V-Power vs. Green Star
By Gabriel Torres on December 29, 2008 - 11:50 PM


There was a lot of confusion about correctly identifying this power supply. First we thought it was a Green Star model. Then we found out that it had the same part number from the Huntkey V-Power 550 W unit (LW-6550SG) and since Huntkey does not list Green Star products on their website anymore we though we were then facing a V-Power model, so we changed the text to say that this unit was in fact a V-Power model.

Then with the help of our reader Travis Chen we could finally correctly id this unit and it is in fact a member of the Green Star series, as you can check here. What kind of company labels different products with the same part number? We've got an e-mail from Huntkey accusing us of reviewing a "fake" unit, since the label from the model we reviewed doesn't have "V-Power" written on it. Funny enough the label from the V-Power 550 W unit posted on their website also doesn't have "V-Power" written on it.

Once again, how could we correctly identify this unit if on its label there is no mention to its series, only the "LW-6550SG" part number, which is used by two different products? This makes us speculate that Green Star 550 W and V-Power 550 W are internally the same product (we don't see any other reason a manufacturer using the same part number on two different products). We are going to buy a V-Power 550 W model to review it and clarify this issue.

The only real difference we could see between Green Star 550 W and V-Power 550 W labels was the current limit for +12V1, 16 A on Green Star and 18 A on V-Power. Since the unit we reviewed had "16 A" for +12V1 on its label we get the information that we were in fact facing a Green Star unit, not a V-Power one. Another smaller difference was the presence of only two SATA power plugs on the reviewed unit, while V-Power has four of them.

Here I ask my most sincere apologies to all our readers, but, once again, we don't have a crystal ball and the manufacturer doesn't help by naming different products using the same name. If we got confused imagine you, a normal user.

By the way, the naming scheme Huntkey uses work like this. "SG" means 140-mm fan and "HG" means 120-mm fan. When the model has a passive PFC circuit then a "P" is added at the end. So an LW-6550HG would be the same unit with a 120-mm fan, and an LW-6550SGP would be the same reviewed unit with passive PFC.

Originally at http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/blog/V-Power-vs-Green-Star/114


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