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Devoid of
an exhaust fan, the back of the Real Power 450 is very plain indeed. A
honeycomb mesh pattern helps maintain the structural strength of panel and
offers very little resistance to airflow. A very thoughtful (an in my opinion
almost mandatory) inclusion is the master on/off switch. Something that may seem
pretty minor to most users but it can come in very handy during the Overclocking
Exploits of any new system build or tweak. The For Full Range
sticker is pasted to a removable panel which is held closed by one small Philips
head screw. This is where you will find the manual switch to convert the Real
Power 450 to a 220 Volt system. The addition of the cover panel assures that
this switch can not be inadvertently moved to an undesired setting.
For a
performance based, enthusiast level machine, the 350 watt power supply is no
longer considered adequate. The product description in the lineup of some newer graphics cards and recommend a 450+ watt
power supply. While this certainly is important, don't base your purchase
decision strictly on the amount of power a
unit can generate. The difference between a clean and dirty power
supply can be the difference between a stable gaming rig and a constant
headache. The most typically sought-after power supply specification deals with
the units Power Filtering Circuitry or PFC. PFC comes in three basic forms;
active, passive or none. Simply put an Active PFC is better than passive and
passive is better than having none at all. The difference between
active and passive is in the makeup of the filtering circuits themselves. Active
relies on solid-state electronics to monitor the voltage and current levels and
reacts within milliseconds to a change in either parameter. Passive filtering is
generally less accurate and has a longer correction time than active filtering
to changing line levels. With no PFC system in place on your power supply,
you're basically at the mercy of the utility voltage coming out of the wall. In
all of these cases, a good Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) can help with 99%
of bad line-voltage problems before they get to your PC power supply.
Serial ATA
is here to stay and more power supplies are coming, like this one, with Serial
ATA drive connectors. Though some power supplies come with the Serial ATA
connectors attached to the same wire bundle as other Molex connectors, I prefer the
Serial ATA connectors to be on their own, as shown in the above picture. It makes it a lot easier to tidy
up the enclosure if the SATA connectors are together. The Real Power 450 offers
two SATA connections.
The rest of
the accessory power
connectors are arranged as such; there are a total of seven four pin "Molex"
connectors and two four pin "floppy" connectors. Two power wires have two Molex
and one floppy connector on each lead and a third lead has three four-pin Molex
connectors on it. The Molex
connectors are pre-fitted with an "easy grip" system to facilitate the removal
and installation of the connector. This makes hard drives and CD-ROM
drives very easy to attach the connector to, but if your video card requires a four-pin Molex
connector, then there could be issues. To prevent damaging the easy grip tabs on
the connectors, use the "Y cord" that should have come bundled with your video
card.
The Real Power 450 only has the main ATX
power wire-bundle wrapped with the loom material. Another note, the ATX
connector is the 24-pin so use with standard ATX motherboards will require the
use of the supplied 24-pin to 20-pin adapter (not pictured). The only other
motherboard power cord on the Real Power 450 is the four-pin auxiliary voltage
connector.
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