Posted:2006-04-12 By hardware psu review Number of View:9130
SUNBEAMTECH NUUO SERIES
SUNNU550-EUAP -SUNBEAMTECH NUUO
SERIES REVIEW
By :hardware psu review
Posted:2006-04-12
xtreview is your : Video card - cpu - memory - Hard drive - power supply unit source
Sunbeamtech Nuuo Series SUNNU550-EUAP (550W)
It’s the first time a product from Sunbeamtech comes into our power supply reviews, so I can’t tell you anything
about the company except that its Tuniq Tower fans are reported to do well in
tests. My search for the real manufacturer of the PSU produced the name of
Andyson International Co., Ltd., which I cannot tell you much about, either.
The PSU came to our lab in a cute-looking cardboard box which contained,
besides the PSU proper, a very detailed user manual (my thanks go to the
manufacturer for it as most other PSU manuals merely contain a couple of tables
with specs and a couple of pictures to illustrate the connections), a set of
detachable cables, and a fan control panel to be inserted into a 3.5” bay of
your system case.
Sunbeamtech Nuuo Series SUNNU550-EUAP (550W)
The dark lacquered steel case of the PSU is cooled with two fans, 120mm and
80mm. It’s not very usual to have different-size fans in a power supply; I’ve
only seen this in products from Wintech (that are selling under a number of
trademarks). The manufacturer claims it to be more efficient than the classic
cooling solution with a single 120mm fan.
Although with active PFC, the power supply supports an input AC voltage of
220V only.
Sunbeamtech Nuuo Series SUNNU550-EUAP (550W)
On the other side of the unit, there is an abundance of connectors: four
connectors for PATA drives, two more for SATA ones (the narrow 5-pin connectors
in the bottom right), an 8-pin CPU power connector, a 6-pin graphics card
connector, and a group of 2- and 3-pin connectors that I’ll discuss later on.
A.C.Ryan would do well to follow this example.
Sunbeamtech Nuuo Series SUNNU550-EUAP (550W)
Sunbeamtech Nuuo Series SUNNU550-EUAP (550W)
It’s all plain inside this PSU: group voltage regulation, active PFC on a
separate card, two 820µF capacitors on the output (the effective capacitance is
410µF since they are connected in series). The small green card on the heatsink
(there are in fact two of them there, but the other hides under the mains
connector and is barely visible in the snapshots) carries fan control circuitry
– not the ordinary thermal control, which is located elsewhere, but an auxiliary
circuit for the external fan management unit that I’ll describe below.
Sunbeamtech Nuuo Series SUNNU550-EUAP (550W)
The output connectors are fastened on the common PCB the wires are soldered
to. This looks neat enough, but I’ve seen prettier solutions in other PSUs.
The only stationary cable here is the mainboard’s one, with a 24-pin
connector (a 4-pin part of it is detachable); its length is 47 centimeters.
And here’s what you’ll find included with the PSU:
CPU power cable with two connectors, 8-pin and 4-pin; 50cm
Sunbeamtech Nuuo Series SUNNU550-EUAP (550W)
Two cables with three Molex connectors on each; 49cm+15cm+15cm
One cable with three Molex connectors; 34cm+15cm+15cm
One screened cable with a filter and one Molex connector; 60cm
One screened cable with a filter and a 6-pin graphics card connector; 50cm
Two cables with two SATA power connectors on each; 55cm+15cm
Adapter from two Molex connectors to a single 6-pin graphics card connector
(for SLI and CrossFire systems)
Adapter from a Molex connector to two floppy power connectors
The two screened cables with built-in filters look interesting. They are
designed similar to cables from OCZ that you have seen in our earlier reviews:
there is a ferrite ring and a couple of capacitors at the end of a cable which
form a simple LC filter to suppress high-frequency interference. The efficiency
of the filter is dubious, but why not if it doesn’t make things worse?
