Layout

     One of my favorite aspects of this power supply is the layout of the fans.  This may seem unimportant, but it is not.  I just happen to have a case that mounts the power supply upside down.  With the more traditional fan layout, one on the bottom and one in the back, installed in this case would put the bottom fan on top against the top of the case.  This is not a good design.  Granted it's the case makers fault and not the power supply's, but there are cases like that out there and this design makes this power supply more universal.  Also with the straight through airflow, the cooling is going to improve for both the power supply and the system.

Testing

     Testing of a power supply is a difficult thing.  There aren't any benchmarks out there.  We can't see how far we can overclock it.  Basically, all we can do is monitor the output under load and at idle.  The test system is will be an AMD Athlon AP2500+ on a MSI K7N2G-ILSR nForce2 motherboard. The memory is 512mb of Crucial PC3200. The system also features a Geforce 4 TI4200 8x video card, 60gb IBM hard drive and a 52x CD Drive.  I also have 4 system fans, a CPU heatsink fan and a northbridge heatsink fan.

     One of the most important power concerns for AMD CPUs is the 5v power rail.  On the last few power supplies that we've reviewed we've seen a pretty decent 4.97V on the 5v rail.  While this is pretty decent that slight undervolt could be holding you back from that awesome overclock.  As most of us know the power is constantly fluctuating.  We just don't want to see a large fluctuation.  The FSP 530 never dipped below 5.02v on the 5v rail.  This is outstanding.  If you aren't getting that awesome overclock now, something else is holding you back.

     Next we want to see if the power is going to drop during 100% CPU usage.  Some of you may be experiencing this already.  You can actually hear it sometimes.  For instance, start a game or a heavy CPU load app and see if you hear your fan RPMs decrease.  This is a good indication that you may need to upgrade your power supply.  I put the CPU at 100% utilization and monitored the power with SiSoft Sandra.

     As you can see the 5v and 3.3v rails remain stronger than ever, the 12v dropped slightly.

Conclusion

     All is not perfect with the FSB530-60GNA.  The packaging leaves much to be desired.  Included in the box, was the power supply.  That's it.  There was no documentation of any kind and there was no power cord.  It is possible that we were sent a preproduction model and that may account for the missing items.

Pros:

• AMD & Intel approved

• Solid performance

• Great cooling

• Awesome fan layout

• Nickel plated

Cons:

• No fan speed options

• Lack of power cord and documentation