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AMDReview Site News!
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| Manufacturers: |
I-Star
Enermax |
| Products: |
TC-500R8A (500W)
EG651P-VE (550W) |
| Availability: |
Now |
| Authors: |
Pieter (dutchcedar) Bijleveld
John (flashawk) Smith
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| Date: |
3-25-03 |
| Price: |
TC-500R8A: $526.40
EG651P-VE: $140.00 |
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Discuss
this review in our forums
There are
5 parts to this review, please use the pulldown below to browse sections or
simply hit "Next" at the bottom of each section to continue

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Power supplies are not very exciting components for most of us. They
just sit somewhere in the back of our PC's making noise, hosting the maze
of wires that impress our friends because we actually know where to plug
them in. The power supply just gets no respect.
When building powerful PC's however, we have to take them a little more
seriously. The poor selection of a power supply or the choice of an underpowered
one can lead to serious problems with our systems. Embarking on the build
of a rather serious dual AMD Opteron liquid cooled RAID0 workstation is
what made me take a closer look when selecting a power supply. The candidates
I chose for this rig are both monsters, the 500 watt I-Star TC-500R8A
and the 550 watt Enermax EG651P-VE.
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The 500 watt I-Star TC-500R8A
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The 550 watt Enermax EG651P-VE
(shown upside down)
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Although these are 500W and 550W power supplies respectively, this is
where the similarities end. I have had great success with Enermax units
in the past, so it was only natural to take a serious look at one of their
latest offerings. While the Enermax unit is conventional in design, the
I-Star blows the lid off of what we expect a power supply to look like
and what we expect it to do.
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other in hot swap bays. Each of these units has its own AC input, and
therefore, can operate alone at the full 500W output if its partner fails.
When they are paired together however, they each operate at 50%, which
should add to the life expectancy of each. It is the added reliability
and redundancy from this design that originally sparked my interest. My
concerns were the potential for it to be noisy and how efficient its cooling
system might be. We will look closely at both of these concerns in this
review, putting it head to head with the Enermax unit.
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| Both of these power supplies are 3-3/8 inches (86mm) tall and 5-7/8 inches
(150mm) wide, so they slide nicely into the throat of our LianLi PC-60's
PSU rack. But they aren't short in the length department. The Enermax is
a full 5-1/2 inches (150mm) long while the I-Star is a whopping 7-7/8 inches
(200mm) in length. Considering that the latter is really two power supplies
in one, it's rather amazing that the folks at I-Star were able to fit everything
into such a compact package. When installed in our LianLi PC-60, the front
of the unit interfered with the top plate exhaust fan. Either the fan must
be moved or the power supply must be left to protrude about ¾"
from the case's rear face. |
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| Market Watch |
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| -CPU AMD
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| 2400+ and below |  |
| 2500+ and above |  |
| AMD MP |  |
| Opteron |  |
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| -CPU Intel |
| P4/XE 2.4 & up |  |
| P4/XE 2.2 & down |  |
| Celeron |  |
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| -Memory DDR |  |
| -Memory pc133 |  |
-Hard Drive IDE (60G and lower) |  |
-Hard Drive IDE (80G and higher) |  |
| -CD/DVD/CDRWs |  |
| -nVidia video cards |  |
| ATI video cards |  |
| -LCD monitors: 15in |  |
| -LCD monitors: 17in |  |
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AMD Motherboards
XP:nForce2,VIA KT600
Opteron: nForce3, AMD8000
64: nForce3, AMD8000, K8T
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Intel Motherboards
Latest Chipset: 875P
w/Graphics: 865G
VIA: P4X
ATI: 9100 IGP
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