RAIDMAX Aurora RX-580F PSU Review :: The Unit

The PSU comes in a silver chassis. There is a series of holes on the sides of the PSU. These holes allow the user to look into the innards of the PSU when the power supply is on. The PSU fits on the two cases I tried it on without difficulty. When power is applied, the PSU lights up with a cool blue LED. This works well in a dark area. The PSU comes with a power cord and an instruction manual.

Top of Power Supply

Power Supply on

Rear of chassis

Side of Chassis

Front of Chassis

Bottom of PSU

Content

One thing about Power Supplies today is the variety of connectors the modern PSU needs. Intel introduced the 24-pin ATX power connector two years ago with the advent of the 915/925 chipset. Power supply manufacturers have had to include an adapter for those that have the 20-pin power connector. The RAIDMAX comes with a 24-pin ATX connector and a adapter for the 20 pin connector. The RAIDMAX PSU comes with a 4-pin power connection. Many motherboards come with 8-pin power connections, but you can use the 4-pin one in most cases today by plugging an adapter or by using 4 of the pins signified by the notch.

Power Supply laid out

Connections

Another important consideration in today's computers is SATA drive power connectors. Most motherboards come with a variety of power connections for SATA drives. RAIDMAX decided one SATA power connector was enough for this power supply. I find this number to be insufficient, as most people who use SATA drives will use two or more in RAID mode.

The RX-580 comes with 7 Molex connections, more than sufficient for any user. Also included are two 4-pin Floppy drive connections and a 6-pin PCI Express x16 connection for the video card. If your video card has a Molex connection, there's a Molex connector especially separated from the others for this purpose.

The RAIDMAX Aurora RX-580 is rated for 30.0A on the +3.3V rail. The 5V rail has a 45.0A rating. The 12V1 rail has a rating of 18.0Amps. The 12V2 rail has a rating of 16.0A. The -12V rail has a rating of 1.0A. Finally the +5Vsb has a 2.5A rating. The output of the power supply is a total of 580W.

Mounting the unit on a RAIDMAX Scorpion case was a breeze and without incident. The PSU mounted easily with 4 screws holding it securely in the PSU bay. The cables included are long enough for almost any case. The only thing I might have liked more was if RAIDMAX had sleeved the cables.

For purposes of testing the PSU I took a variety of hardware we have laying around the test lab and put together systems with the tested components and the RAIDMAX PSU. I tested the PSU with both a SLI motherboard from ASUS and 2 7800GTs in SLI mode and a ATI X1800XT Crossfire setup. The two were totally stable.