Mushkin HP-580 580W Power Supply Review

Table of Contents:

Intro

1- Packaging and Accessories
2- Exterior Impressions
3- Cables and Connectors
4- Interior Impressions
5- Output Characteristics

Performance Tests

6-Efficiency Testing:
7- Voltage Regulation Testing:
8- +12V AC Ripple Testing
9- Heat and Noise

10- Conclusion


Product Number: 550250
Price: $86.70 @ Directcanada
Packaging: Retail
Fan Size: 1x 120mm
Warranty: 5 Years
Availability: Now


Cable Lengths and Connectors:

- Molex: 6 Connectors (modular)
o 2x 26” (2 connectors)
o 2x 18” (1 connector)

- SATA: 8 Connectors (modular)
o 2x 41” length (4 connectors each)

- PCI-E 6-Pin: 1 Connectors (modular)
o 1x 17” length

- PCI-E 6+2 Pin: 1 Connector (modular)
o 1x 17” length

- 4-Pin Floppy: 2 Connector
o 2x 26” length (at end of one 18” Molex cable)

- 20+4 ATX Connector: 17” length

- 4+4 Pin CPU connector: 17” length


Mushkin has made a name for themselves among ram manufacturers as a company which offers high-performance products to consumers at quite fair prices. In the past, they have stuck exclusively to ram but in the last year or so, they have released a lineup of Topower-built modular power supplies in 550W, 580W and 650W outputs. Originally, these power supplies were a bit on the expensive side but Mushkin has now brought down their prices to much more reasonable levels. In this review we will be looking at the HP580 580W power supply which is the only Mushkin power supply we have not reviewed yet.

Some of you may be wondering about the point of releasing a 580W power supply which is so close in specifications to the 550W unit but priced $20 higher. This power supply actually has few benefits over the 550W model other than the addition of Active PFC but it still carries a phenomenal price of about $86. At this price-point there are very few competitors that have the same very complete feature list which includes modular cables, APFC and a 5-year warranty. All of Mushkin's power supplies are made by Topower. Topower-built units we have reviewed in the past performed admirably and if this one holds up to our high expectations, it will prove to be a champion in the price / performance category.


1- Packaging and Accessories


In typical Mushkin tradition, the HP-580 is packaged in an absolutely massive white and green box. We have seen this same packaging with the other two Mushkin units we have reviewed in the past with the only distinguishing feature being the picture of the power supply.

Once the box is opened, we are greeted with another box which contains the modular cables and other accessories. In order to get to the power supply itself, this box must be removed.


When looking down on the power supply, we see the typical Topower packaging with the “Open” sticker on the bubble wrap that encases the HP-580. All in all, the packaging on this Mushkin power supply looks ready to handle nearly any shipping SNAFU that you can think of.






When looking at the exterior of the HP-580 it is nearly impossible to distinguish it from its little brother, the HP-550. There is an off-center mounted 120mm fan which has Mushkin-green colored LEDs in addition to Mushkin logo on the fan grille. The housing itself is also a bit long when compared to other, non-modular power supplies we have tested in the past. While this increase in length does not impact too much when installing it into a larger case, care has to be taken when installing it into a more cramped standard ATX-sized enclosure.



The finish on the housing of the HP-580 is an absolutely brilliant mirrored dark satin powder coating. While it looks great, this finish is also scratch-prone and seems to be a magnet for fingerprints. If you are careful when installing it into your case, you should be fine but any bump on the inside of your case will probably mean that the finish is scratched.

This power supply also has a nifty little feature called “Rail Fusion” which denotes this power supply’s capability to combine its 4 +12V rails into a single +12V rail if the loads demanded it. Basically, Rail Fusion would kick in if one of the +12V rails reaches its OCP limiter. While this gives the benefits of a single-rail power supply while sticking to Intel’s ATX12V standards, one must wonder why Mushkin didn’t just go with a single +12V rail to begin with. Many people (including this reviewer) will think this is nothing more than a gimmick.


