Testing

Testing

To attempt to stress the PSU, the following hardware was used:

• Opteron 165 Dual Core @ 2.7GHz w/ 1.45v
• MSI X1800XT 512MB @ 690/800
• DFI LanParty UT nF4 Ultra-D
• 2GB G.Skill HZ PC4000
• X-Fi Xtreme Music
• 250GB Samsung 7200RPM PATA SP2514N
• NEC DVDRW 3520A
• 2x 80CFM 120's, 2x30CFM 80's

Readings were taken with a digital multimetre. Full load consisted of two instances of Prime95 (one for each core) and looping 3dmark05.

Here are the results:

• Idle

12v: 12.01

5v: 5.04

3.3v: 3.35

• Load

12v: 11.82

5v: 4.96

3.3v: 3.23

ATX standards state you are allowed a 5% tolerance either way, so for example the 12v rail can swing from 11.4 to 12.6 and be classed as in spec.

Knowing that, we can see the PSU had no problems. I didn't experience any issues such as reboots. The PSU did run hot and the 12 volt rail did dip a fair way due to the dual core and XT so I dare say that you wouldn't want to load it up with too much more. My system is a fairly high end gaming system with quite a major overclock on the CPU so if the PSU can handle it, which it can, it should be ok for anybody out there running a single GPU based system.