Introduction
Contents
Huntkey is a brand that isn’t known by the North-American audience but it is somewhat popular in other countries, due to the low cost of its products. Huntkey manufactures some power supplies for other brands sold in the US, in particular BestBuy-owned Dynex and Rocketfish. We completely dissected their Green Star 450 W (LW-6450SG) model and tested to see if it can really deliver its labeled power. Read on.
Figure 1: Huntkey Green Star 450 W (LW-6450SG) power supply.
Figure 2: Huntkey Green Star 450 W (LW-6450SG) power supply.
As you can see, this power supply uses a big 140 mm fan on its bottom (the power supply is upside down in Figure 2) and a big mesh on the rear side where traditionally we have an 80 mm fan. We like this design as it provides not only a better airflow but the power supply produces less noise, as the fan can rotate at a lower speed in order to produce the same airflow as an 80 mm fan.
This power supply, however, doesn’t have active PFC. In practical terms this only means that Huntkey can’t sell this product in Europe (you can read more about PFC on our Power Supply Tutorial).
As for efficiency, Huntkey says on the product box that “efficiency exceeds 85% under full load.” On their website, however, a funny thing happens. They say “85% high efficiency performance” but under “Output Spec” they say “70% min at full load 230 VAC/50 Hz, 50% min at 30 W load 230 VAC/50 Hz,” which makes much more sense. Of course we will test to see if this is true or not.
The higher the efficiency the better – an 80% efficiency means that 80% of the power pulled from the power grid will be converted in power on the power supply outputs and only 20% will be wasted. This translates into less consumption from the power grid (as less power needs to be pulled in order to generate the same amount of power on its outputs), meaning lower electricity bills – compare to less than 70% on regular power supplies.
This power supply comes with four peripheral power cables: one auxiliary power cable for video cards with 6-pin connector, one cable containing three standard peripheral power connectors and one floppy disk drive power connector, one cable containing three standard peripheral connectors and one cable containing two SATA power connectors.
The number of connectors is enough for a mainstream user that won’t have more than two SATA devices willing to build an entry-level or mainstream PC with a good video card. However, users with more than two SATA devices (i.e., more than two hard drives) will need to use adapters.
The main motherboard cable uses a 20/24-pin connector, and this power supply has one EPS12V connector that can be transformed into an ATX12V connector, as you can see in Figure 3.
Figure 3: EPS12V connector can be transformed into an ATX12V connector.
On the aesthetic side Huntkey used nylon sleeving only on the main motherboard cable, and it doesn’t come from inside the power supply housing.
But the main problem with the cables used on this power supply is that they use wires thinner than we’d like to see. We think all power supplies should use 18 AWG wires, with high wattage units using 16 AWG ones, but on this power supply all peripheral cables are 20 AWG, including the video card cable. The motherboard cables, however, are 18 AWG.
A curious detail is that the UL registration number at this power supply label is E181356, which belongs to "SHENZHEN CHI YUAN INDUSTRIAL CO LTD", which is Huntkey’s registered company name. But on the product box the UL registration that is printed is E175472, which belongs to Fore Point, a company from another group. Of course the number printed on the box is wrong, but this a very strange error.