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Both the FSP Blue Storm II 500W and the Akasa GreenPower 500W managed to pass all of our standard load tests. They both lived up to their 500W labelling, and, in fact, their specs were so similar that you can barely tell them apart by looking at the test results.
Both are more than capable of handling a fairly powerful system, according to our test results, then.
We did, however, come across some shortcomings in both of the supplies.
We'll cover the FSP first, as we found fewer significant problems with it. The first problem was its claim of 85 per cent efficiency: it was 'only' 81.4 per cent efficient in our tests. It's close, but not technically accurate. It would be better if it was labelled 80 per cent-plus efficiency, like the Akasa is.
The only other fault we could find was the rippling on the PEG connector, attached to the primary 12V rail. While this was within the specifications, it caused us some concern as we would have liked to see a nice, clean output.
While the Akasa did manage to pass our tests, we came across a significant problem. Both PEG connectors are attached to the primary 12V rail. This means you may come up against it if you attempt to run a pair of high-powered graphics cards in SLI or CrossFire mode.
Further, one-half of the EPS connector (pins 5-8, CPU2) was also sharing the primary 12V rail, too.
Our tech. hound, James Smith, chased Akasa for a formal statement about the wiring on the GreenPower, and here is what company spokesman Adrian Young had to say on the matter:
"The AK-P050FG8_BKUKV1 has two PEG connectors on V1, this is fine for a mid-range SLI configuration as a potential hi-efficiency PSU upgrade. We tested this PSU using 2 x XFX nVidia GeForce 7800GT. The system was running stress tests and 3DMark06 all day and performed faultlessly. However due to the growing public realisation that a high quality 500w PSU can drive a high end SLI system we have decided to change the 500w 80+ (to AK-P050FG8_BKUKV2) to accommodate two PEG connectors on different rails (V1 & V2) to support high peak demands This new version should be available imminently."
As was mentioned previously, we tested the supply with an Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 system, running a pair of GeForce 7900GTX cards in SLI mode and the supply worked fine. However it may make sense to wait for the second revision of the supply, which should be available very soon.
If Akasa does alter the wiring in its second revision of the supply, and it remains the same price, then it would be difficult to choose between the FSP Blue Storm II and the Akasa GreenPower. Purely on the basis of this test, though, we'd have to recommend the FSP over the Akasa. It's a little better and cheaper.
HEXUS Awards
FSP Blue Storm II 500W
HEXUS Where2Buy
The Akasa GreenPower 80+ 500W is available for £62.15 here, and the FSP Blue Storm II 500W retails at £54.99 hereHEXUS Right2Reply
At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any of the company representatives for the products reviewed here choose to do so, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.HEXUS.related reading
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