PurePower P.S.T. 520W (W0073, 520W)

Next to the low-end W0070 there stands the expensive W0073 which belongs to an opposite market segment. It is an enthusiasts-targeted product.

You can correctly guess the real manufacturer of this power supply – HEC/Compucase – even by its appearance. The PSU has a black case and a single 12cm fan with blue highlighting. Well, it’s not only the fan that’s highlighted here as you’ll see soon.

Yes, we’ve seen this before! This is a copy of the W0063, at least the stuffing is absolutely identical to it: the same heatsinks, the same electronics, active PFC, and group voltage regulation…

You will find the difference in the rear part of the PSU where a separate card with a few connectors resides under a small plastic casing. Is it yet another PSU with detachable cables? Not quite.

There are only three connectors at the back. This is too few even if the mainboard and CPU power cables are not detachable. Two of these connectors are 6-pin for graphics cards, while the third and most interesting one has 8 pins.

You get a so-called Power Station with this power supply. This station goes into a 5.25” bay of your system case and is attached via a special cable to the PSU’s 8-pin connector.

It’s at the rear panel of the Power Station that the connectors for peripherals are placed: 6 connectors for PATA drives, 4 connectors for SATA drives, two for floppy drives. This solution – one cable goes from the PSU to the 5.25” bay and then the power cables for the drives spread out from this bay – is meant to simplify system integration, improve airflows in the system case, etc.

The Power Station itself is an empty box without any electronics. There’s a card with the connectors at its rear panel; on the front panel there are three multicolored LEDs that indicate voltages on the PSU’s output: green is for +3.3, red is for +5V and yellow is for +12V.