Testing

For testing power supplies, we get together the most power hungry of all our hardware, get it all plugged in and then test the rail's outputs at idle and at load to check their stability. However, since this PSU is rather large in it's wattage, we decided to use our hillbilly testing setup. This involves placing our AM2 and Conroe systems very near each other and having the Olympia not only powering the entire C2D rig, but also the GPU, hard drives, CD drives and all fans from the AM2 rig.

Testing is performed using Asus Probe. A multimeter is used to check accuracy of readings.

The pieces of hardware that the Blue Storm II 500w powered were:

Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.7ghz
Asus P5W DH Deluxe
MSI 8800GTS
x1950 Pro 512mb
2gb OCZ Special Ops. Urban Elite @ 900mhz
1x 36gb WD Raptor
2x 80gb WD Caviar SE
2x LG CD/DVD Writer combo.
3x 120mm Noiseblocker fans
2x 120mm Akasa fans

Results

As you can see from the above results this PSU is pretty darn stable throughout the testing and is a good indication that 500w power supplies are still capable of powering a large amount of high end hardware; counter to what GPU manufacturers would have you believe.

Noise

The Blue Storm II was near silent throughout testing. The only way it is audible is if you are very near to the power supply, or cause extra air turbulence by placing the computer's rear very close to a wall.

Cost

The FSP Blue Storm II 500w PSU can be found for around £50-£60 which is about on par with other power supplies between 500 and 600 watts.