Date: May 6th, 2008
Article by: Jackie Mueller (Hardware Reviewer)
Edited by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner / Head Editor)
Product was submitted by: Cooler Master
<--SHOP FOR A POWER SUPPLY HERE
PRODUCT INSTALLATION AND TESTING
The hardware I'll be using with the Real Power Pro consists of:
- Biostar TForce 550 SE Motherboard
- AMD X2 3600+ Brisbane CPU overclocked to 2.8 GHz
- Thermaltake Bigwater 760i LCS
- 2 x 1GB GSkill PC2-6400 RAM
- XFX Geforce 8600GT Video card
- 2 x 80GB WD800JD SATA hard drives
- NEC DVD-RW
- Thermaltake SwordM case
This PSU is a couple inches longer than most others I've worked with, so there could be space issues in smaller mid-tower cases. In a server case such as the one I installed it in, it fit perfectly. There will most likely be a lot of extra cables to tuck away and hide, though.
While I don't have a system that will necessarily push this PSU to its limits, for testing I will stress the hardware as much as possible and record the load and idle voltages with Speedfan software.
I first recorded voltages while the system had been sitting idle at the Windows desktop for one hour, then ran continuous stress testing on the system for two hours and recorded voltages again. Here are the results:
|
+3.3V |
+5V |
+12V |
Idle |
3.30 |
4.95 |
12.03 |
Load |
3.28 |
4.92 |
12.03 |
After multiple times stressing the CPU, memory, GPU, and both hard drives simultaneously, there was little fluctuation in the +3.3V and +5V rails, and the +12V rail didn't budge at all. It appears as though my system, even with an overclocked CPU and water cooling system installed, was no match for this power supply. It didn't even break a sweat! The fan was very quiet too, almost inaudible actually.
I did notice a buzzing sound coming from the PSU while the system was on. The noise would get slightly louder every time I moved the mouse which was odd. Thinking it had to be interference of some sort, I noticed the power cord that came with the PSU was a thicker gauge (14 AWG) than the one from my old PSU which I was still using. When I used the thicker cord from Coolermaster, the noise went away. It's easy to overlook things such as a power cord thinking they are all the same, but in this case they are not.
