First Look
With new Minimal Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) laws in Australia, new PCs sold in this country now have to have 80 PLUS Silver or better power supplies. As a result, a few new products have popped up on the market. One of those is the Aywun Silver series which, as their name implies, are 80 PLUS Silver certified. The lineup currently only contains a 550W model, which is available for $59 from PC Case Gear. Let’s now see if this product is a good buy, or if it’s just as much of a fraud as the last product I reviewed from this brand – the Megapower Elite 550W.
The Box
There is very little marketing on the box. The front simply contains a picture of the power supply and what model it is on a black and silver background. The only marketing blurb present is on the back:
Aywun 80+ Silver Series delivers stable and quiet power with efficiency and style. You will experience stable power with 80 PLUS SILVER® Certification in energy efficiency
We’ll let the load tester back that claim up shortly. The back of the box also contains an incomplete load table (which is missing the 12V1 rail), the number of connectors and some more pictures of the power supply. The other sides of the box are the same as the top, and do not contain any marketing.
On opening the box up, we have just the power supply and a power cable. No manual, no screws, no zip ties or any other accessories. Perhaps a little more disturbing is the lack of any foam or bubble wrap, so the unit could easily get damaged during shipping and handling. At least my unit seems to have survived.
The Power Supply
Unlike the label would have you believe, this is a single rail unit, as there is no Over Current Protection to separate the 12V outputs. The power supply is a semi-gloss black color. Finger prints do show up, but not nearly as badly as they do on some other units with glossy finishes.
The connectors consist of a 20+4 pin ATX connector, a 4+4 pin ATX/EPS12V connector, a 6-pin PCI Express connector, four Molex/peripheral connectors, five SATA power connectors (which is actually one more than what the box said), and one Berg-style FDD power connector. A second PCIe connector would be preferable, as a 550W power supply is quite capable of handling a GPU with two connectors. Another small problem is that the wires do get a little messy closer to the unit. A few extra zip ties would have helped to keep the wires tidier.
The fan grille is punched out, but isn’t overly restrictive. The rear grille uses a honeycomb structure, like on most power supplies. It’s quite open too.
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