|
Out of the box
experience...
When I opened the box, I was
a little shocked by the packaging. Then I realized that this was
environmental friendly packaging and all was good. The packaging
is sufficient, I'm just used to seeing plastic bubble wrap or foam
everywhere.
The power supply is wrapped in an
environmental friendly container, held together with brown paper. The
package contains screws, power cable and an owners manual.
There is nothing fancy about this power
supply. It has no extra fan, only ventilation holes and no bling
whatsoever. This power supply is not about bling though, it's
about being efficient.
Cabling is pretty basic with the Earthwatt,
but that is just fine with me. I'm tired of getting 20 connectors that
I just have to try to hide anyway. There is still plenty of
connectors. Along with the 24-pin power connector you get the 4 pin
auxiliary power connector, 8 pin power connector,6 molex, 4 SATA, 2 PCI-E
and a floppy drive connector.
Testing
For this review we'll
be using an abit AW9D-Max motherboard which is based on Intel's 975X
chipset. The CPU is overclocked to 3.2GHz using a 400MHz FSB and voltage
of 1.325. Here is a basic rundown of the test system:
|
Hardware |
Model |
|
Motherboard: |
abit AW9D-Max |
|
CPU |
Intel C2D E6400 |
|
Video Card |
eVGA 7900 GTO |
|
Storage |
Seagate 400GB SATA |
|
Optical |
Lite-On 16X DVD+/-RW with
Lightscribe |
|
Memory |
OCZ 2GB Kit
PC2-8000 Platinum
4-4-4-12 |
|
Cooling |
Corsair Nautilus 500 Water
cooling kit |
I will be using a volt
meter and taking the readings directly from the power supply. I'm not
too fond of monitoring programs as they can vary from program to
program. I monitored the voltages at idle and load and here are the
results.
|
Rail |
Idle |
Load |
| +12v |
12.08v |
12.04v |
| +5v |
5.02v |
5.03v |
| 3.3V |
3.301v |
3.301v |
Conclusion
I was a little worried
about putting a 500w power supply into my system. I had used the
PSU calculator and came up with over 500w for my system. However,
the Earthwatts has been running 24/7 now for about two weeks in my
overclocked computer and it hasn't complained one time. The
voltages on the rails barely budged at idle or at load and without fans,
the power supply is completely quiet. The best thing about this
power supply is that finally a company is looking into ways to save
energy and help the environment. At only $95, this is a really
good power supply and Club Overclocker recommends it.
|
 |
|
Innovation: |
8.5
out of 10 |
|
Performance: |
8.5
out of 10 |
|
Quality: |
9.0 out of 10 |
|
Stability: |
9.0
out of 10 |
|
Overclocking: |
N/A |
|
Software/Drivers
Pack: |
N/A |
|
Value: |
9.5 out of 10 |
|
Overall Rating 9.0 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
Project Skill
Level
(10 being most difficult) |
4
out of 10 |
|
