Paxpower 500 W (also known as Powerpax 500 W or AK-P050FG7) is a mainstream power supply from Akasa, featuring active PFC and a 120-mm fan. Since this was the first product we’ve reviewed from this brand, we were very curious to see if it could really deliver its labeled power. Read on.

All power supplies from Akasa are manufactured by Enhance Electronics. This is the same factory behind Cooler Master Real Power Pro series, Antec TruePower Quattro series and newer power supplies from BFG. Keep in mind that not all models from these brands are manufactured by Enhance.

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Figure 1: Akasa Paxpower 500 W power supply.

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Figure 2: Akasa Paxpower 500 W power supply.

Akasa Paxpower 500 W is a small power supply (5 ½” or 14 cm deep).

All cables use a nylon protection, however only the protection used on the main motherboard cable comes from inside the power supply housing, as you can see on Figure 2.

The main motherboard cable uses a 20/24-pin connector and this unit comes with two ATX12V connectors that together form one EPS12V connector.

The reviewed power supply comes with five peripheral cables: one with one six-pin auxiliary power connector and one six/eight-pin auxiliary power connector for video cards, two with three SATA power connectors, one with three standard peripheral power plugs and one with three standard peripheral power plugs and one floppy disk drive power connector.

All wires are 18 AWG, which is the correct gauge to be used.

Even though this power supply presents a very good number of connectors – especially the presence of six SATA connectors on two separated cables, easily allowing you to install SATA hard disk drives and SATA optical drives – the two video card auxiliary power connectors are installed on the same cable. We prefer to see these connectors using independent cables, as the use of two connectors on the same cable tends to make voltage to drop on them when the power supply is fully loaded. Also there is only 5 29/32” (15 cm) between them, which can make it hard for you to install two video cards under SLI or CrossFire mode depending on your configuration.

The distance between the power supply housing and the first connector on each cable is of 20 5/64” (51 cm) – long cables, which is good – and the distance between each connector on cables that have more than one plug is of 5 29/32” (15 cm).

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Figure 3: Cables.

Let’s now take an in-depth look inside this power supply.