Allied 500W Aluminum PSU

Do you want more power? Can’t get enough power? Need the most power possible? Look no further than the Allied 500W Power Supply. Lots of juice, a sweet brushed aluminum body, and some cool LED fans make this PSU a sweet piece of hardware.

Introduction

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Power supplies have become somewhat of my forte´ here at Bjorn3D, so why stop now right. Well this time I’m going to take the Allied 500W PSU for a spin to see what this latest contender throwing itself into the mix has to offer. For once I will avoid mentioning that the PSU is one of the most important parts of your PC to maintain overall health and performance. Without me mentioning that again… 😉 …we will go ahead with this journey into power supply land.

500W of unadulterated, unbridled, sweet and juicy power. Who wouldn’t like that much horsepower under the hood? My motto is that less is less, and more is well…..MORE!!! There is nothing worse to me than not having enough of something. With this PSU, you never need to worry about that again. Unless you want to power an extra microwave or refrigerator or two, you are going to satisfy your need for MORE POWER many times over.

Specs and Features

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We all love this part of the review. SPECS PLEASE!

• Two dual ball-bearing & thermally-controlled fans with tri-color illumination
• On/off switch with grenn LED indicator
• Fan speed adjustable knob
• ATX 12V and auxiliary power connectors, 8 large and 2 small leads
• All wires and cables tied up in net tube
• Serial ATA connector included

Even before I pulled this thing out of the box I knew I had something special. Not only is it packing power, this thing is packing good looks too. The brushed aluminum body looks very cool and definitely deserves a close-up look. While many PSUs on the market are a simple steel gray, this PSU would be the runway model of the bunch. Very flashy, but the aluminum also adds the great benefit of heat dispersion. With all that power crawling through this PSU, heat is definitely one of the first problems I was worried about running into.

LED fans are also a cool addition. My case has started to look like a bionic Christmas tree as of late. I think all the little added glow and lights that are on many PC peripherals are a cool addition. If you don’t like them, buy something without them. I prefer to show off a little bit and get some ooooohhhhhss and aaaaahhhhhhhhhs from the peanut gallery at my next LAN party.

The Allied unit comes with eight of your standard molex connections, with two small leads and an SATA power hookup also. I am starting to think that PSU manufacturers need to begin adding two SATA connections onto current power supplies. With the ease of adding a couple of SATA drives to current motherboards and going with a sweet RAID configuration, having power connections for both of those drives is going to be a must. I may be jumping the gun a little, but I see the demand in the future, so why not get a head start on it now?

The Allied PSU also has an adjustable fan speed knob to turn up those coolers if need be. I have always thought this is just a good idea to have an adjustable fan speed on all the PSUs on the market. With all the added mumbo jumbo on your PC today noise levels can become obscene to say the least. To be able to crank those settings down, for example while watching a DVD, is a must to avoid hearing loss at an early age.

Find the BEST PRICE for the ALB500E 500W PSU at PriceGrabber

Testing

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I took some quick measurements using Motherboard Manager 5 and a simple multimeter I have at home. Power ratings are just fine all the way around. The only thing I saw was a somewhat high -12V and -5V reading. The numbers are still within the recommended 5% of normal, and I didn’t notice any spiking while monitoring the numbers with MBM. I didn’t see any spikes or significant drains on the PSU at any time during testing. I even tried to really push it by cranking 4 case fans, turning on my cold cathodes, burned a CD at 24X, and ran some graphics demos in the background to crank up my vid card. Of course, I probably didn’t even touch the 500W capacity of this bad boy…but it’s definitely fun to try. 🙂

Motherboard Monitor 5

+3.3 +5.00 +12.00 -12.00 -5.00 3.25 V 4.87 V 11.98 V -12.51 V -5.25 V

Standard Multimeter

+3.3 +5.00 +12. 00 -12.00 -5.00 3.22V 4.83 V 11.76 V -12.37 V -5.23 V

Temperatures inside the case are also not a factor. The fans in the PSU do a great job of sucking hot air out of the case and keeping the PSU cool at the same time. I was able to turn it to its lowest and the noise levels are very acceptable. My case fans are easily louder than the PSU fan when at its lowest setting. When I cranked it up while playing games the tides turned a little and the PSU eminated a nice fan spinning groan. Overall the noise was at pretty expected levels.

Final Thoughts

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What can I say, I am definitely digging this PSU from Allied. It looks great, performs great, and I have yet to have a problem with it. What else can you really ask for at this point? To top it all off, this can be found at Newegg.com for a cool $64.00 with free shipping. Not bad, not bad at all. The sound levels were on par for a PSU like this and can get a little loud when turned up, but you can keep the levels much lower for 90% of your PC use. What I would like to see is another SATA connection to give me more options with a RAID configuration in the future.

Pros:

• Sweet looks
• Plenty of power
• Fan controller knob
• Cool operation

Cons:

• Only one SATA connection
• Can cause a racket when fans are turned all the way up

I highly recommend this PSU for someone looking for a sweet unit to provide all the juice you need. This is a PSU definitely worthy of the Bjorn3D Seal of Approval.

Find the BEST PRICE for the ALB500E 500W PSU at PriceGrabber