MSI Turbostream 600 W Power Supply Review
Load Tests
Contents
We conducted several tests with this power supply, as described in the article Hardware Secrets Power Supply Test Methodology.
We tested this power supply under five different load patterns, trying to pull around 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, and 100% of its maximum capacity (actual percentage used listed under “% Max Load”), watching how the reviewed unit behaved under each load.
If you add all the power listed for each test, you may find a different value than what is posted under “Total” below. Since each output can vary slightly (e.g., the +5 V output working at +5.10 V), the actual total amount of power being delivered is slightly different than the calculated value. On the “Total” row we are using the real amount of power being delivered, as measured by our load tester.
+12V2 is the second +12V input from our load tester and during our tests it was connected to the power supply EPS12V connector, which is the only thing connected to the unit’s +12V2 rail. So this time +12V1 and +12V2 inputs from our load tester where really connected to the +12V1 and +12V2 rails from the reviewed power supply.
For the 100% load test we used two patterns. On the first one, test five, we respect the limit written on the power supply label for the maximum combined power we can pull from the +12 V outputs (480 W). In order to respect this limit we had to pull more power from +5 V and +3.3 V than we’d like so. So we also used another pattern, test six, where we pull more current/power from +12 V outputs (above the limit printed on the unit’s label) and less from the +5 V and +3.3 V outputs. The results you can see below.
| Input | Test 1 | Test 2 | Test 3 | Test 4 | Test 5 | Test 6 |
| +12V1 | 4 A (48 W) | 9 A (108 W) | 13 A (156 W) | 17.5 A (210 W) | 20 A (240 W) | 21.5 A (258 W) |
| +12V2 | 4 A (48 W) | 9 A (108 W) | 13 A (156 W) | 17.5 A (210 W) | 20 A (240 W) | 21.5 A (258 W) |
| +5V | 1 A (5 W) | 2 A (10 W) | 4 A (20 W) | 6 A (30 W) | 12 A (60 W) | 8 A (40 W) |
| +3.3 V | 1 A (3.3 W) | 2 A (6.6 W) | 4 A (13.2 W) | 6 A (19.8 W) | 12 A (39.6 W) | 8 A (26.4 W) |
| +5VSB | 1 A (5 W) | 1 A (5 W) | 1.5 A (7.5 W) | 2 A (10 W) | 2.5 A (12.5 W) | 2.5 A (12.5 W) |
| -12 V | 0.5 A (6 W) | 0.5 A (6 W) | 0.5 A (6 W) | 0.5 A (6 W) | 0.5 A (6 W) | 0.5 A (6 W) |
| Total | 116.2 W | 244.0 W | 358.3 W | 482.6 W | 596.4 W | 595.0 W |
| % Max Load | 19.4% | 40.7% | 59.7% | 80.4% | 99.4% | 99.2% |
| Room Temp. | 46.5° C | 46.4° C | 48.2° C | 51.7° C | 49.4° C | 51.9° C |
| PSU Temp. | 50.3° C | 50.3° C | 51.3° C | 54.4° C | 53.9° C | 56.6° C |
| Load Test | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass |
| Voltage Stability | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass |
| Ripple and Noise | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass |
| AC Power | 138 W | 283 W | 422 W | 581 W | 743 W | 741 W |
| Efficiency | 84.2% | 86.2% | 84.9% | 83.1% | 80.3% | 80.3% |
| Final Result | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass | Pass |
Bad reputation or not the fact was that we were able to pull 600 W at 52° C from this power supply with it working just fine! In fact we could pull even more than that, as we will discuss in the next page.
With Rosewill RD600N-2DB-SL we had a problem where our unit wouldn’t turn on when we tried to turn the unit on with the load tester configured to pull 600 W then the unit was hot. This didn’t happen with MSI Turbostream 600 W, probably showing us that the two 80 mm fans were cooling this unit better than a single 120 mm device.
Efficiency was excellent, especially for a product on this price range. If you pull between 40% and 60% of the unit’s maximum labeled power (between 240 W and 360 W) you will see efficiency between 85% and 86%, which is a terrific number. When we pulled 600 W from this unit efficiency dropped a lot, but still above the 80% mark, which is what we want.
Voltage stability, on the other hand, was the highlight of this product, with all outputs between 3% of their nominal voltage in almost all tests (the only exception was -12 V, which was outside this range when we pulled 600 W from the reviewed product), which is excellent (ATX standard allows voltages to be up to 5% from their nominal values – 10% in the case of the -12 V output).
Noise level was higher than the noise level found on good power supplies, but still inside ATX specs. Below you can see noise level for the test number six.
Interesting enough noise level at +12 V was lower than the one presented by Rosewill RD600N-2DB-SL, but on the other hand noise level at +5 V and +3.3 V was higher.
Figure 15: Noise level at +12V1 with power supply delivering 595 W (58 mV).
Figure 16: Noise level at +12V2 with power supply delivering 595 W (64.6 mV).
Figure 17: Noise level at +5 V with power supply delivering 595 W (36.4 mV).
Figure 18: Noise level at +3.3 V with power supply delivering 595 W (30.2 mV).
Now let’s see if we could pull even more power from this unit and our tests of the power supply protections.