3- Cables and Connectors


All of the cables on the Mushkin HP-580 are completely sleeved to perfection. The peripheral connectors are sleeved in a tight-fitting yet easily manipulated weaved sleeving while the PCI-E cables have the usual Topower-exclusive plasticized sleeving. Unfortunately, none of the most important connectors are of an acceptable length. With more and more cases being released with bottom-mounted power supply locations, it has become important for power supply manufacturers to release units with ATX and CPU cables which can reach to their respective places on the motherboard. On one hand, this power supply’s PCI-E cables are far too short to reach the bottom-mounted GPU in an SLI configuration when using a larger case with a top-mounted power supply. Indeed, when installed into a Gigabyte Aurora 570 case, the PCI-E connector refused to reach our second 8800GTS. On the other hand, both the ATX and CPU connectors were a good 3” too short when installing this power supply into a TJ10 case. It should be noted that the fitment issues with the PCI-E cables were also due to another Topower-exclusive feature which will be discussed shortly.

The modular connector interface is the standard fare with 6-pin connectors used for attaching all of the cables. The two blue interfaces are reserved for the PCI-E connectors while the other connectors on the housing are used for the other peripheral connectors. This interface is a definite plus for this power supply considering some of the unintuitive stabs we have seen at modular interfaces from some other manufacturers.


The new shipments of the HP-580 have been updated to include a single 6+2 pin PCI-E connector. In addition, if you already own this power supply and you buy an 8-pin equipped graphics card, you can contact Mushkin’s customer support team and they will send your out one of these connectors for a nominal fee. We must applaud Mushkin for this inclusion since there are still far too many manufacturers who are releasing new model power supplies without the 8-pin PCI-E cable.

Both of the pictures above show one of the major annoyances with this power supply: the EMI filters on the PCI-E cables. Supposedly these filters are designed to isolate the cables against electromagnetic interference and thus improve voltage regulation. We don’t think they make an iota of difference when it comes to the performance of the HP580 as you will see in the tests. The only area in which these “unique” additions make any difference in is their contribution to make cable routing nearly impossible. These filters make the PCI-E cables’ last 4” extremely rigid which makes attaching the already-too-short cables to your graphics card(s) a lesson in futility.


4- Interior Impressions


After seeing the interior of another Topower-built unit in our Tagan 2-Force II review, the interior of the Mushkin HP-580 power supply looks a bit lacking. To tell you the truth, the interior of this power supply looks quite a bit LESS robust than the HP-550 which we reviewed sometime back.. Attention should be given to the primary filtering stage which looks cut-down compared to other 550W-600W units we have seen in the past. On the other hand, it is good to see that the ATX and CPU cables are completely sleeved all the way into the casing of the power supply.

Special mention needs to be made of the soldering job done on the modular interface because the quality of the workmanship it is absolutely atrocious. It is extremely important to have clean power transfer from the interior wiring onto the modular interface terminals and this is done by clean soldering points on the PCB. Unfortunately, when looking at an interface that looks like this it is easy to recall first generation of modular power supplies that got a bum-rap due to large voltage drops caused by shoddy modular interfaces.


The primary capacitor on the HP-580 is from Toshin Kogyo which is rated at 85°C while the caps on the secondary are all Jenpos. The Toshin caps seem to have a pretty good record all-around but the Jenpos are very rare outside of Topower-built power supplies. Neither of these caps are what you would call high quality but they do not have any knocks against them either.


5- Output Characteristics


For a more budget-oriented power supply, the Mushkin HP-580 has very good amperage ratings on the +12V rails. Having 456W available on the +12V rails alone shows that Mushkin took a good look at the +12V dependence of most components and designed their power supply’s outputs accordingly. This is also where the Rail Fusion comes into play since it will give you that full 465W wherever you need your components demand it. If this would be a "multi-rail" unit, the second a rail would hit 20A the OCP circuit would kick in and shut down the power supply. Luckily, through the “miracle” of Rail Fusion you will have the full 38A to play with.


PERFORMANCE TESTS:

Instruments Used:

Belkin 1100VA UPS
Rexus PSU tester
Fluke 187 Digital Multimeter
UPM Power Meter
USB Instruments Stingray USB O-Scope
USB Instruments Differential oscilloscope probe

Test Platform:
DFI Lanparty SLI-DR Expert
AMD X2 3800+ (at 2.6Ghz)
2GB Corsair PC4000 Ram (at 520Mhz)
EVGA 8800GTS (Stock, OC 650/1900, SLI, SLI OC 650/1800)
1x Samsung Spinpoint 250GB SATA Hard drive
Gigabyte 3D Aurora 570 Case
Pioneer DVD Writer
4X 120mm Noctua NF-S12-1200 fans

Important note:

Because of processor limitation, 8800GTS cards in SLI are seriously bottlenecked in Company of Heroes. Thus, while they still drew quite a high amount of power, when coupled with a higher end system or playing at higher resolutions they would probably draw much more.

