 Rock solid, quiet, and green |
| Review Date: August 31, 2008 |
| Reviewer: buddha-dog, Menlo Park, CA USA |
This is a top quality power supply from a well-respected brand.
The key distinguishing feature for this Power Supply Unit (PSU) is it's "single-rail" design. This means that all the power of the unit is available to all the plugs. This is in contrast to multi-rail models by other manufacturers that split the power capacity between sets of plugs, causing you to have to balance each rail so it has enough load to have reliable voltage output, but not more than that rail can deliver. Doing that is a real pain and fraught with hard to predict troubles, such as too much surge draw on startup and so on. Multi-rail PSUs were introduced with the claim that they made the voltages more stable, but the voltages on this PSU are rock-steady at any draw I have been able to put to it. Others I've spoken to have said the same.
Having a single rail allows you to use a smaller PSU which reduces the amount of waste power by operating in the high-efficiency band of the PSU. This PSU has an efficiency of 82% over it's mid band, but any power supply will be less efficient when run at lower than about 20% of it's capacity or over maybe 85-90% capacity. So matching the PSU to the true load is important for minimal power use.
The case size of this unit will fit into any micro-ATX case I've come across that doesn't take a custom PSU. Many of the higher wattage PSUs will not fit into a case like the Antec Mini P180 I used with this PSU.
I find this unit to be extremely quiet and I have very high standards for quietness in my boxes. There are PSUs that are technically quieter than this one, but I can't distinguish them in use unless I crawl under the desk and crane my neck around the back to put my ear right next to the air outlet. Usually there is some other component (like the hard drive) that gets my attention first if I get that close to it. Otherwise I never notice the sound at all.
This is my first choice for mainstream PCs. If you are running 7 hard drives or multiple power-hungry high-performance gaming video cards, you might need to look for a higher wattage unit. For my high-end business PCs running a quad processor, 4GB memory, two hard drives and dual network cards, I can barely draw 125W of power when I run the Burn-in software with everything going to the max. At idle my machines run about 80W, so this PSU has plenty of headroom for them and any more would be waste. |
Excellent PSU
|
| Review Date: September 2, 2009 |
| Reviewer: C. Brauer, Lakewood, CO |
This power supply is likely the only one you will every need! PC Power and Cooling is the best, period. They have earned their reputation for a reason.
If you are using a crossfire or SLI application, it will not be enough, but for single GPU solutions, it is the ONLY PSU i will use (non 1366 builds, as this wont have quite enough headroom for 125w+ processors). It is extremely silent, and despite what many will tell you, it has plenty of power. My system:
Antec 300 case
Prescott Pentium 4 @ 4.12Ghz (179x23)
Cooler Master Hyper N520 HSF w/ OCZ freeze TIM (keeps P4 @ 33c after 36hrs Prime 95)
Gigabyte ep45-ud3p motherboard
HIS Radeon IceQ4 HD4850 OCd to 750/1000
Mushkin XP 2x2gb DDR2-800 OCd to 1066
Lightscribe DVD R/W
PC Power and Cooling PSU (This power supply)
5 fans on a sunbeam rhoebus fan controller
1x160gb Seagate Barracuda HDD, 1x640gb WD Caviar Black HDD
Update:
Replaced P4 with Q9550 @ 4050mhz @ 1.2vcore
Also now have Prolimatech Megahalem with a Cooler Master R4 fan
PSU still works absolutely flawlessly
This system draws 250w peak, according to a Kill-A-Watt meter. This PSU is more than enough to run this system! Remember though, not all power supplies are created equal. DO NOT SKIMP ON YOUR PSU, it is a critical part of any setup. if a poor quality unit is used, you might destroy internal components, so keep that in mind.
While this is a fantastic power supply, it is not 100% perfect. The 4-pin atx connector (for the cpu) is extremely short. even in my (relatively) small antec 300 case, i needed to buy an extension to be able to run it behind the motherboard. not a big deal, but in a larger case, there may be issues without an extension. The main ATX power connector might also be a bit short in a full tower. It also only has one PCIe 6 pin connector, so for those cards (such as the hd 4870), you will need to use the included molex -> 6 pin adapter. This is only a concern if you will be using many hardrives, or other molex powered components.
If you are going to be using a s1366 (i7) or going to use dual gpu's, i would suggest going with PC Power and Coolings 610w model, which will be more than enough!
If you do not find this review helpful, please let me know what i could do better in the comments!
|
Nice PSU
|
| Review Date: October 2, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Jon A., Santo Domingo, DR |
Very good power supply. excellent efficiency and price.
I bought this to power a INTEL BOXD945GCLF2, 750GB HD and 2GB of ram. Everything in a MicroATX case everything runs perfect and a lot of power to spare |
Nice quiet PSU
|
| Review Date: October 3, 2009 |
| Reviewer: pakesack, seattle, wa |
| I bought this PSU for a new build, and I am pleasantly surprised by how quiet the fan is. The PSU is heavy (a good thing) an looks like it was built with quality. One of the deciding factors on making this purchase was the long 5 year warranty. This PSU was put into a minitower case, so all leads were long enough. The number of plugs were also more than adequate for a basic micro atx build (2 dvd drives and 1 sata hard drive). I will probably buy this again for my next htpc build. |
|
No video reviews found for this product.
No customer reviews were found for this product.
