Akasa Essential Power 300 W Power Supply Review

Introduction

Although it is an entry-level power supply, the Akasa Essential Power 300 W (AK-PD030FG) comes with active PFC circuit, automatic voltage selection, and 80 Plus standard certification. Funny enough, this unit isn’t listed at Akasa’s website.

This power supply is manufactured by a company called Sirfa, which is a different manufacturer from the Essential Power 350 W from the same manufacturer.

Figure 1: Akasa Essential Power 300 W power supply

Figure 2: Akasa Essential Power 300 W power supply

The Akasa Essential Power 300 W is 5 ½” (14 cm) deep, using a 120-mm sleeve bearing fan on its bottom (Globe Fan S1202512L). As mentioned, this unit has active PFC, as you can see by the absence of a 115 V/230 V switch in Figure 1, being based on the outdated half-bridge topology.

No modular cabling system is provided and cables don’t have a nylon protection. The cables included are:

• Main motherboard cable with a 20/24-pin connector, 16.9” (43 cm) long
• One cable with one ATX12V connector, 17.3” (44 cm) long
• One cable with three SATA power connectors, 17.3” (44 cm) to the first connector, 5.9” (15 cm) between connectors
• One cable with two standard peripheral power connectors, 16.9” (43 cm) to the first connector, 5.9” (15 cm) between connectors
• One cable with three standard peripheral power connectors and one floppy disk drive power connector, 16.9” (43 cm) to the first connector, 5.9” (15 cm) between connectors

On the good side, all cables use 18 AWG wires, which is the minimum recommended gauge. On the other hand, the cable configuration and reduced number of connectors and lack of a video card power connector clearly shows that we are dealing with an entry-level product. Although this unit has three SATA power connectors, you may have trouble installing a SATA hard drive and a SATA optical drive, depending on the distance between them inside your case.

Figure 3: Cables

Let’s now take an in-depth look inside this power supply.