Mushkin Volta 600 W Power Supply Review

Conclusions

Mushkin Volta 600 W presented a performance similar to OCZ StealthXStream 600 W and like this model from OCZ, it may be a good buy for the average user that won’t be pulling the full 600 W from it.

This unit from OCZ is currently being sold for USD 75 in the US (or USD 55 if you can get the Newegg.com USD 20 mail-in rebate). Volta 600 W will arrive on the market next week with a USD 90 suggested price tag, but usually on-line stores sell PC power supplies for less than the manufacturer suggested price. If Newegg.com offers it for USD 85 or less, it can be a good buy, since it has a modular cabling system, feature not present on the OCZ model (of course if you can get the mail-in rebate from StealthXStream 600 W this other unit from OCZ is a no-brainer). At USD 85 it competes with Seventeam ST-650P-AF, which has a little bit higher maximum wattage with comparable performance but without a modular cabling system.

Efficiency peaked practically 84%, which is good enough for our buy recommendation, even though it can’t deliver efficiency above 80% under full load (and it shuts down when pulling 600 W at very high temperatures). Since most users won’t use a mainstream product like this at its full load, we don’t see a problem here.

We’d like this unit better if it had one extra SATA power connector and one extra peripheral power connector and presented lower ripple/noise levels at +5 V and +3.3 V outputs while the unit is delivering 600 W.

Of course there are better 600 W power supplies on the market, but not at the same price range.