing fan inside (Model: D14BH-12). It is rated 1V 0.70A. We have seen this fan in some other power supplies in recent years, including the Corsair AX1200. It can get quite loud under load but has been chosen for long life characteristics due to the target demographic (predominately miners).

The Fan is controlled by a digital circuit (MCU) due to the fact that analog fan control has proved to be a problem for some designs. MCU also allows for better Hysteresis and refined precision. These are inherently louder fans so they clearly don't want to exacerbate the issue further with sloppy fan curves.

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We can see from the images above that the OEM partner is Enhance. An OEM I rate quite highly when they decide to make a higher end unit. They are also known to be quite cost effective and this Kolink KL-C1500PL supply is one of the cheaper 1500watt Platinum units on the market.

Soldering quality on the main PCB and daughtercard is overall very good. There are a couple of large overhead style heatsinks to ensure there is plenty of cooling capability inside the unit. The cooling fan situated directly above should ensure they run cool.

This particular unit looks quite familiar to the other 1500W Enhance units I have seen based on the newer LLC Primary and DC-DC secondary implementation. When I spoke with Kolink about the design they said they made 50 changes to the regular Enhance models to improve performance and fix minor concerns. This is a design unique to Kolink right now.

The primary stage features three high grade 105c Japanese Nichicon capacitors rated 450v at 560uF per capacitor. This gives a total output of 1680uF. This really is immense!

Protective Circuits:

• OVP/UVP (over- and undervoltage protection).
• SCP (short-circuit).
• OPP (overload).
• OCP (overcurrent on the rails +12, +3,3 and +5 Volt).
• OTP (overheating protection.

Correctly testing power supplies is a complex procedure and KitGuru have configured a test bench which can deliver up to a 2,000 watt DC load. Due to public requests we have changed our temperature settings recently – previously we rated with ambient temperatures at 25C, we have increased ambient temperatures by 10c (to 35c) in our environment to greater reflect warmer internal chassis conditions.

We use combinations of the following hardware:
• SunMoon SM-268
• CSI3710A Programmable DC load (+3.3V and +5V outputs)
• CSI3711A Programmable DC load (+12V1, +12V2, +12V3, and +12V4)
• Extech Power Analyzer
• Extech MultiMaster MM570 digital multimeter
• Extech digital sound level meter
• Digital oscilloscope (20M S/s with 12 Bit ADC)
• Variable Autotransformer, 1.4 KVA

12V output is combined for our testing.

DC Output Load Regulation
Combined DC Load	+3.3V		+5V		+12V		+5VSB		-12V
	A	V	A	V	A	V	A	V	A	V
150W	0.90	3.33	0.84	5.05	11.65	12.27	0.5	5.01	0.20	-12.07
300W	1.63	3.32	1.65	5.03	23.75	12.23	1.0	4.98	0.20	-12.06
750W	3.01	3.27	3.02	4.99	59.66	12.18	1.5	4.97	0.30	-12.06
1125W	4.05	3.24	4.05	4.96	90.00	12.12	2.0	4.94	0.30	-12.09
1500W	15.56	3.22	15.55	4.95	113.30	12.04	2.5	4.92	0.50	-12.08

Load regulation is not too bad. All lines show some fluctuation but it falls well within what we would deem to be acceptable (5%).

Kolink Continuum KL-C1500PL PSU	Maximum Load
	1634W

We managed to get the PSU to achieve 1634W before it would shut down, delivering around 134W more than the rated specifications.

Next we want to try Cross Loading. This basically means loads which are not balanced. If a PC for instance needs 500W on the +12V outputs but something like 30W via the combined 3.3V and +5V outputs then the voltage regulation can fluctuate badly.

Cross Load Testing	+3.3V		+5V		+12V		-12V		+5VSB
	A	V	A	V	A	V	A	V	A	V
1150W	3.0	3.33	2.0	5.05	92.0	12.06	0.2	-12.06	0.50	5.03
250W	20.0	3.23	24.0	4.96	5.0	12.26	0.2	-12.07	0.50	5.04

The power supply did very well in our Cross Load tests – far from class leading, but decent enough.

We then used an oscilloscope to measure AC ripple and noise present on the DC outputs. We set the oscilloscope time base to check for AC ripple at both high and low ends of the spectrum.

ATX12V V2.2 specification for DC output ripple and noise is defined in the ATX 12V power supply design guide.

ATX12V Ver 2.2 Noise/Ripple Tolerance
Output	Ripple (mV p-p)
+3.3V	50
+5V	50
+12V1	120
+12V2	120
-12V	120
+5VSB	50

Obviously when measuring AC noise and ripple on the DC outputs the cleaner (less recorded) means we have a better end result. We measured this AC signal amplitude to see how closely the unit complied with the ATX standard.

AC Ripple (mV p-p)
DC Load	+3.3V	+5V	+12V	5VSB
500W	15	10	10	10
750W	20	15	15	10
1000W	20	15	25	15
1250W	20	15	30	20
1500W	25	20	40	25

These ripple results are not the greatest we have seen in recent months, but to be fair they are all falling well within industry rated tolerance levels. No concerns here.

