Huntkey Balance King 5000 500 W Power Supply Review

Introduction

Certain power supply series from Huntkey (like V-Power and Green Star) are labeled with their peak wattage instead of their continuous wattage. So far in our reviews only Titan 650 W (sold in the US as the first version of Best Buy’s Rocketfish 700 W) and Jumper 550 didn’t explode during our tests. We’ve already reviewed the 450 W version from Balance King series, which also exploded in a very unusual way. Let’s see if the 500 W model will survive our tests.

Figure 1: Huntkey Balance King 5000 500 W power supply.

Figure 2: Huntkey Balance King 5000 500 W power supply.

Huntkey Balance King 5000 500 W is 5 ½” (140 mm) deep, using a 120 mm fan on its bottom.

It is very important to note that Balance King 5000 uses a different internal project from Balance King 4500: it comes with active PFC circuit, feature not available on the 450 W model. It, however, still uses the obsolete half-bridge topology, just like it happens with the 450 W model.

No modular cabling system is available and only the main motherboard cable has a nylon protection, that doesn’t come from inside the unit. The main motherboard cable and the ATX12V/EPS12V cable use 18 AWG wires, but all other wires (including the ones from the video card cables) are 20 AWG, i.e., thinner than the recommended. The cables included are:

• Main motherboard cable with a 20/24-pin connector, 20 1/8” (51 cm) long.
• One cable with two ATX12V connectors that together form one EPS12V connector, 20 7/8” (53 cm) long.
• Two cables with one six/eight-pin connector for video cards each, 20 1/8” (51 cm) long.
• Two cables with two SATA power connectors and two standard peripheral power connector, 20 1/8” (51 cm) to the first connector and 5 7/8” (15 cm) between connectors.
• One cable with four standard peripheral power connectors and one floppy disk drive power connector, 20 1/8” (51 cm) to the first connector and 5 7/8” (15 cm) between connectors.

The number of connectors is satisfactory for a 500 W product and this model has as an advantage over the 450 W model that the two video card power connectors are located on individual cables.

Figure 3: Cables.

Now let’s take an in-depth look inside this power supply.