Connectivity can be sometimes a more determining factor when selecting your best case power supply, and from our today's contestants it is the Nexus Value 430 which does a slightly better in my opinion.The Coolermaster unit features only one molex cable, even with molex cables being lesser used nowadays I'd say it's always handy to have your product support older setups in case someone has to renew its PSU. It also lacks a second PCIe power connector, the 4870X2 in my setup for example need two. If you're lucky you get extra molex-to-PCIe cable adapter with you VGA, in that case you still might be in trouble since there is only one molex cable. I might be drawing a more extreme scenario which most of you probable won't have to deal with, but it is not unthinkable that someone else is having the same issues as I had.

In cable length it is hard to say which one does best, Coolermaster gives you a longer CPU power cable while in most other cases it is Nexus offers slightly longer cables. In the medium-height testing case I did not find any trouble concerning cable length.

Conclusive thoughts

Let's put all off our thoughts together and make a final judgement. First there is the electrical performance in where both off our contestants scored evenly good (apart of the PF issue we witnessed with the Coolermaster PSU). The volt rails remain stable with the 3.3V and 5V only slightly undervolting at high load. At 12V ripple noise Nexus does a slightly better job than Coolermaster. Both manufacturers opted for a single rail design which as only for the good of customer: no hassle with evenly powering each volt rail...

In the temperature/noise charts we finally see some larger differences between the two, where Nexus has clearly focused on keeping the noise levels as low as possible Coolermaster has chosen for more variation in fan speed based on the electrical load. What folows is that the Nexus Value 430 is a very silent power supply even at full load, thanks to its compact size it may find its way in a wide range of desktop computers going from htpc's to compact desktops and even full towers. The highest drawback is probable lesser protection circuitry and lesser airflow, the Coolermaster GX450 runs around 5°C less hot but is also noisy at high load.

The length of the cables was of no issue to us, nexus features slightly longer cables for the peripherals while Coolermaster offers a longer CPU power cable. All together the mayor drawback I noticed here is the combination of 1x PCIe power connector and 1x molex power cable found on the Coolermaster GX450. Not only dou you need to use a molex-to-PCIe cable adapter when owning a high-end graphics card, take note that this cable adapter will take two out of three available molex connectors, add in a fan controllers and you're done with adding more molex powered peripherals (unless adding some kind of molex connector hub).

Coolermaster GX450:

price: € 43,45

warranty: 5 years

Nexus Value 430:

price: € 53,15

warranty: 2 years

The final verdict is that the Nexus Value does a better job overall, but do take account that it comes at a 120% higher price than the Coolermaster GX450 while Coolermaster also throws in a much longer warranty period. For many desktops both PSU's will be good enough, we even found them good enough to use inside a high-end setup which exists out of a Quad Core cpu and dual GPU graphics card, if you want few extra connectivity or a more silent setup than the Nexus Value 430 is clearly the better of the two.

That's it for now, I hope we could provide you with the needed info, before you go I would like to thank Nexus and Coolermaster for sending us their reviewing samples, and especially Coolermaster having us over at their Venlo testing lab.