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HuntKey HK500-13BP 500W Power Supply Review

Cases & PSU/Power Supplies by Berry @ 2007-01-18

And they came from the East, a thousand strong. Like a storm, they ravaged the lands. Unknown, exotic, different than ever been seen. One sat down at my table, and ate, drank and laughed. We´re all so different, yet all the same. HuntKey, a Chinese company let us test drive their 500W Power Supply.

More Performance Tests and Conclusion

More Performance Tests

Now on with some more heavy-loading. Migrating the Huntkey to my gaming-rig, which consists of the following components:

Opteron 185 @ 3Ghz stock V ~135W

DFI CFX3200-DR ~70W

Team Special CE5 @231 2-3-2-7 ~30W

Sapphire X1900XTX ~120W

NEC 3540 ~20W

Samsung 1648 DVD ~20W

Maxtor Max21 320Gb ~15W

4x 12cm Noiseblocker SX2 ~35W

Though this isn’t the heaviest rig you can imagine, it’s quite represent able as an upper mainstream gaming rig. It generates a fair amount of load, 445W max, but more important, it demands quite a lot from the 12V-lines.

Running 3dmark06, combined with a run of S&M 1.5.2 on Core0, and a copy of 1Gb from disk to burner, filled with 3-4mb pictures, resulted in a consumed power (Peak) of 2,21Amps, giving almost 500W out of the wall. All rails remained stable.

Madshrimps (c)

Doing some more shifting of pieces and finally having a Crossfire-setup available, let’s give it ago. Using the same setup:

Opteron 185 @ 3Ghz stock V ~135W

DFI CFX3200-DR ~70W

Team Special CE5 @231 2-3-2-7 ~30W

Sapphire X1950XTX CFE ~135W

Sapphire X1950XTX ~120W

NEC 3540 ~20W

Samsung 1648 DVD ~20W

Maxtor Max21 320Gb ~15W

4x 12cm Noiseblocker SX2 ~35W

Giving the above ratings, 595W, this is a definitive NO-GO. But what the heck, they don’t supply that extra cable for nothing, right. Boot-up went without any trouble, and running desktop-mode worked fine, though when entering 3D-mode, the 12V rails drop immediately below 11,5V and the system shuts itself down. After approximate 1 minute, I tried to boot up again, and all worked fine. Kicking all settings back to stock, and running only with 1 hard-drive didn’t change much, and resulted in the same shutdown.

After taking out the X1950XTX board, I could run all tests without any trouble, so the extra 15W, used by the X1950XTX Cross Fire Edition did not give any trouble. During these tests, I noticed for the first time the fan speeding up a little, though noise never rose above the level of the Silverstone case-fans.

Some thoughts and info

Though some inquiries were made by me, regarding the total combined power rating for the 12V lines, which aren’t stated in the specs, and some technical points, answers still have to be given. This seems to be due to the earthquake, last week, as all communications are slow or impossible at the moment.

Contacting the importer/distributor, http://www.atecsystem.nl/, they couldn’t answer my questions, but they added a few points for the upcoming revision.

The power rating for the 3,3V-5V-5Vvsb is going to be raised, due to some minor changes.
Furthermore is the assortment of the connectors going to be changed, with more SATA connectors.

Giving them a short brief of my findings, they came up with some nice news. HuntKey is working on a SLI/Crossfire capable supply, ranging in the 600/700W range.The first engineering samples are being tested, as we speak. More on this to follow soon, I hope.

Conclusion

Looking at the overall picture, I’m quiet impressed by this power supply, with its roots in mainland China. Most brands manufacture or get them manufactured there, but a Chinese brand presenting itself, and using its own name is rare.

Looking at the box, and the first impression of the outer looks of this unit, it's clearly not your one in a thousand, grey cardboard box metal-finish one. It wouldn't be misplaced on a shelf, besides the bigger brands.

As for the internals, they are more than up to standard, using some unique features and easy adaptable for consumer wishes. The use of a 14cm fan, combined with the good layout, make operations almost silent. With their main target-group, being the on-the-corner-computer shop, building pre-assembled systems, and the replacement market in these shops, the 2 minor shortcomings are explainable.

If this is what is coming, and all mayor OEM-builders start launching supplies under there own brand the future looks good for all end-users.

PRO
Nice finish and good looks
Clean internal layout
Low Noise Level

CON
No power cord included
only 20AWG cabling used
Not all cables meshed

Thank you for reading and thank you, Atec System, for giving me the opportunity to test the HuntKey.

Madshrimps (c)

Comment from EsaT @ 2007/01/19

They surely know how to give good first impression:

Quote:

MTBF 50,000 hours at 25°C

"Standard" is ~100 000 hours at 50°C...

Design is old, uselessly overpowered 5V with 12V being seriously underpowered and efficiency is low.

Quote:

upper mainstream gaming rig. It generates a fair amount of load, 445W max...

resulted in a consumed power (Peak) of 2,21Amps, giving almost 500W out of the wall.

You forgot that this PSU converts some serious amount of electricity into kinetic energy of particles aka heat.
Real load on PSU is more inline with 350W because of low efficiency. (500W *0.7)

You must have overclocked those NoiseBlocker fans seriously to get that much overshooting consumption!
http://img.clubic.com/photo/00069702.jpg

PS. Next time take photo of PSUs spec sticker from slightly oblique angle to avoid washing of highlights because of reflecting light of flash. (remember law of reflection)

Comment from Berry @ 2007/01/21

First off all, read the review on the silverstone ST40EF,
http://www.madshrimps.be/gotoartik.php?articID=524
and the stated ratings, and measurements there.
I clearly admit, this isn`t the most reliable way off measuring, but I`m working on that.

As for the fan`s, I`ve taken the liberty of verifying the stated power-consumption, by separately measuring all four fan`s using a single connector.
Free flow(free on desk): 2,3A combined(12,12V)=27,88W
Build in system: 2,71A combined(12,11V)=32,81W
Power-on peak:3,41A using peak-measurement.
As for the fan`s used, they are the SX2-Pro(Black)
http://www.noiseblocker.de/en/produk...fan-sx2pro.php
and of a slightly different build than the ones on their site.

Comment from jort @ 2007/01/28

Nice review berry

Typo? "
CON
No power card included"

Cord?

Comment from jmke @ 2007/01/28

Fixed, thanks

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