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Date: November 23rd, 2006
Article by: Joe Anderson (Hardware Reviewer)
Edited by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner / Head Editor)
Product was submitted by: Zalman USA
<--SHOP FOR A ZALMAN ZM600-HP 600 WATT POWER SUPPLY HERE

 

PRODUCT INSTALLATION AND TESTING

Let me preface this section by saying that I don't have the kind of sophisticated (and expensive) electronic test equipment needed to fully and selectively load a power supply. For this review, I've chosen a DFI LanParty SLI-DR motherboard because it's notoriously finicky about the power fed to it.

I tested the ZM600-HP in my bare frame to minimize any effect that a case might have on cooling or performance. The following components were used during testing.

AMD Opteron 165 processor @ 2.8 GHz
DFI Lanparty UT nF4 SLI-DR motherboard
eVGA 7800GT
OCZ 5002048ELGE-K (1024mb X 2) memory
Zalman ZM600-HP PSU
Western Digital WD800 SATA hard drive
LG CDRW/DVD Combo drive

Testing consisted of monitoring voltages from the +3.3V, +5V, and +12V rails while running multiple passes of Prime95 on both cores and while running loops of 3Dmark05. Voltages were monitored with a digital multimeter. I was very impressed with the results, in light of the relatively high demand of the components and the power-sensitive motherboard. Over several days of testing, including overclocks exceeding 50%, rails were rock stable and not one power issue reared its ugly head.

Random checks with the multimeter throughout several days of testing yielded the following results:

Very impressive indeed! I tested the Zalman ZM600-HP every way I could think of and I couldn't get it to budge off of these numbers. While the +12V rails ran a bit high, they were within the ATX spec and rock stable. I wasn't able to hear the PSU over the CPU and chipset fans at any time during testing. It's not silent, but it's very, very quiet.