Tom's Hardware > All Reviews > Components > Cooling > Stress Test: Power Supplies Under Full Load

Spire SP-500W: High Noise Levels At Full Load

07:00 - Monday 11 July 2005 by Frank Völkel

The Spire SP-500W has stiff connection cables and registers quite substantial operational noise at full load, but efficiency is ok.

The graphic above shows the power supply connections and their length in centimeters: Lots of connections and sufficient length with the Spire SP-500W.

Features

While Spire is a little-known manufacturer in the segment for power supply units, it has made itself a name with processor coolers for AMD and Intel.

The Spire PSU is a powerful unit with a nice design that should please users overall. To sum up, Spire is an outsider that is capable of standing up to power supply units from well-known brands. The pluggable lines and the clean workmanship are striking. However, it also conceals risks: Due to the stiff design of the cables, breakage in the connectors for SATA hard disks is conceivable.

High-quality, pluggable lines are included in the Spire power supply

Here, the connectors are on the power supply itself - they all have the same design

Spire with a green switch: This is used for forced activation of the 120-millimeter fan.

Identification plate of the Spire.

Test Results

One of the pleasant surprises of this test is the 500-watt power supply unit from Spire, which has been running under a full load since Thursday.

Noteworthy with its power supply unit is that it has very high efficiency at 81%, though the down side is that this in turn causes the unit to become noticeably loud, 64 dB(A), under full load.

Spire SP-500W (500 watts)
Test Phase 1
Test Description	Lower Limit	Upper Limit	Result
Increase load from 20% to 100% of nominal load limit	100 watts	500 watts	Passed
Test Phase 2
Test Description		Belastung	Result
Steady load at 100% nominal load		500 watts	Passed
Test Phase 3
Voltage Stability
Power Rail	Measurement	Min/Max according to ATX Spec.	Result
+ 3.3 V	+ 3.32 V	+/- 5% (+3.14 to +3.46 V)	Passed
+ 5 V	+ 4.96 V	+/- 5% (+4.76 to +5.25 V)	Passed
+ 12 V	+ 12.13 V	+/- 5% (+11.4 to +12.6 V)	Passed
+ 12 V CPU	+ 12.04 V	+/- 5% (+11.4 to +12.6 V)	Passed
+ 5 V Standby	+ 5.02 V	+/- 5% (+4.76 to +5.25 V)	Passed
- 12 V	- 12.57 V	+/- 10% (-10.8 to -13.2 V)	Passed
Ripple
Power Rail	Measurement	Min/Max according to ATX Spec.	Result
+3.3 V	33 mV	50 mV (Peak-Peak)	Passed
+12 V CPU	63 mV	120 mV (Peak-Peak)	Passed
Further Data
Größe	Messung
Noise Level (max.)	64.1 dB(A)
Voltage	215 V
Current	2.89 A
Cos Phi (Phasenverschiebung)	0,99
Efficiency	81,0%