In The Box



After you remove the goodies from the box, it looks to be rather sparse. This is due mainly to the lack of ANY cabling being hard wired to the power supply itself. Every single portion of wiring harness is modular, to include the primary and auxiliary power couplings.



The unit itself is fully industry standard and will mount in your case like normal. The finish, as can be attested to the reflection of the carpeting on the side panels, is a highly polished finish that will set off a windowed enclosure very nicely. Since the bottom of the power supply is also polished metal, any interior lighting you have inside the case will be reflected back.



The back side of the unit consists of only the exhaust fan, the power input and a toggle switch to turn the PSU on and off. Like most power supplies hitting the market right now, this model is an auto-switching design that correctly sets itself automatically to the proper power rating. This makes it ready for use regardless if you have a 110v or 220v power grid.

The fan you see above is the only one used in this model. It is a lighted (blue) fan, but with no venting on the bottom of the unit the impact should be minimal if you have a different lighting scheme in use. While some may have issues with this setup, I ran into no heat related issues during testing. It wasn't the quietest PSU I've ever come across, but the noise levels did not climb to a level where I was concerned. It isn't silent, but not terribly loud either.



As I noted above, the entire unit is modular. If you need cabling, simply add it to the panel and run it to the device. If you don't, then leave that piece of cabling in the box and you won't have to worry about hiding it in the case to keep it out of the way of the airflow. Let's take a quick look at the cabling that comes with this model.



Quite a selection of cables we have here. An inventory shows that we have a 20+4-pin primary coupler, a 4+4-pin auxiliary coupler, and connectors for two PCI-E devices, four SATA devices, six 4-pin Molex and one FDD device. While some with older systems may need to resort to Molex splitters, most systems currently being produced are using SATA drives for storage so the six Molex should be enough for most users. About the only issue may be the inclusion of only a single FDD connector. Some enthusiast class motherboards use one of these for power needs, so if you also want to make use of an internal floppy drive you will need to get a splitter of some sort. Otherwise, there should be no issues to speak of.



As far as the numbers are concerned, the EvoStream 600 is designed to handle a continuous load of 600 watts. It makes use of four 12v rails, each of which are rated at 15A. While this isn't the beefiest setup on the block, it will be sufficient for all but the most hardcore systems. Our test system runs a pair of hungry video cards and no issues were noted even under load.

The 5v rail is rated at 30A and the 3.3v rail is rated at 20A, so even older Athlon based systems should be well provided for.