Scythe, a Japanese manufacturer known for its high-end CPU coolers, has also power supplies. Their latest power supply series is called Kamariki 4 and has 450 W, 550 W, 650 W and 750 W models and we are going to review the 550 W version, also known as KMRK4-550A. Let’s see if it will live up to our expectations.

This power supply series is currently available only in Europe and Japan (the 750 W model is available only in Japan) and we believe Scythe will bring them to the USA very soon.

By the way, “kamariki” means “power of the sickle” in Japanese, and Scythe’s logo has two sickles.

We couldn’t find out the real manufacturer behind the reviewed power supply, however we know that other series from Scythe are manufactured by Topower (a reader says this unit is manyfactured by Sirtec).

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Figure 1: Scythe Kamariki 4 550 W power supply.

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Figure 2: Scythe Kamariki 4 550 W power supply.

Scythe Kamariki 4 550 W is 6 19/64” (16 cm) deep, has a small 100-mm fan on its bottom (this is the first time we’ve seen a power supply using this size of fan) and active PFC, of course. What is really unique about this power supply is the presence of three connectors for external fans, as you can see on Figure 2. Thus you can connect up to three fans available on your case to be controlled by the power supply thermal circuit, which changes the speed of the fans according to the temperature of the power supply secondary heatsink. The unit comes with three cables for you to extend the length of the cables from your fans, so you won’t have any problem connecting a fan that is far away from the power supply to one of the available power connectors.

Kamariki 4 doesn’t have a modular cabling system. All cables are protected with nylon sleevings, but only the one used on the main motherboard cable come from inside the unit, as you can see on Figure 2.

The cables included are:

• Main motherboard cable with a 20/24-pin connector.
• One cable with two ATX12V connectors that together form an EPS12V connector.
• Two auxiliary power cables for video cards with one six/eight-pin video card auxiliary power connector each.
• Two SATA power cables with four SATA power connectors each.
• Two peripheral power cables with three standard peripheral power plugs and one floppy disk drive power plug each.
• Three wires for extending the length of the fan power cable.

All cables are relatively long for a 550 W product, measuring 20” (51 cm) between the power supply housing and the first connector on the cable (the fan extender cables are also 20”/51 cm in  length). On cables with more than one connector there is 6 19/64” (16 cm) between the plugs, a little bit more distant than usual, which is great.

All wires are 18 AWG, which is the correct gauge to be used. The number of cables is enough for building a mainstream PC with one very high-end video card or two mainstream video cards. The highlight here is the high number of SATA power plugs (eight).

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Figure 3: Cables.

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