AcBel Polytech is a very well known OEM manufacturer, producing power supplies for brands such as Cooler Master. Now they seem interested in the retail market and today we are going to completely dissect their iPower 660 model (also known as PS2/660 or PC7016), which should reach the US market pretty soon, to see if it can really deliver its labeled power and what is its internal design.
The first thing we noticed about this power supply is that it isn’t a 660 W model as everyone would assume. See how AcBel used the name “iPower 660” without adding the letter “W” for “watts”. According to the power supply label and to AcBel’s website, iPower 660 is a 610 W power supply with 660 W peak power. So why not labeling it iPower 610 W instead? We simply hate manufacturers that use deceitful naming systems and we honestly think that manufacturers that do such kind of thing should be sued. Because of this we will have to make our tests assuming that this is a 610 W unit, but we will also check if it can deliver 660 W. If this power supply can’t deliver 660 W we honestly hope that the US distributor change its name to reflect its real power capability. We will talk more about this later, after we’ve done our testings.
click to enlarge
Figure 1: AcBel Polytech iPower 660 power supply.
click to enlarge
Figure 2: AcBel Polytech iPower 660 power supply.
As it is becoming the new standard, this power supply uses a big 120-mm fan on its bottom (the power supply is upside down on Figures 1 and 2) and a big mesh on the rear side where traditionally we had an 80-mm fan. We like this design as it provides not only a better airflow but the power supply produces less noise, as the fan can rotate at a lower speed in order to produce the same airflow as an 80-mm fan.
This power supply has active PFC, which provides a better usage of the power grid and allowing Acbel Polytech to sell this product in Europe (read more about PFC on our Power Supply Tutorial). AcBel says that this product has 80% efficiency. The higher the efficiency the better – an 80% efficiency means that 80% of the power pulled from the power grid will be converted in power on the power supply outputs and only 20% will be wasted. This translates into less consumption from the power grid (as less power needs to be pulled in order to generate the same amount of power on its outputs), meaning lower electricity bills.
The main motherboard cable uses a 20/24-pin connector and this power supply has two ATX12V connectors that together form an EPS12V connector.
This power supply comes with five peripheral power cables: two 6-pin auxiliary power cables for video cards, two cables containing two standard peripheral power connectors and two SATA power connectors and one cable with three standard power connectors and one floppy disk drive power connector.
The number of connectors provided by this power supply is adequate for a mainstream user, but high-end users would need more connectors, especially more SATA power plugs.
On this power supply all wires are 20 AWG, except the ones used with the two ATX12V connectors, which are 18 AWG. This is ridiculous for a power supply on this power range; all wires should be 18 AWG, especially the ones used on the auxiliary power cables for video cards. On the other hand each video card 6-pin power plug is attached to an individual cable, while on several mainstream power supplies these connectors share the same cable.
On the aesthetic side AcBel Polytech used nylon sleevings on all cables, but they don’t come from inside the power supply housing.
Let’s now take an in-depth look inside this power supply.