One way or another, I would NOT recommend anything under a good 700W power supply for a pair of 8800GTS cards. These tests are done as benchmarks ONLY.


6-Efficiency Testing:

To test efficiency, plugged in the UPM power meter to the Belkin UPS and the highest sustained AC power consumption was recorded over the 1 hour test period. All tests were run twice and if there were anomalies, the test was run a third time. All “Startup” results are the peak power output required while powering on the computer between the POST screen and a usable WindowsXP desktop.

The first efficiency test’s “Load” value was done with an overclocked processor and the graphics card at stock speeds while running Company of Heroes. The values are the highest peak power draw over the 1 hour test period.

The second efficiency test’s “Load” value was done with an overclocked processor and a heavily overclocked (both 2D and 3D overclocked to the same value) graphics card. Company of Heroes was played while Orthos was running on the processor in the background.

The third efficiency test was run with 2 8800GTS 320MB cards in SLI running at stock speeds with the processor overclocked to 2.6Ghz. Company of Heroes was then run for 1 hour to determine load values.

The final test was run with 2 8800GTS 320MB cards running in SLI and overclocked to 650/1800. Company of Heroes was played for 30 minutes while the overclocked processor (at 2.6Ghz) ran Orthos in the background. In addition, HDtach was looped in the background and a full DVD was burned as well.


Efficiency Test #1




Efficiency Test #2




Efficiency Test #3




Efficiency Test #4



The Mushkin HP580 put up a valiant fight against its more-expensive competitors and had quite good efficiency numbers throughout the tests. The results posted were very respectable considering the non-APFC HP-550 was by far not the most efficient power supply when we tested it a few months back.


7- Voltage Regulation Testing:

To test voltage regulation I used the same tests as the efficiency. All tests were done over two tests of 1 hour where the voltage drops were logged with the Fluke 187 multimeter. The multimeter was installed directly on a connected PCI-E connector for the +12V tests and a SATA connector for the +5V and +3.3V tests. The tests were as follows:

The “Idle” value was done with an overclocked processor and the graphics card at stock speeds while running the Windows Desktop.

The “Load” value was done with an overclocked processor and the graphics card at stock speeds while running Company of Heroes.

The “Load (OC)” value was done with an overclocked processor and a heavily overclocked (both 2D and 3D overclocked to the same value) graphics card. Company of Heroes was played while Orthos was running on the processor in the background.

The “Load (SLI)” value was run with 2 8800GTS 320MB cards in SLI running at stock speeds with the processor overclocked to 2.6Ghz. Company of Heroes was then run for 1 hour to determine load values.

The “SLI OC” test was run with 2 8800GTS 320MB cards running in SLI and overclocked to 650/1800. Company of Heroes was played for 30 minutes while the overclocked processor (at 2.6Ghz) ran Orthos in the background. In addition, HDtach was looped in the background and a full DVD was burned as well.


+5V / +3.3V Voltage Regulation:

Once again, I am going to keep this short and sweet; because I do not have (and the typical user does not have either) enough components that draw power from the +5V and +3.3V rails in order to stress them. Thus, I did conduct the tests with the system I had and the Mushkin HP-580 passed every test within +/- 2% of 5V / 3.3V.


+12V Voltage Regulation



This proved to be a very odd test for the Mushkin HP-580 and we found ourselves running all the tests 4 times over with different multimeters (Fluke 187, Extech 510, Extech 110) to validate our results using different connectors. Without a doubt, the idle voltage is quite high but it only tells half the story because when using the Rexus tester (which puts a 90W load on the power supply) we found the voltage on the +12V rails to be hovering around 12.51V. This 90W is basically what a normal (think e6600, 8600GTS 2GB ram and a single HD) would draw and we find 12.51V far too high. True, it is not above the ATX v2.01 stated maximum of 12.60V but it is too close for comfort Heck, even the 12.45V at idle on our overclocked system is flirting with the upper ends of the ATX specifications.

As the load increased, the voltages plummeted to a point where they were down to 12.13V at the most stressful part of the SLI OC test. Luckily, this is still within ATX specifications but it still represents quite a large drop in the +12V voltage. Personally, I believe this dialing-up of the +12V rail was done to compensate for somewhat lackluster voltage regulation…..but that is just me editorializing.

