To test this power supply I used Motherboard Monitor 5.2 to check the 5v and 12v rails to see if they dropped to any unacceptable voltages. Here is the test rig that I used for this review:
- AMD Athlon XP 1600+
- EPoX 8KHA+ motherboard
- 256MBytes PC2100 DDR SDRAM
- Radeon 8500 Retail Video Card
- 1x 80GByte Western Digital HDD ATA100 @ 7200 RPM
- 1x 15GByte Western Digital HDD ATA66 @ 7200 RPM
- Lite-On 16x10x40 CDRW
- Red 12v Cold Cathode Fluorescent light
- 1x 12v 120mm Sunon Fan
- 1x 12v 92mm Panaflo H1A Fan
- Thermalright AX-7 Heatsink with 80mm Low output fan
- Linksys 10/100 Ethernet Card
- Sound Blaster Live! Digital
That’s quite a bit of equipment to power, but I really wanted to stress this PSU to the limits, since enthusiasts will undoubtedly do the same. To kick it up a bit I overvolted the CPU to 1.85v (the max that the motherboard would allow) and I upped the RAM voltage up from 2.5 to 2.9 volts. I also ran the computer with the CPU overclocked to 1.54 GHz (up from 1.4). I would have liked to overclock the CPU more, but since my CPU is not multiplier unlocked this is as high as it would allow me to go. As a side note, this power supply unit allowed me to overclock the CPU 10 MHz more than my Antec 300w PSU would allow, which is a plus.
Here you can see my WCPUID screen:
To round out the stress testing, I ran Prime95 Torture test to push the CPU, along with loops of 3DMark2001SE to stress the video card to its limit, and I also burned a CD, just for good measure. I then used MBM5.2 to get the scores. On the left are the scores for the system at default speeds and voltages, and on the right are the scores for the system being stressed to the max:
As you can see, the only thing that drops is the 5 volt rail, but even then it doesn’t drop below 5 volts so there’s no problem there whatsoever. It seems that this PSU will handle anything you can throw at it. Another plus to this unit is that it is SO quiet. It honestly makes no distinguishable noise whatsoever. The only gripe I have with the unit is that, unlike some of the other high performance PSUs, it doesn’t have any type of mesh or split loom over the cables to keep them tidy, as you can see in this picture:
Also, the cords were a little long for my case, but if you have a decent sized mid to full tower case then this shouldn’t be a problem at all for you. Also, the only one I could find online was the dual fan model, which goes for $52 at newegg.com. This is a pretty nice price for a sweet power supply. Overall I believe that this is a solid product that I would recommend to anyone in the market for a good power supply. I give this product a 9.5 and award it the OCmodshop Seal of Approval.
Pros
- Quiet
- 360 Watts of power
- Voltage rails don’t dip
- Pentium 4 Compliant
- Decent Price
Cons
- No wire tidying mesh
