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Zalman ZM460-APS


Date
: 01/28/06 – 07:50:02 AM

Author
:

Category
: Power Supplies

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer:
Zalman

Price:
N/A

The power supply is easily the most critical and overlooked components when it comes to building a system. It's never a good feeling to realize that the unexplainable instability of your system is due to the power supply that was on sale last week on Newegg (just a hypothetical example). I've had my fair share of bad power supplies pass through my hands, and for that reason alone I'm always extremely cautious when I decide on a power supply for myself or another person's system.

Zalman is known for high quality, silent parts, and today we'll be examining the
ZM460-APS
to see if it stands up to that reputation. The ZM460-APS is a 460 Watt unit that is up-to-date in features and connectivity making it a likely candidate for many. Let's see what Zalman gives us…

Page 2 : Package

Zalman ships the power supply in a nice, small retail package as seen below. Useful specs and features are outline on the reverse side of the box.

Inside the package are a thin manual, some cable adapters, velcro straps to help with cable management and the power supply.

Though the power supply is not SLI certified by nVidia, Zalman includes a handy splitter for their power supply that enables the single PCI-E power connector to power two video cards. This was used throughout all tests.

Overall, the bundle is nice for a power supply. The included adapters will be useful for anyone with many SATA drives or an SLI setup. The velcro ties will be helpful for users concerned about getting good airflow and keeping things tidy. Let's look more closely at the power supply's specifications…

Page 3 : Specifications

The following specifications come straight from Zalman's site:

The ZM460-APS is an ATX12V 2.01 compliant power supply, and as such has two 12V rails, SATA power connections and improved efficiency compared to older ATX12V 1.3 power supplies. Most of these changes were brought about with the ATX12V 2.0 revision and can be viewed in detail here (pdf).

With a combined max output of 460 Watts, the ZM460-APS should be able to hold it's own in most systems. Its combined 12V rails and 34A between the two of them should provide this unit with enough juice to keep a loaded system stable even under overclocked conditions. We'll look more into this in our test usage.

Looking at the features, the power supply is equipped with a single low noise 120mm thermally controlled fan, sleeved cables and EZ-Grip molex connectors. The connectors proved to be very helpful in making all disconnections from hard drives and optical drives effortless.

Page 4 : ZM460-APS

Here we have the power supply. It comes in a matte black finish and is relatively small compared to other power supplies, the depth of the PSU is a good inch or so less than the Raidmax I last reviewed. Smaller footprint and the premise of quiet operation makes this a likely candidate for HTPCs.

The top of the unit has nothing particularly interesting to talk about…

and the sides are no different, except for the typical characteristic chart and a nice graph depicting the thresholds for Zalman's thermal control implementation.

The rear is home to a rocker switch and power adapter plug. The back is kept nice and open with the honeycomb style grill allowing for air to easily flow through the unit.

The bottom is where we find the 120mm fan that pulls air into the unit. Various labels let us know it's a ball bearing, thermally controlled fan and that the unit has active power factor correction.

The power supply sports seven molex connectors, two SATA power connectors, two floppy disk drive power connectors, two 4-pin 12V power connectors (they can join for use in certain servers), a 6-pin PCI-E power connector and a 20+4-pin (can be separated depending on need) connector.

All the cables are sleeved nicely and of good length. The sleeving stops short of the enclosure, would be nicer if it continued into the enclosure, and each molex connector features Zalman's unique EZ-Grip connectors.

Removing the cover of the power supply reveals the hardware that gets it all done. Lots of room and a clean layout ensures good airflow through the unit.

With the unit open, we can get a good look at the fan used by Zalman to cool this thing. The fan uses a ball bearning and is rated for 1900 RPMs with a max airflow of 75.9 CFM, and generating 31.0 dB of noise.

Let's move on to the install…

Page 5 : Installation

Installing the ZM460-APS was easy considering I didn't put it inside a case. The power supply however has one distinct advantage and one distinct disadvantage that is visible for installation. The advantage is that the power supply's physical dimensions are smaller than typical power supplies which will allow extra room to work in tight spaces. The disadvantage is that with so many cables, such a setup could greatly benefit from modular cables.

Page 6 : Testing

The ZM460-APS was subjected to four hours of Prime95 torture testing with measurements taken after each hour then averaged to give our 'load' numbers. Idle measurements were taken in the same manner, but with the system idle after a cold startup.

Measurements were taken using a Fluke 73III multimeter. The test setup was selected to represent a moderate to heavy system requirements on the output of the power supply. The details below:

Below we have load and idle results from the testing I described earlier:

The best test for a power supply is heavily loading it and seeing whether it can stay within the manufacturer's described tolerances. The Zalman ZM460-APS displayed very consistant results under both conditions and maintained normal operating voltages under all conditions with one exception; the -12 rail gets a little out of the normal operating tolerance, but stays well within what Zalman describes as the stable operating range.

What's more important to users should be that the power supply isn't limiting what hardware they can use. I was quite happy with the power supply's ability to maintain my system's stability throughout all overclocked settings with SLI enabled. This was a load too much for the Raidmax (higher claimed power output, however a single 12V rail) that I reviewed here

While the power supply was able to show it can handle quite the load, I was also interested in testing its noise levels. At its most quite operating level the fan had a bit of a whine to it which made it a bit noisier than the Raidmax I had near to compare to. However, in actual operation the Zalman proved to be the quieter of the two, though most components in a users system would drown out both as they are meant to be quite operating PSUs.

Page 7 : Conclusion

The Zalman ZM460-APS power supply is quite the unit. It can be a difficult hunt finding the right power supply that offers quality power output that won't cost your system its stability. The Zalman provides this and is able to do it quietly.

The ZM460-APS has little going against it. What it does have going against it though is that despite the inclusion of velcro ties, the cable management would be greatly improved with a modular design. Finally, what disappoints me most with this power supply is Zalman's lack of faith in their product by only offering a standard one year warranty. I would hope to see the warranty period extended for what's suppose to be a high-end, quality unit.

Advantages:

ATX12V 2.01 compliant
Stable voltage rails
Quiet

Disadvantages:

Short warranty
Not modular

I'd like to give our thanks to Zalman for supplying the power supply that made this review possible.