First Look
Smart QC, Smart Buy. That’s what GMX is telling us, but is it really? After all, GMX is a little known company and this unit can be had for as little as $28AUD. Let’s find out.
The Box
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One thing that catches my eye on the box is the presence of a “Smart QC” button on the back of the pictured power supply, which looks to be where the input voltage switch would usually go. Since this a feature I’ve never heard of, I think it’s worth checking out. GMX explain what this button is for on the back of the box, well, at least they try. The paragraph under the Smart Buy by Smart QC heading reads:
Smart-QC was born and makes the checking of DC OUTPUT regulation just a PUSH away. What the user needs to do is only connecting the power supply with 115/230V AC and push Smart-QC button and he can justify if the regulation is right or not by status of cooling fan.
Now, if only I could speak and read fluent Engrish. The illustration below the paragraph, though, clears up what the paragraph itself didn’t. It looks like you’re supposed to push the button with the power supply connected to the mains, which will start the power supply up. If all voltages are correct, the fan will spin.
Note the damage to the side of the box. I wonder whose fault that one was. We’ll find out later when I open it up. Our list of features goes:
- Form Factor: ATX12V 2.31
- Built-in Smart-QC system for quality guarantee
- Industrial grade protection: OVP (Over Voltage Protection), SCP (Short Circuit Protection), and OCP (Over Current Protection)
- SATA connectors for Serial ATA Drive
- +12VP(4+4) connector for latest i series CPU motherboard
- MTBF: 100,000 hours
- Safety approval: C-Tick, UL, CE, TÜV, CB, FCC, CCC (I don’t think so. I don’t see enough logos on the box)
So, with the marketing out of the way, let’s open it up
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Now that explains the damage to the box. We have nothing in here but the power supply itself. No bubble wrap, no foam, no nothing. No power cable or manual either.
The Power Supply
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The label doesn’t contain all of the certification logos listed on the box, and other than the C-Tick, none of the logos which are there have certification numbers under them, so they may very well be forged. Now, let me just plug it in and try out this Smart QC feature… Oh yes, the fan spins. At least I know it survived the shipping despite the lack of padding. The unit supposedly has two 12V rails. For a $28 unit, I find this hard to believe, so I quickly popped the cover prematurely, and sure enough, it only has a single 12V rail, but you’ll have to read on to find out what else I saw there.
For a 550W product, I expect a better cable configuration than this. We have 3 SATA connectors, 3 peripheral connectors, 1 FDD connector, a 4+4 pin ATX/EPS12V connector and a 20+4 pin ATX connector. A PCIe connector or two would have been nice. I’m assuming that the red plug on the CPU power connector means that it’s supposedly driven by the second 12V rail (that would be, if this product had one). All of the wires are 20AWG, which is thinner than the minimum recommended gauge.
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I can’t say I’m a big fan of the cooling here (pun very much intended). The fan grille is punched out and isn’t as open as the wire grilles used by most power supplies with 120mm fans. The rear grill doesn’t have the honeycomb structure like most power supplies, but uses rectangular holes. It may not be obvious through the fan and grilles, but there is a passive PFC coil screwed to the front of the unit.
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