Nesteq ASM Xzero 600W Power Supply Review

Test Setup
There are many different aspects to testing a power supply from the regulation, ripple, idle and load tests and even efficiency, but sadly only certain tests can be run on the hardware that we possess. The likes of efficiency testing needs very expensive hardware to be able to measure the results accurately and these are normally priced in the thousands. Due to us not having this equipment, there are only certain tests that we can run.

To perform our tests, we try to push the power supply to its limits, testing the stability of the rails. We run the power supply at idle and load wattages and measure the voltages on the 3.3V, 5V and 12V rails (with a calibrated Flukemeter) as well as any other 12V rails that the unit may have.

Our test system consists of the following components:

NesteQ Xzero 600W PSU
AMD Phenom II X6 1055T @ 3.5GHz
Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H
8Gb Crucial Ballistix Tracer @1600MHz
AMD Radeon HD 6950 2GB
Hitachi Deskstar 500Gb
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

[HR][/HR]We will start with testing the 3.3V rail, which doesn’t cater for many of the computer’s components in this day and age. They are generally left for higher voltage rails, mainly the 12V rail.

The 3.3V rail is way within the safe voltage range, which ensures that clean power is going to you intricate motherboard components such as your USB controller which require precise voltages to prevent damage.

5V Rail
[HR][/HR]Next in our tests was the 5V rail, which being very similar to the 3.3V, doesn’t power the higher end components of a computer system but is still a vital part of a power supply.

Again, the stability is way within ATX standards and is quite remarkable when compared to most of these much newer PSUs. Again, the most important job of the 5V rail is to provide clean power to motherboard components, which is does flawlessly.

12V1 Rail
[HR][/HR]The third test is for the most important rail; the 12V. Some brands opt for multiple 12V rails to distribute the power evenly, and to increase stability by having components such as the CPU and GPU running from different rails, thus decreasing the load on the rail.

12V2 Rail
[HR][/HR]This PSU has more than one 12V rail to give extra stability across the system. We test this rail in exactly the same way as the 12V1 rail.

12V3 Rail
[HR][/HR]Next up is the 12V3 rail which acts in much the same way as the other 12V rails whilst giving extra stability.

12V4 Rail
[HR][/HR]Lastly we test the 12V4 rail, which once again gives extra stability to the 12V rails.

This is the most important test, and the Xzero performed pretty well. The voltage is a little higher than it should be, however this is way within the safe limit and I would be more uncomfortable using a PSU that was throwing out 11.8V as undervolting can cause much more damage than overvolting. The main thing is that it is supplying a fantastic amount of power and the voltage remained stable throughout testing. Although it’s not quite as stable as some of the newer PSUs we are using for comparison, the Xzero is fantastic and reflects the overall quality surrounding everything we have looked at with this unit. It has to be noted however, that when the fan is manually switched on and ASM mode disengages the voltages took an unexpected drop of almost a volt on idle.