CoolMax Taurus CX Series Power Supplies CX-350 and CX-450 Review
Provided by www.coolmaxusa.com
This power supply review will focus on two factors. The first factor being how quiet the power supply is and what the values of voltage-rails are compared to their ideal values. CoolMax sent us two power supplies of the Taurus CX series, which have one controllable 120mm fan. The idea being that a larger fan running at a lower rpm should effectively reduce noise.
CoolMax Taurus CX-350 (350 watt) and CoolMax Taurus CX-450 (450 watt)
Features
The build quality of these power supplies is good, probably made out of steel. The power supplies weigh about 3.5 pounds each. There are plenty of Molex connectors and extra goodies. It has the following connectors:
- Main Power Connectors
- ATX12V Power Connector
- AUX Power Connector
- Floppy Drive Power Connector
- Serial ATA Power Connector
As you can see from the list, it does have 1 serial ATA power connector on it. That is an added bonus and you can see that this power supply was designed recently. There is a black sleeve on the main power connector is a good touch, but rather standard now.
When you purchase one of these PSU’s, you get what you see in the above picture. All pretty much standard accessories.
What is a good feature on higher quality power supplies is the ability to control the fan speed so that you are able to choose a noise level that is suitable for you. As you can see in the picture you have three settings. There is L, A, H. L stands for L for low, A for auto, and H for high. Auto is a particularly good setting, as the fan’s rpm will adjust according to the temperature of the case. This will provide you with the best noise/performance ratio in most circumstances. When actually using the power supply, the high setting wasn’t that loud by any means.
As seen in the above pictures, the output ratings are about normal. Compared to my Enermax 350 watt dual fan PSU (EG365P-VE) currently in my system, the 450-watt CX-450 has lower +3.3V rating. The -5V and -12V ratings were also the same as my Enermax PSU. So let’s get on to testing and see how these two power supplies perform!
Testing
Computer Configuration:
- 1700+ Athlon XP (tbred core)
- Abit KR7-A
- 512MB RAM
- 120GB Western Digital 8MB Special Edition HD
- 27.3GB Western Digital HD
- Lite-ON
DVD 16x
Lite-ON CD-RW 48/24/48x
Chaintech GeForce 5200FX 128MB
From the computer configuration, you can see there is a fair amount of things in my system and it should tax the power supply sufficiently. The power supply voltages in the data were collected using Winbond Hardware Doctor Version 2.70.
Conclusion
From the tabulated data, we can conclude that all the PSU’s tested perform relatively close compared to each other PSU. Even though the 3.3V was off by about 5% from the ideal value, all the power supplies gave the same recording. This might mean a voltage sensor is not functioning properly. The CX-350 goes for about $40 dollars USD and the CX-450 goes for about $50 dollars USD. Either power supply, the CX-350 or the CX-450 performed about the same so the final recommendations will represent the ratings for the whole Taurus series, which have the 120mm adjustable fan.
CoolMax Taurus CX-350 & CX-450
+Silent
(120mm Adjustable Fan)
+Good Value
+Serial ATA Power Connector
+Voltages were good (Especially the important +5V)
-Dual Fans would be beneficial
9/10!
