Testing:
A system with the following components was used to test the
Rosewill RX630-S-B Xtreme Series 630W power supply:
»
ASUS P5E64 WS Evolution X48 ATX motherboard
» Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 dual core processor
»
G.Skill 4GB DDR3-1600 Pi Series dual channel memory kit (at 1600MHz and 7-7-7-18)
»
OCZ Technology Vendetta CPU cooler
» Maxtor MaxLine III 250GB SATA 3Gbps hard drive (Qty. 4)
»
Sapphire Toxic 512MB HD3870 graphics card (Qty. 2)
»
Sapphire Toxic 512MB HD4850 graphics card
» TSST Super WriteMaster SATA optical drive
As mentioned earlier, the test system exceeds the number of connections provided for SATA and PCI Express, and adapters were required. The system represents a decent gaming system; not the top of the line, but definitely above average and fairly power hungry. The three PCI Express graphics cards are from different generations, so only the HD3870 cards were configured in CrossFire, while the HD4850 was used independently just for some extra power draw.
For comparison purposes, the RX630-S-B was tested against the
Nesteq EECS 700 Watt power supply. This was the only modern unit on handle with a comparable power rating, and in its review it proved to be a reliable, solid performing unit.
While all of the components listed above were used during idle testing, load testing saw a Seasonic brand "Loader" connected as well. This device can generate up to 148W on the 5V and 12V rails, bringing the system's demand a bit closer to the limit of the power supply.
The equipment used during testing included a Radio Shack digital multimeter (Cat. No. 22-810) and a
Seasonic Power Angel power monitor.
For idle condition testing, the system was powered up with the hardware listed above except for the Seasonic Loader. It was allowed to sit at the Windows desktop with nothing else running for a period of at least 30 minutes. For the load conditions, the Seasonic Loader was connected, Folding@Home was run on each of the processor's cores, and 3DMark Vantage's first two tests were run at a resolution of 1680x1050. The load testing was also around 30 minutes, during which time the two tests from 3DMark Vantage were executed over and over again, and the Seasonic loader was unplugged while the software transitioned from one graphics test to the other in order to keep it from getting too hot.