Efficiency (%)
500W	93.57
750W	94.25
1000W	93.57
1250W	92.72
1500W	91.89

The efficiency ratings are superb, peaking at just over 94% between 50% and 60% load.

We take the issue of noise very seriously at KitGuru and this is why we have built a special home brew system as a reference point when we test noise levels of various components. Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on components we are testing. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

Today to test the power supply we have taken it into our acoustics room environment and have set our Digital Sound Level Noise Decibel Meter Style 2 one meter away from the unit. We have no other fans running so we can effectively measure just the noise from the unit itself.

As this can be a little confusing for people, here are various dBa ratings in with real world situations to help describe the various levels.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 Player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

Noise (dBA)
500W	<28.0
750W	31.4
1000W	34.8
1250W	38.3
1500W	39.7

At lower loads the power supply is pretty quiet, but as demand rises, the fan starts spinning faster. At around 1000 watts, the fan is clearly heard, although not too intrusive. At over 1200 watts, the fan is running around the 1800 rpm mark and is clearly heard. As we detailed earlier in the review, Kolink have specifically went for a Double Ball Bearing fan to ensure the best cooling performance and long term reliability – at the expense of noise. This is catering specifically to the miners out there.

At full load, the fan is running around 2,000-2,100 rpm and we get close to 40dBa output.

Temperature (c)
	Intake	Exhaust
500W	36	39
750W	38	41
1000W	41	49
1250W	45	52
1500W	48	53

The large fan spins fast when the load rises but its working so hard that the exhaust temperature at full load is very impressive. There is a trade off in regards to noise – as detailed on this page.

Maximum load	Efficiency
1634W	91.54

At 1634W, the efficiency level is still good, measuring 91.54%. Not a practical situation to be running 24/7, but worth noting.

The Kolink Continuum KL-C1500PL is a rather unusual power supply because its been specifically designed to target the enthusiast base who mine with multiple graphics cards.

First impressions weren't that positive for me. The stickers look ugly, and the lack of C19 cable surprised me, along with an error on the specifications sticker (watts instead of amps). As I explained earlier in the review, I raised these points with Kolink and they told me that miners use their own power cable and that the typo has already been fixed on the next batch of retail supplies.

Kolink have surprised me, and in a positive way. When I was feeding back my thoughts they wanted to detail the reasons behind their decisions, and they haven't been slow in supplying information either – which is good.

Based on the C19 cable feedback they did say they will try and set a bundle up with a C19 power cable included. I think that is a good move as not everyone will already have a C19 cable at hand.

It would be fair to say that the finishing of the power supply could be better. It is budget looking and when compared to high end market leaders such as Seasonic, the overall appearance is disappointing. Its not pleasant having huge stickers on the sides, but when they aren't stuck on perfectly straight it just exacerbates the overall feeling of a lack of attention to detail.

Technically, I was pleased to note that things started looking better. The Enhance design is very good and the power supply delivered in excess of 1600 watts before shutting down, and a constant 1,600 watts would be possible, although I doubt Kolink would recommend it. They have not cut corners by using cheaper Chinese capacitors, instead opting for high quality Nichicon capacitors rated 450v at 560uF per capacitor. There are three in this 1500W unit, totalling 1680uF – which really is impressive.

The use of a Double Ball Bearing fan means that this unit does operate a little louder than many high end units available today, but the fan selection is based on the fact that miners will want the most reliable long term solution under heavy load. A 2BB fan offers that over a FDB/HDB/Rifle fan.

As I noted earlier in the review, this Enhance design looks similar to other Enhance 1500W units on the market today, but it appears to be a custom mixture of the new Platinum and Titanium Enhance models with LLC primary and DC-DC secondary. Kolink said they worked with Enhance to make around 50 changes to this particular unit to enhance the overall performance.

Another design decision catering to the mining market is the removal of the mechanical power switch. This removes another possible issue and as miners often remote control their rigs it makes sense to take another possible long term issue out of the way.

The pricing on the Kolink Continuum KL-C1500PL is competitive. Right now you can buy it from Overclockers UK for £289.99 inc vat HERE. Silverstone for instance offer their Strider SST-ST1500 unit for £309.95 inc vat – but its only 80 Plus Gold certified (HERE). If you are building a new system for mining and are using multiple graphics cards and need a lot of power then the Kolink Continuum KL-C1500PL is a sound purchase.

Pros:

• good ripple suppression.
• modified Enhance design is well made.
• strong load regulation.
• quality cables.
• 12 PCIe connectors.
• 105c Japanese capacitors throughout
• fan selection aids long life.
• competitively priced.

Cons:

• only a 5 year warranty.
• can get loud under load.
• no C19 cable bundled.
• ‘stickered' exterior is ugly.

Kitguru Says: The Kolink Continuum KL-C1500PL is specifically designed for the mining audience, and its technically a very solid customised Enhance design with a focus on high load long term reliability.

 

 

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