Everyone knows Moore's law, that the number of transistors
in a given processor or chip will double every two years. Another
less well-known computing constant is starting to become a factor in modern desktops though;
increasing power requirements. Let's call it Watt's law? No that's already taken.
How about the 'blink factor', named after the unfortunate habit that underpowered
desktop computers have of suddenly turning themselves off at inopportune moments.
There's
nothing like wading through 2 hours worth of Guildwars flora and fauna ready in
search of the one quest that has eluded you so far, only
to see your monitor turn black, the silence of a stopped computer
ringing in your ears... Yes I am speaking from personal experience.
Modern computers with high-end videocards
and 64-bit processors generally require more than 300W of power. ATI and
nVidia state that their latest GPUs need around 400 watts to function
effectively, and that's excluding the rest of the system components. If you
go the SLI route, your system will be even more of a power
hog.
It used
to be that 300Watts was all any desktop system needed, but those days are long
gone. With this fact in mind, we've been looking at a lot of 400Watt+ power
supplies lately. The latest to cross our desk is the HEC Ace Power 580UB 580Watt power
supply.
This all-black dual-fan PSU pumps out a maximum output (peak) of 580Watts, which
should be quite sufficient for SLI and just about anything else you can throw at
it. The power supply uses two discrete +12V rails to separate motherboard and videocard power
flow. The Ace Power 580U also features a large array of connectors, including dual
6-pin connections for powering a set of SLI videocards. Obviously, the HEC Ace
Power 580UB is designed with the possibility of an SLI system in
mind, and would be quite suitable for that
role.
The unit comes wrapped in a small cloth bag, along
with an assortment of items; a standard power cable, screws, velcro cable tie, an instruction
booklet and an AMD GES 12V adaptor for Opteron servers.
According to its
label and instruction booklet, the HEC Ace Power 580UB puts out 32A on
the +3.3V line, 38A on the +5V and 18A and 17A respectively
on the two +12V rails. The PSU
uses a 24-pin ATX connector, but the four extra pins can be separated from
the main connector, providing compatibility with older 20-pin style
ATX motherboards.
The two
80mm fans are thermally throttled automatically through a motherboard
connector and no manual fan controller is present. The HEC Ace
Power 580UB does not use Active PFC (Power Factor
Correction).
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