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- Date:
- Wednesday, May 23, 2007
- Author:
- Paul Johnson
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
450w-500w PSU Battle Royal
You guys asked, "What about regular mid-range PSUs?" So we bought five power supplies and then tested them to see if they would do what they were advertised to do. A melting fiery mess proves you get what you pay for. 5 PSU enter, 1 PSU leave.
Apevia ATX-AS500W-BL
The first thing we are going to look briefly at with the Apevia ATX-AS500W-BL is its packaging, accessories, and documentation.
Except for the dimensions of the unit the Apevia box is devoid of useful information as it only contains some marketing speak. The user manual and the Apevia website fill out some information including what Apevia thinks of this unit and its placement among other power supplies on the market:
This gorgeous Apevia aluminum 500w see-through power supply is the most spectacular power supply you can ever find in the market. Masterfully designed and expertly engineered, this power supply features 500W of power housed in lightweight aluminum chassis combining sufficient cooling, quiet and extraordinary performance in a stunning stylish design. Supports Pentium 4 and AMD CPUs. The power supply has two built-in 80mm blue UV reactive LED fans for best cooling and a fan speed adjustor to control the fan speed and reduce the noise level while maximizing its cooling capacity. The power supply comes with loads of phenomenal features, including the two blue UV reactive fans, UV reactive plug, switch, adapters and UV reactive wire sleeves. The blue light shines through its acrylic cover showing all the vibrant colors of the power supply when turned on, it is most eye-catching beauty. Short Circuit/ Under Voltage/ Over Voltage/ Over Current/ Over Power Protection functions ensure and stabilize your system. Made of the fire-resistant quality components, Apevia has undergone the most rigorous testing in the industry to offer the best cooling, reliability, durability and performance for today's heavily loaded PC. This power supply is a state-of-art cutting edge innovation for gamers and PC enthusiasts.
After canvassing the Apevia website and manual we learn a few interesting items. The unit is specified to have an efficiency of greater than 70% at full load and is to be operated in temperatures up to 40c only. Given the units plastic casing there may be a reason why the unit is limited to a 40c operating temperature. Neither the manual nor the website make mention of a warranty, which may send up a red flag for many people, but a warranty does not guarantee a good product and a company can always guarantee a bad product. The remaining information we were able to get from the manual and the website are summarized in the tables below.
The connector count on this unit is not exactly what we have seen in most of our reviews but those reviews have been targeting the high end of the market. The Apevia 500w does include a 6 pin PCI-Express connector for native support of newer video cards that require it. The unit also has 2 SATA connectors which will limit the number of native SATA connections that can be made but with 8 Molex connectors Molex to SATA adapters will allow more drives to be run off this unit.
Following the connectors we come to the power label, and this power label is very interesting. Not only does the Apevia unit violate the ATX12v specifications in a number of places Apevia advertises this fact. (It should be noted that advertising your violation of specifications does not somehow make it all better.) To start the unit is specified as having a load regulation of 10% on the 12v rails which is double the ATX12v specification of 5%. This is quickly followed by the 3.3v being specified as allowing 60mV of ripple instead of 50mV like the ATX12v specification calls for while the 5v rail is an even more egregious offender at 80mV instead of 50mV. The final interesting point on the power label is that the unit is specified to have only 25A on the combined 12v rails; however this information is nowhere to be found on the unit or its manual and is only available on the Apevia product page, so a customer seeing this on a shelf at Fry's is being rather blindsided by these issues.
Once we open the packaging of the Apevia we find the power supply, mounting screws, manual, and power cord. All of this is standard fare and nothing out of the ordinary. The manual is 10 pages long and does come with the unit’s pinouts for various connector types which is appreciated however what it is lacking is more interesting. As indicated previously there is no mention of the units warranty and it does not include the power label information that would indicate that the unit violates the ATX12v specifications. With all of that in mind lets open this unit up and see if it really is as worrisome as the documentation has made it out to be so far.
External Build Quality
Margaret Wolfe Hungerford once wrote “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. With that being the case, if the Apevia ATX-AS500W-BL is beautiful the beholder is blind. Subjective impressions aside the exterior build quality of this unit is mixed. The cables are all well sheathed, albeit in an interesting color, and anchored to the housing by a zip-tie. However, the unit does feature a plastic housing which would seem to not be as ideal a choice for EMI shielding as a metal case, but the unit is supposedly UL approved so how bad could it be? The final exterior feature of note on this unit is the fan speed selector. The fan speed selector is located on the back of the unit by the voltages switch, no APFC here, and allows the user to adjust the fans speed between 80% and 100%. During testing the fans were set at 100%.
The cables on the Apevia 500w are all fixed and provide a serviceable length of ~19inches.
Internal Build Quality
The interior examination of this unit bleeds into the exterior as with the clear plastic we can see the interior components fairly well. The Apevia 500w has a pair of thin ridged gold colored heatsinks coupled with a pair of 80mm fans for cooling. The fans are Apevia branded fans provided by Young Lin Tech and rated at 0.25A at 12v. As we examine the remaining build components we find the primary capacitors are two Su’scon 820uF 200v 85c capacitors (mainly because the unit lacks APFC) while the secondary is also mainly Su’scon. The overall impression this build leaves is that it is a typical YoungYear power supply, and that is not a good thing. However, that assessment is still a subjective opinion at this point and we will see shortly how the unit fairs in testing.