FSP Aurum 600 Power Supply

Much to my chagrin, the gaming PC I built to test this power supply unit was unwilling to draw even four hundred watts according to our Stanley power-draw meter.  Four memory modules, a SATA hard drive, and the highest power-draw CPU I could get my hands on (~125 watts) were coupled to an ATI Radeon HD 4870.  While not the most modern machine, it’s pretty up to date (and happens to use some of the highest-draw components of its generation). It also represents part of the niche that the Aurum line is aimed at, either gaming machines without fat stacks of hard drives, or media center PCs where efficiency means limiting the heat soak in a poorly-ventilated audio-video shelf.  My worst-case power draw may be elevated by another 50 watts during particularly intense hard drive activity, but the modern trend toward kilowatt-class power supplies is just silly for almost every system configuration that most home users will be building.  Driving this power supply at around 50% capacity puts it close to its optimum efficiency, too.  In my opinion, FSP has a simple, solid product that does what it does better than many more popular products.  The unusually high efficiency achieved by the advanced designs FSP chose will be especially welcome where either heat, or a power bill is relevant – basically everywhere.  If you can put up with a non-modular power supply (honestly, most of us can) and don’t need thick, chewy amps for some monster of a workstation, this is an excellent choice.  When relying on battery backup power in case of emergency, the power-factor correction may be downright critical.

Still, all this technology comes at a cost – a financial one, mostly.  At a 25% premium over other power supplies of similar wattage, and a 50% premium (yes, a two for one difference) over no-name power supplies, you might hesitate or balk at the cost.  Consider however the value of the rest of your system – and how much it may cost to replace components damaged by a no-name power supply.  These are depressingly often pushed beyond their design capacity by unscrupulous resellers, who bump the output rating of their cut-rate hardware up a notch or two to make it appeal to people on price alone.  When we ignore the potentially dangerous hardware, the Aurum is very competitive pricewise.  Not only is it very modestly more expensive than other brand-name power supplies, at retail it is roughly on par with anything else of equivalent wattage carrying any form of 80+ certification.  It is also worth noting that this is the only one in the 80+ gold-class that I found in my casual perusal of popular component vendors.

For all this, if you’re willing to get ahead of the curve on power, and your computer is operating within the range of these power supplies (they do go up to 700 watts, if you need a bit more juice) then I have to recommend the Aurum series as a good, solid go-to power supply for most machines.  If they were to make the cabling modular, they would remove the only reservation I would mention when recommending this supply to anybody interested in building a system.  In spite of this foible, I thoroughly approve of FSP’s attempt to bring green computing to market, and hope that other players take note.

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