Power Supply:
The power supply's specifications are provided in the image below, and it seems to be a mixed bag. It has a fairly strong 5V rail, and average 3.3V rail, and what seems like a pitifully weak 12V rail. In addition, looking at the model number and some of the other details implies that this may really be a 350W model, advertised as a 400W unit based on its maximum power rating. A trick that is not uncommon among lower end power supplies, and one I am confident is being employed here.
The image below shows the cables included with the power supply. You have a 24-pin motherboard connector wrapped in black mesh, and the balance of the cables are all loose wires. You have 1 4-pin CPU connector, 1 4-pin floppy connector, 5 4-pin hard drive style connectors, and 1 4-pin to SATA power adaptor. There really aren't many connectors at all, and the lengths of the cables are all fairly short. They seem adequate for the smaller size of this case, but they wouldn't reach all areas of larger cases, and it is quite clear I will be doing some daisy chaining in order to connect all of my components.
The images below show the power supply's internals, and other than the 120mm fan, there really isn't anything impressive in here. The heatsinks look undersized and cheap, and overall I am not expecting much in terms of long term performance from this unit.
 
The power supply sounded good on paper... 24-pin motherboard connector for today's latest boards and a single 120mm cooling fan for low noise operation. But, the short cables with minimal connectors, marginal specifications, and cheap looking internal components has me ready to ditch the power supply as soon as testing is complete. Don't get me wrong, this unit may do fine for an older system that doesn't demand too much, but I intend to throw an AMD Athlon-64 system with multiple drives at it, and yes, I do want it to overclock.
Installation:
The following components were installed into the case, and will be the basis for the installation discussion, as well as the performance testing:
For the documented portion of the installation, we will skip anything that is not of interest. If you don't see anything on it, consider that it went as well as can be expected with any case. On that note, let's take a look at the first issue I encountered...
Please read on to the next page for more... Next
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