My NX-5000 R3 Review

PSUs: The source of DC power for all components in the PC & often a big noise source.

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mephiska
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Nov 14, 2009 6:42 pm
Location: bay area

My NX-5000 R3 Review

Post by mephiska » Sat Nov 14, 2009 7:16 pm

So I bought one of these and I found no other reviews on it, so I just wanted to add my own $0.02.

My system

Custom HTPC
Asus P5Q-EM motherboard
Intel E6400 @2.13ghz
4gb OCZ Reaper DDR2
EVGA 9600 GT SSC
old DVD-RW E-IDE drive
Apeva X-QPAK Case (cube shaped thing, fits my IKEA entertainment center perfectly)

Purchased from Newegg for $99.99 on 11/15

Quality: The fit & finish of the NX-5000 R3 is great. Really high quality unit. My desktop has a PCP&C Silencer 750w and this unit really stands up to it in quality. Mesh covered cables are nice...to a point.

Output: Not much to say here, 530W is more than enough to power my system. I stress tested it a bit with some gaming(l4d), ran Prime95 on it, watched 1080i live/recorded TV & lots of hulu, none of which really taxed it much and I still haven't heard it boost up the fan and get noisy.

Noise: SUPER Quiet - I have no way to measure the noise but I really have to get close to it to hear it when it's tucked away in my entertainment center. This unit replaced a 500w Raidmax unit (came with my desktop case) and the 420w apeva power supply, neither of which even made an attempt at being quiet so no real comparison there, but it's definitely quieter than the silencer 750w in my desktop. Between the case fan, video card fan and cpu fan I'd say the fan in this unit is the quetest. I haven't heard it get loud under load once. I'm new to the world of quiet PSU's but this thing just blew me away.

Size: This is my main beef with the unit. The cables are long. Too long for a compact HTPC, more suitable for a desktop tower. And while it's nice to have every available power option, it's got way too much of it. Power cables include

24 pin Motherboard power
1x 4-pin CPU power
1x 8 pin CPU power (separate cable from the 4 pin!)
1x 6+2 pin pci-e power
1x 6 pin pci-e power
2x sata power - 3 connectors each
2x ide power - 3 molex + 1fd power on each

AAAAAHHHHHH - way too much cabling coming out of this thing. At the very least they could have lost one of the molex cables. As it is this thing is a VERY thight fit in my case. And they could have done a combo 4+4 pin cable for the CPU as opposed to 2 separate cables. They advertise the compact "size" of it, and the unit is quite small (it uses a 120mm fan and its not much larger than that ), but the abundant cabling wrapped in the stiff mesh makes it quite difficult to deal with in tight spaces.

anyway, despite the size it does still fit thankfully, with the help of some zip ties and a shoehorn, and the noise level makes me really happy, so It's definitely a keeper. I plan on getting either a 58xx or 57xx for this system so I should have no power issues with this unit and one of those cards.

thejamppa
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Joined: Mon Feb 26, 2007 9:20 am
Location: Missing in Finnish wilderness, howling to moon with wolf brethren and walking with brother bears
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Post by thejamppa » Sun Nov 15, 2009 2:47 am

Thank you for insight and welcome to the SPCR ^^

When you can, please post some pictures of your system and PSU ^^

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