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Review on πŸ’‘ Raidmax Hybrid 530W Power Supply RX-530SS – High-performance ATX12V/EPS12V Solution by James Trapkin

Revainrating 2 out of 5

5V rail problem after a year. The guarantee is no longer valid. But maybe.

READ FIRST! The 5V voltage dropped to around 4.7V which caused problems with the internal DVD writer NOT reading or writing DVDs. It took me a while to figure it out! The only way to restore power was to disconnect some of the internal components like a couple of RAID disks and voila, the DVD burner was working properly again! them with the same results. I need to replace this PSU and it only has a 1 year warranty so I'm screwed unless Raidmax makes an exception. As you know, as I mentioned below, it takes time for some defects to appear and that day has come. Unfortunately I will never buy this brand again if Raidmax blows my mind. Build Raidmax, I had to disable my RAID HD (two HDs). Irony of fate, isn't it? A kind of Raid-max.Bah! UNTIL AFTER THIS message, Raidmax still hasn't confused me. Maybe all is right with the world. In fact, they're sending me another one. Of course I have to pay them for shipping and he recommended USPS which he thought would cost me about $10. Thank you to everyone who read this. I used to say: It's quiet. It has a cool blue color that can be turned off. It worked right away (I tested it with a Fluke DMM first) and my system is very stable. Warm air doesn't blow, which is good. The only reason I don't LOVE it and give it 5 stars is because the 12V rail was read from 12.67V to 12.74V either in the BIOS or with the monitoring software in Windows. Using my trusty voltmeter, however, the readings were lower and within specification. Normally the voltage is around 12.1 or 12.2. The tolerance is assumed to be 5%. This does NOT really bother me because the motherboard has its own voltage regulator like all decent motherboards. My system is an unlocked I5 processor overclocked from 2.8 to 3.3 GHz. I have 2 gigabytes of dual channel DDR3 memory (2 sticks with 1 gigabyte each) and ONE graphics card, NVidia GeForce GTS 250. MOBO is a gigabyte P55A-UD4P. I have 2 small 150GB SATA 1s in a Raid 0 array so the capacity is doubled and treated like a 300GB HDD. I have a DVD burner and finally Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit. I play WOW religiously with no problems. No blue screens and no issues with this PSU and 530W is all I need. Recommended for medium systems. If you have a great system, get a 650W PSU or higher. UPDATE: The PSU fan is starting to make noise when heating up and I've used this computer very little. The fan makes a kind of howling noise, not too loud but loud enough to be annoying. The PSU is still NOT heating up (currently not being used for gaming) and it's January 2014 and it's still working. so that's good! It doesn't seem to matter who you buy from as I had a flagship Corsair 750 modular PSU that was obsolete after 2 years. Good capacitors and semiconductors such as diodes and voltage regulator ICs, current draw, overload protection and no cold solder joints are essential for the longevity of a power supply. Sometimes it takes years to detect failures, so it's hard to say how reliable this or that power supply will be. I haven't seen the power supply for the last time in many years until it overloads and the fan fails. So far so good with it, except for the fan whine lol.

Pros
  • Hexflo honeycomb cutouts for maximum airflow
Cons
  • unreliable