The characteristics of this model are like those of the previous one: the
combined current on the +12V rail is limited to 30A (with short-term peaks up to
35A) while the load capacity of the +5V and +3.3V rails is high and their
combined allowable power is an impressive 280W (it is usually no higher than
200-220W and even 150W in the latest PSU models). So this product looks a hybrid
between versions 1.2 and 2.0 of the ATX12V standard.
The most thrilling accessory included with the power supply is the panel to
display temperatures and fan speeds.
The panel shines in blue, showing one temperature and indicating the fact
that one fan is rotating (I can’t say it shows the speed of the fan since there
is not a number here but an animated icon). The panel looks very elegant.
Among the three fan connectors of this power supply, two are meant to control
the PSU’s own fans and the third to connect an external fan that will get the
same voltage as is supplied to the PSU’s 120mm fan. The two 2-pin connectors
below the fans’ ones are the outputs of temperature sensors, one of which is
located on the heatsink with the diode packs and the other measures the air
temperature inside the PSU case.
The panel allows controlling only one fan and only one temperature – you
choose them by attaching the panel to the necessary connectors. The PSU
manufacturer, however, does not recommend to adjust manually the speed of the
120mm fan. They say it is already quiet enough, and you may overheat the PSU by
setting the fan speed too low. This is why if you remove the plug from the 120mm
control connector (it is sealed with a warranty sticker), the PSU warranty is
automatically shortened from two years to one.
Many other power supplies combine manual adjustment with automatic thermal
control, but the SUNNU550 divides them sharply: the fan is managed automatically
when the panel’s knob is in the extreme position (or if the panel is not
attached at all) and manually at any other position of the knob.
Besides the fan control function, the panel also features a Smart Protection
output. It is attached to the appropriate PSU connector and switches the PSU
fans to automatic control (irrespective of the position of the panel’s knob) if
the heatsink temperature is over 70°C. Moreover, if the temperature is higher
than 90°C or the fan speed is below 400rpm, the panel emits a warning squeak and
blinks a warning symbol at you.
I must also say that the PSU uses standard thermo-sensors, standard fans and
standard connectors, so it can be attached not only to its own panel, but also
to fan & temperature control panels from other manufacturers. There is
another collection of cables included with the PSU for that purpose so that you
could connect both the sensors and both the fans at once. It’s nice to see such
care about the user when many other manufacturers deliberately make their
designs incompatible with others’ (using non-standard connectors, for instance)
for the user to buy accessories from that manufacturer only.
The unit yields rather stable voltages, especially considering the allowable
load range for the +5V and +3.3V rails, but I wish the +5V were lower in the
bottom right of the diagram since it is there that most modern computers belong
in.
At a load of 540W the voltage ripple was 20, 23 and 28 millivolts on the +5V,
+12V and +3.3V rail, respectively.
The fans installed in the PSU are labeled as “Sunbeamtech”, so I can’t tell
you the name of their actual manufacturer. Both fans are black, with shiny blades and without any highlighting. The number of
blades is somewhat unusual: the smaller fan has 11 and the bigger has 9.
As promised by the manufacturer, the 120mm fan is really very quiet. Its speed
isn’t higher than 1500rpm even at full load (the speed was managed automatically
during the tests). It’s worse with the 80mm fan which can spin up to 3000rpm and
become rather noisy. The control panel allows you to find an optimal balance of
the speeds of the two fans, though.
The efficiency of this PSU isn’t high, barely notching 80%. The power factor
is quite typical for a unit with active power factor correction.
So, Sunbeamtech has made a successful enough debut in our reviews. The
SUNNU550 features good electrical characteristics and excellent functionality
too. It has detachable cables (and unlike the cable-free Ryanpower2, the
SUNNU550 is up to the latest requirements), allows to control the speed of the
PSU fans and even connect an external fan, and has two temperature sensors
accessible from the outside. What’s important, the additional features do not
look like useless trumpery, but are really well thought out from a
technical standpoint. So, that’s indeed as fine a debut as you may wish.
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