Vantec Stealth 520W Power Supply Review
It's pretty rare these days to look at a powersupply and be impressed with
its appearance. Now granted, what's on the inside of a powersupply is ten times as
important as how the equipment looks, but with case modding and highly detailed systems
it's a shame to install just another well-made, gray steel powersupply.
Vantec must have heard the call, because they have
recently released the all black VAN-520A powersupply. With 520 watts of power,
an armful of connectors, and some low-noise features, the unit has an impressive
rap sheet. Add to that its three fans with wire grills and a mesh-wrapped set of
24-pin ATX power cables and you have something pretty interesting for your
computer.
The Vantec VAN-520A
comes with a 24-pin to 20-pin ATX power adaptor so it can easily plug into
standard desktop boards, as well as more power-hungry WTX systems. The list of
connectors goes like this: (1) 24-pin ATX, (1) 8-pin, (1) 4-pin, (1) 6-pin
Auxiliary, (9) Molex, (2) FDD connectors and a 24-to-20 pin ATX converter
cable. The cables all use gold-plated crimped
connectors.
In addition to the rather large and useful set of
connectors (when was the last time you used a powersupply with an 8-pin
connector?) there were a few things on the rear of the aluminum case which drew
our attention. Alongside the standard computer power plug we find a
standard switched AC power socket. We call the socket
"switched" because if you hit the power switch on the rear of the Power Supply
Unit (PSU), power to the socket is turned off.
If the
computer is shut down, the socket will also get turned off. Vantec suggests
hooking up a power bar to it, so when the computer is shut down, all the
peripherals connected to the power bar will also get turned off. 
This makes
sense for things like printers, routers and scanners, and is a useful way to
save a bit of electricity with devices that don't have a natural 'standby'
mode.
The power cables
are nice and long which is great for those tall tower cases.
The temperature controlled fans (when set to automatic) will run at between 900-2200RPM until
the internal temperature sensor reaches 50 degrees Celsius. At temperatures above that speed, the fans
will max out at approximately 2500RPM, according to the Vantec
documentation.
With the powersupply running in silent mode, we
measured its noise levels at approximately 47.5 dBA. With the VAN-520A running
at full levels that noise signature rose to approximately 53.7 dBA.
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