Climbing Everest

The Everest power supply breaks from the norm, in that it doesn’t require additional space as compared to other 1000W units on the market. The size is slightly longer than your normal PSU, which can also be put down to the fact that this unit is modular.

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Unfortunately, the front of the unit quite clearly shows wasted space, which leads me to believe that either FSP haven’t saved as much space as possible, or it was necessary to space components out for cooling purposes.

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The Everest comes complete with a handy bag which keeps your cables in one place should you need them in the future. There is nothing worse than losing the one that you need and destroying your room trying to find it.

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The unit itself has a fair amount of hard-wired cables which you can’t remove from the unit. Fortunately, these are the most used cables, and so you won’t have too much additional cable bulk. These cables include two PCI-e cables, one of which is 6+2pin allowing for a single 8pin PCI-e GPU to be used, an ATX 20+4pin, an EPS 4+4pin cable and a separate 4pin P4 cable.

All of the cables are braided in a rather thin Nylon which is coloured black for all the cables bar the hard-wired PCI-e cables which are blue, while the additional PCI-e cables are braided in orange. This seems a little pointless, but at least it identifies these cables from the rest. All of the other cables, bar the molex and the SATA are labelled on their plugs, which lets you know where to put them.

The modular cables include a pair of PCI-e cables, one of which mirrors the hardwired version with a 6+2pin end, three SATA chains with three SATA plugs each (9 SATA in total), and a pair of molex chains each having three molex plugs and one has a FDD power cable. Oddly, even though the PSU can have three molex chains plugged in, only two modular cables are supplied.

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The modular design is made in such a way that it’s not possible to insert a cable into an incorrect socket, or at least if you were, the correct voltages will be sent to the cable due to how the sockets are designed. As with any modular PSU, you should never use cables from another power supply with it. Together with the inability to place the wrong cable in one of the sockets, there are labels above the ports which give you the location of where to put them, they have even written a warning message describing this; you would have to be a grade A idiot in order to get this wrong.

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The unit is dressed in bright blue, and has a glossy finish. The choice of the colour is an interesting one, as it will definitely stand out in your case compared to any other components. The bottom of the unit reveals the gold coloured fan grill and hub logo. Behind this and you’ll find an off-centre 120mm fan which is the units’ only method of ventilation. The air is sucked in through this hole, and then blasted out the back through the honey-combed rear and out of your case.

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Looking at the back, and you’ll find the socket which you slap the kettle lead into, and also a illuminating switch which lets you know when you’ve turned the PSU on. For the most part, this light won’t be of much use as few people stare at the back of their PC when in use.

The unit spits out four independent 12v rails each sending up to 20A out. There is a small disclaimer which says that the rails can’t do more than 75A combined. The normal PSU label also lets you know how the rails are distributed, the first 12v rail is for the CPU’s, the second sends juice to the hard-wired PCI-e cables, the third give your motherboard and ‘accessories’ life and the final rail is for the other two PCI-e cables. This gives you 240W for every pair of PCI-e connectors, which is more than enough for an Ultra; or up to 480W for GPU’s.