All in all, the Mushkin HP-580 did pass this test as it stayed within ATX specifications but the high voltage readings at lower loads were a bit worrying.


8- +12V AC Ripple Testing

This is a very significant test in the fact that AC Ripple can be the cause of many common computer problems. Short term effects of excess ripple can be anything from an unstable overclock to memory errors while long term effects can include premature component failure and decreased component performance. The ATX v2.01 ripple tolerance is anything below 120mV on the +12V rail.

To test for ripple the following tests were run twice for 30 minutes while the ripple was being measured by the Singray o-scope. The values were the highest peak ripple measurement across all of the +12V rails. So, if the +12V1 rail shows a ripple of 20mV and the +12V2 rail shows a ripple of 40mV, the highest value will be graphed.

The “Idle” value was done with an overclocked processor and the graphics card at stock speeds while running the Windows Desktop.

The “Load” value was done with an overclocked processor and the graphics card at stock speeds while running Company of Heroes.

The “Load (OC)” value was done with an overclocked processor and a heavily overclocked (both 2D and 3D overclocked to the same value) graphics card. Company of Heroes was played while Orthos was running on the processor in the background.

The “Load (SLI)” value was run with 2 8800GTS cards in SLI running at stock speeds with the processor overclocked to 2.6Ghz. Company of Heroes was then run to determine load values.

The “Load SLI OC” test was run with 2 overclocked 8800GTS cards (650/1800) in SLI while playing Company of Heroes for 30 minutes. At the same time, Orthos was running in the background to put stress on the processor (OC’d to 2.6Ghz) while a DVD was burned and HDtach was running a hard drive scan.



The +12V ripple exhibited by the HP-580 was well within the ATX tolerances for all of the tests but the scope did see the ripple steadily increase into the SLI OC test. Without a doubt, having a pair of overclocked 8800GTS cards and an overclocked processor all running like gangbusters at the same time on a 580W power supply is a bit of an unrealistic scenario but it does show what a fair amount of stress can do to the +12V ripple. Overall, we are satisfied with these results even though they did start to look a bit on the high side during the last test.


9- Heat and Noise

From our extensive testing of this power supply, we have found that the Mushkin HP-580 is extremely quiet. While the fan speed did increase as more load was put on the unit, the fan did not increase its noise output by much. That being said, we did find that the heat coming out of the back of the power supply to be a bit concerning near the end of the final test even though it did not increase to extreme levels. You can definitely buy this power supply with the confidence that it will probably be one of the quieter components in your computer case.


10- Conclusion

With its newly reduced price and great looking specifications, the Mushkin HP-580 is definitely high on many consumers’ wish lists. Unfortunately, after reviewing both the Mushkin HP-550 and the XP-650 power supplies, we had high expectations which this power supply simply failed to meet. While most of the performance numbers for the HP-580 are acceptable for a budget unit, the voltage regulation on the +12V rails left much to be desired. Having such a high voltage value on the +12V rail when the computer was in idle conditions is unacceptable and the dips in voltage as load increased were quite large. There is also the not-so-small matter of cables which are woefully short and the inclusion of the (in our opinion) pointless EMI filters which only serve to further frustrate the installation process.

Looking on the bright side of things, there are plenty of benefits the Mushkin HP-580 has that should still have people considering its purchase. First of all is the absolutely phenomenal price; a few short months ago it was nearly unheard of to get a fully-featured, APFC-equipped, 580W power supply for under $120CAD. Even though the PCI-E, ATX and CPU cables are quite short, they are beautifully sleeved and the finish on the power supply itself is quite unique. Even though the voltage regulation left quite a bit to be desired and the ripple suppression was nothing to write home about, the efficiency was very good across the board. Mushkin backs their power supply with an amazingly-long 5-year warranty which goes hand-in-hand with their easily-accessed customer support.

So, while we were not overly impressed with the performance of this power supply there were still quite a few areas where it pulled its butt out of the fire. Thus, the Mushkin HP-580 gets a 3 / 5 rating.


Pros:
- Good efficiency
- Quiet
- Long Warranty
- Nicely sleeved cables
- Modular
- Great price

Cons:
- Short cables
- Odd voltage regulation performance
- So so ripple suppression
- EMI filters make cable routing next to impossible
- Some internal build quality is suspect