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Thirteen PSU Roundup |
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Thermaltake PurePower TWV-480, Zalman ZM400B-APS
Thermaltake PurePower TWV-480:
This 480W unit provided by Thermaltake Aust & NZ has a matt black, textured finish and the cables are braided in various colours:
 
The box also includes another 80mm fan for use elsewhere in your system, a manual, a 20 to 24-pin ATX power converter and the usual mounting screws.
It also includes this 5.25" device, which gives the unit its "TWV" name, for "Total Watts Viewer":
 
This unit can control two fans - Thermaltake's intention is that you'll use it for the rear PSU fan and the extra 80mm fan they include, but you could use it to control any fans really. The main feature of this gadget however is that it reports the current power consumption of your system in watts, in a red LED readout in the middle of the unit. For most people this is pretty much a gimmick, but if you were for example running peltiers or a watercooling pump, or were concerned about the extra load from a second video card in SLi, this readout can let you know what's happening in terms of power usage.
On our test system, the display reported 2W constantly when the PC was off but in standby mode. During bootup we observed a peak of 250W reported, and during testing this rose to 320W.
In use this PSU is very quiet with the fans turned down, but not completely silent. The PSU sticker actually rates this unit to a peak of 550W, with 40A on the +5v, 30A on the +3.3V and 18A on the +12v. There's 9 molex, 2 floppy and 2 SATA connectors, as well as 4 and 20 pin ATX power - it's not ATX 2.0 compatible.
Zalman ZM400B-APS:
This unit was also provided by Altech Computers. As you'd expect from Zalman, the focus of this PSU is on silence. They call it noiseless and despite having a rear exhaust fan it was essentially silent in our testing. It even comes with some velcro mounting strips to eliminate vibration in your case. Another nice inclusion is the "Multi-Connector", a simple adaptor to let you connect up to four fans to a molex plug, with two receiving 5v and two receiving 12v.
 
One of the internal heatsinks is actually screwed to the chassis opposite the exhaust fan, and this area of the unit does get very warm during use. The air exiting via the rear fan is quite warm also. This is obviously the tradeoff for silence.
Zalman rate the +3.3, +12 and +5 for a combined total of 380W, and a total overall of 400W. It has 7 molex, 2 floppy and 2 SATA connectors, with the usual 4 and 20-pin ATX power plugs, but no converters. It also has the older-style motherboard connector for boards using it, and isn't ATX 2.0 compatible.
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