ePower Tagan 480W

Written by Michael Larabel in Power Supplies on 9 May 2005 at 01:00 PM EDT. Page 3 of 3. Add A Comment.

Performance:

Even though the PSU offers an RTN grounding cable, which requires a bit more work than a conventional PSU installation, the process remained easy to work with and we experienced no conflicts along the way. Take time to make sure the RTN grounding cable is securely attached to a screw-hole on the motherboard. The system we used during testing is listed below.

Hardware Components
Processor:Intel Pentium 4 530 (3.0GHz)
Motherboard:Tyan Tomcat i915 S5120 (AGNNRF)
Memory:512MB Mushkin PC4000 DDR
Graphics Card:ATI X300SE
Hard Drives:Western Digital 80GB IDE
Cooling:3 x case fans
Case:Thermaltake Soprano
Software Components
Operating System:FedoraCore3
Linux Kernel:2.6.11-1.14

CPUBurn-In v1.00 was used to stress the power rails for 30 minutes, after we allowed the system to idle for the same period of time. The multimeter used to record the voltages in this review, was a trusty RadioShack (Cat No: 22-810) digital multimeter. During operation, we found the ePower Tagan to be extremely quiet; similar to most other ePower PSU’s which bear “The Power of Silence”.

 
+3.33
+5.00
+12.00
Idle:
3.28
5.03
11.93
Load:
3.33
5.09
11.98
 
Volts

Conclusion:

Throughout our testing, the ePower Tagan 480W performed flawlessly. From the noise level to the voltage rails, everything stayed within their respective range. Although ePower has brought a number of new things to the table, such as the rubber protection cover for the power switch and RTN grounding connector cable, we were disappointed to see their 20+4 and 4+4 sliding connectors not implemented on this unit. (REVISED (05/10/05) We've been informed by ePower Technology that their new Tagan model will feature these sliding connectors.) As a whole, this was an incredible power supply unit from ePower Technology and would go great in most high-end servers.

Pros:

· Durable Construction
· Ten molex connectors
· RTN grounding cable
· Rubber protection cover
· Very little voltage fluctuation
· Twisted cables
· Quiet

Cons:

· Only two SATA connectors
· No ePower sliding connectors
· Lack of cable sleeving

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Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.