Cybenetics SAFE is a safety and correct-operation certification for affordable AC-DC power supplies. It answers a single question: is this power supply safe to operate, and does it behave correctly under both normal and reasonably foreseeable fault conditions?
SAFE is an independent certification program. It is not part of ETA, and ETA does not cover it. ETA certifies energy efficiency and LAMBDA certifies acoustic noise, both under the Cybenetics Test Protocol; neither makes any judgement about safety or protection behaviour. A power supply can hold ETA, LAMBDA or both and have no SAFE certification, and it can hold SAFE without holding either of the others. The two are run against separate protocols and judged by separate criteria, and may be pursued together or separately.
Unlike our performance ratings, Cybenetics SAFE has no tiers, scores, or bonus points. A power supply is either Cybenetics SAFE Certified or a FAIL — it earns the certification only if it meets every mandatory requirement below in full. A single failure in any sub-item fails the whole unit. The Cybenetics SAFE mark is a supplementary verification displayed alongside, but never in place of, the mandatory regulatory safety certifications (UL, CE, CB, etc.) that a product must already hold.
All tests are performed at a standard ambient of 25–30 °C (fault-condition tests are repeated at an elevated ambient where required). A Cybenetics SAFE Certified result is valid for a specific period and includes a full component (part) analysis delivered alongside the pass/fail report.
What a PSU must pass
| Category | What is verified | Key pass requirement |
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| A — Electrical Safety Bench Tests | Hipot (dielectric strength), insulation resistance and ground continuity from evidence supplied with the sample, plus Cybenetics' own leakage (touch) current measurement. | Any one of five evidence tiers is accepted and the report records which was used: a 17025-accredited report; a CB Test Report or the report underlying a UL, cUL or TÜV certification; the safety certificate with the Declaration of Conformity; the manufacturer's end-of-line routine test record; or measurement by Cybenetics. It must show a PASS for the exact model across all isolation boundaries, and Cybenetics' measured touch current must remain within the limit for the unit's class and target market. If no tier can be met the category is recorded as not evidenced, which is never a pass. |
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| B — AC Input Protection & Tolerance | Line fuse, surge protection (MOV/TVS), inrush limiting (NTC), startup under load, and brownout / low-line survival. | Correctly rated fuse on the line conductor; MOV/TVS present (mandatory); inrush within the declared rating; the PSU starts and holds 50% load for 5 minutes at minimum rated input voltage; and it survives low input voltage without damage and recovers normally. |
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| C — PSU Protection Features | OCP, OPP, OVP, SCP and OTP. (No-load operation and fan-failure behaviour are tested and reported, but are optional, non-pass/fail items: a unit with deliberate no-load protection shuts down at no load by design, and that is not a failure.) | OCP trips at ≤130% for single +12V-rail designs (≤135% multi-rail) and never below 100%; OPP ≤130% of rated power; OVP engages before the ATX v3.1 limits (+12V 15.6 V, +5V 7.0 V, +3.3V 4.3 V); SCP shuts down safely on every rail; OTP engages before the hot-spot reaches 190 °C — all with safe shutdown and normal recovery. |
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| D — PWR_OK Signal Correctness & Timing | The PWR_OK (Power Good) signal's assertion and de-assertion behavior, timing, and its margin to the PSU's actual hold-up time. | PWR_OK must never stay asserted after any rail has left regulation, and must de-assert at least 1 ms before the PSU's real hold-up time is exhausted. A false “power good” signal is an automatic FAIL, regardless of the absolute hold-up time. |
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| E — Regulation, Ripple & Turn-On Overshoot | Load regulation, ripple & noise, and turn-on overshoot across the rated load range. | Every rail stays within the applicable ATX regulation tolerance from 40 W up to full load; ripple & noise stay within the latest published ATX limits (e.g., 120 mV on +12V, 50 mV on the minor rails); and turn-on overshoot stays within the ATX limit. |
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| F — Cabling & Connector Safety | Minimum wire gauge on every connector, a cable thermal check, and the dual-EPS restriction. (Applies identically to modular, semi-modular and non-modular designs.) | Every power conductor meets the SAFE minimum gauge (18 AWG for the 24-pin, EPS and PCIe 6+2; 16 AWG for the 12V-2x6/12VHPWR connector); cable-jacket temperature stays within the insulation's rating with a ≥15 °C margin at full load; and no single cable carries two EPS connectors on a PSU rated above 550 W. |
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| G — Agency Certification Marking Verification | The regulatory safety marks printed on the unit are genuine and internally consistent. | No mark is fabricated, expired, or issued for a different model. Where a public registry exists it is checked; where none exists or it cannot be reached, the mark is recorded as not verifiable, which is not by itself a failure. The evidence supplied for Category A is also checked for authenticity. A unit sold into a market requiring a mark it does not genuinely hold is an automatic FAIL. |
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Any single FAIL in any category or sub-item results in an overall FAIL for the unit; partial results are not published as a certification outcome, and a manufacturer may resubmit a corrected unit for retesting.
A Cybenetics SAFE certification covers the full test battery above and includes a detailed part analysis (PCB revision, primary/secondary capacitor brands and ratings, PWM/PFC and protection ICs, transformer, bridge rectifier, and the specific MOV/TVS and NTC parts used). The PSU's hold-up time is measured and reported for information, but is not itself scored — only the PWR_OK-to-hold-up margin in Category D is pass/fail. Manufacturers are encouraged to enroll SAFE-certified models in the CybenPass multi-sample program for ongoing verification of retail samples.
