We're fairly familiar with Kingwin. They offer some very nice cases, drive enclosures and water coolers. Now they also offer higher-end power supplies. By using a Superflower modular power supply and putting it into a titanium finished housing with an LED illuminated, UV reactive window one half of the sides, Kingwin introduces the "Absolute Power."

The Absolute Power comes in a 520W, 600 and 650W model. Today I'm testing the 520W model.

The Absolute Power is cooled by a 60MM fan on the inside (the front) and an 80MM fan on the back. The fans are a UV reactive blue plastic and are thermostatically controlled. Although I have no scientific measure of sound, I can report that the fans were fairly quiet at normal loads.

As I mentioned, the housing features three large UV reactive windows. The one on top is especially large, which is quite alright because the inside of the power supply is rather neat and the heatsink canopy rather interesting to look at.

Despite being able to easily see the power supply from the outside, I felt the need to open the unit up as I usually do.

Since Antec holds the patent for LED fans and had begun enforcing their patent about a year ago, I've seen some companies have found some pretty interesting ways to illuminate their product. The Kingwin uses a series of LED's mounted to the outer edge of the largest of the three UV windows.

As I said, the insides of the power supply appear to be very neat. Opening the power supply up only makes this more evident. Superflower power supplies have a great layout and their modular PCB is one of the cleanest I've seen.

Now let's take a look at the assortment of cables Kingwin includes:

Cables included with power supply:

The 24-pin and 4-pin are fixed.  The 4-pin actually combines with a second 4-pin to create an 8-pin connector.  All other cables, Molex, floppy, SATA and PCIe, are modular.

The cables included with the Absolute Power are very nicely sleeved.

The layout of the DC output table on the PSU label is a bit unorthodox, but we can lay it out into one of those conventional DC output tables fairly easily:

Hmm....  Please note that 456 + 24.6 = 480.6W, not 520W.  So it seems that making the DC output table easier to read reveals a bit of a discrepancy with the actual output capability of this unit.

Now for the load tests. If you're curious how these results are derived, feel free to take a look at my SunMoon load tester.

The honeymoon appears to be over when the load tests are started. Right off the bat, with a mere 205W load, the 12V rail was starting off low... and it was only getting worse as the load on the 12V rails was increased. By the time I got to 433W, only 228W later and still well below the power supplies "520W" rating, the 12V rails dropped as much as .46V and at 11.42V, they were only .02V away from being out of spec.

The results from the crossload tests didn't look any better.

For someone that installs a power supply like the Kingwin Absolute Power on an older Socket A or Socket 370 motherboard that regulates CPU voltage off of the 5V rail; there’s the “High 5V crossload” test. By putting a really high 3.3V load (I use 20A) and 5V load (I use 20A,) without exceeding the power supply's 3.3V+5V combined maximum wattage rating, and a really low 12V load (since only drive motors and fans are really using the 12V1 rail and there’s no CPU using the 12V2, I use a mere 4A load on 12V1 rail and nothing on 12V2) I can exaggeratedly emulate an older, non-ATX12V motherboard. The results are usually a high 12V and low 5V.

During the high 12V load test, the 12V rails dropped way below tolerance. At 5%, 12V rails should drop no lower than 11.4V. These were at 11.29V.

The low 5V crossload test is the flipside of this. Let’s say you’re running a dual-core CPU and a pair of PCI-e video cards and rendering some serious graphics. 12V loads will be high (I use 14A each) but if you only have one hard drive, one optical and no USB devices, 5V may be very low (I use 3A.)

The results of the high 5V tests were even worse. The 12V rail jumped all of the way up to 12.90V! That's a whole .3V over spec.

Add to this the lack of PFC and a mediocre efficiency and I think it's fair to say this power supply may not be your best option... despite how stellar it looks on the outsides.

THE GOOD:

• Very nicely sleeved cables.
• UV reactive windows on three sides.
• Nice arrangement of blue LED's around window.

THE BAD:

• Drastic voltage drops under load.
• Failed BOTH crossload tests.
• Loud as hell once the fans kick in.

THE MEDIOCRE:

• Mediocre efficiency.
• One PCI-e, but I wouldn't use this in an SLI machine.

In my opinion, this power supply simply fell flat on it's face. No doubt it can handle big loads, but you can not load the 12V up independent of the 3.3V and 5V rail and that's simply a problem if you're considering a power supply for a modern PC with 12V CPU regulation and auxiliary video card power connectors.

Fortunately, I'm also in possession of a 600W Absolute Power unit. So I'm going to hook it up and see if it makes any difference. Even if the voltage doesn't drop .46V during a 228W load change... heck, if it stays within 5% of specification... it'll get a higher performance score.

We'll see!