X-bit labs

Powerful Power Supply Units Roundup (page 4)

Category: Other

by Oleg Artamonov

[ 01/28/2005 | 05:24 PM ]

Testing Participants

Antec TruePower True430P

Externally the True430P power supply doesn’t differ from a majority of PSUs of the same price category from other manufacturers – a neat case of thick steel; a number of output connectors on thick wires, carefully tied up with nylon braces; two 80mm fans… I guess there’s only one unusual feature here – a connector on the external wall of the PSU that outputs +5v and +12v in case you need to power up some peripherals:

This is in fact a standard connector like those you use to power up the hard disks and optical drives. I only want to note that the restriction of 6amp refers to the total current of the output voltages. Inside the case, inline with the ground wire of the connector there is a self-healing 6amp safety device.

Here’s a surprise for you inside – instead of two traditional chokes on ring cores (one group regulation choke with three windings for +5v, +12v and -12v, and one magnetic amplifier of the +3.3v regulator) we have three chokes here, two of which have one winding and the third choke has two windings:

This is just the dedicated-regulation circuit I was talking about above. The PSU’s main regulator receives feedback only from one of the output voltages, while the remaining two are regulated by their own auxiliary regulators. The result is an excellent stability of all the voltages. The second winding on the third choke is required for the -12v voltage. This choke works like the group regulation choke in the classic PSU design, but now for one voltage only (as for the ‑5v voltage, it can be derived from the -12v by means of an ordinary linear regulator as the load currents for the negative voltages are very small). The stability of this voltage isn’t important: the negative voltages may deviate by up to 10 percent off the norm, while the positive by 5 percent only.

The active PFC device is found on a separate board that is held on poles above the main PCB.

The rest of the PSU’s assembly leaves only pleasant emotions. It’s all conscientiously made – I can’t have any gripes at all.