Spire PowerFuse SP162

Included in the package are the PowerFuse and a heavy duty PCI-E power cable.

The PowerFuse itself has a LED strip inside which back lights the whole front side of the unit. Modders should like this, as the LED’s light up different colours and show the Spire logo on the PowerFuse quite well.

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The PCI-E cable is made from a heavy duty flexible cabling and is covered in a wire mesh with a dark plastic coating. The connectors are quite striking and show up well in the dark; another feature that modders may like.

The PowerFuse is a very simple device consisting of just 5 resistors and 3 capacitors (mostly hidden below the LED strip). The most important part of the construction of the PowerFuse though has to be the actual fuse. It looks like a standard flat blade (rather like the ones found in cars). It has quite a high threshold of 19-23 amps for a maximum of 5 seconds. Any longer than that at a current that high and the filament will go and the circuit breaks, not your graphics card. However this fuse is not changeable, which means that if the circuit breaker goes and it dies the PowerFuse cannot be reused by simply installing a new 15-amp fuse. Whether this is because Spire feel that they sell more units if the device is not reparable or not I do not know, but I would have liked to have seen a swappable fuse used.

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