Please help me identify this PSU.

Halon

Gawd
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Aug 13, 2004
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A buddy of mine asked me to replace the system his dad put together for video editing and general use years ago. By and large its specs weren't bad: Core i5 4690K, decent Z97 motherboard, 16GB DDR3, and a GTX 660 as headlining specs. But the power supply's a mystery. (Incidentally, the Ryzen 3700x with GTX 1660 that's replaced it is great - and it's run by a fully modular Corsair 650 watter)

The logo on the PSU fan shroud indicates it was made by HEC, which I know is not a premiere brand. But the rest of the unit itself is covered in glossy black paint with a couple of QC stickers, and a few others indicating "Support nVIDIA SLI & Dual PCI-E", EcoSmart, and RoHS compliance. There's no other identifying label here. Other features of note:
  • three cables chock full of blue Molex connectors
  • two six pin PCIe plugs
  • blue LEDs inside
  • three 4-pin 12V connectors
  • six SATA power connectors on two cables
  • a three-pin cable designed to be plugged into a motherboard header, presumably for diagnostic purposes
  • *really* long cables - maybe the longest I've ever seen in a power supply
Has anyone here encountered one of these things in the wild? On a scale of "ehh, maybe" to "oh Christ, NO," how bad an idea would it be to keep this thing around as an emergency backup? Should I just send it to the local electronics recyclers? Thanks for reading.
 

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Yeah, you're probably right. The only reason I'm even curious is that it was bought new in 2015 when the system was assembled. My suspicion is it's an old group-regulated PSU given a new badge, shiny black paint, and some LEDs, then shoved out the door as a 450-550 watt unit. But I'm guessing there's no way to determine what's in it short of opening it up and evaluating its components and assembly quality, then drawing a conclusion based on its weakest link.
 
The fact there is no label listing the PSU voltage tables is strange, and doesnt lead to a high quality unit. Plus the 2 fan design and lots of molex, leads to this being a very old PSU and I wouldnt really trust it.

Agreed,

Trash time.
 
looks like one of those cheap highly over-rated chinese ebay specials.
 
at first i thought it was the HEC WIN550UB but i think it's some type of OEM or workstation PSU since the fan is actually at the front of the psu and not the rear or bottom of it like a standard retail psu.
 
at first i thought it was the HEC WIN550UB but i think it's some type of OEM or workstation PSU since the fan is actually at the front of the psu and not the rear or bottom of it like a standard retail psu.
My pics weren’t great - there’s a fan at the front and one at the back as well.
 
My pics weren’t great - there’s a fan at the front and one at the back as well.


wow i think i actually found it, holy hell what a pain in the ass... knowing it had two fans helped, tried to come up with every combination possible to search til googles algorithm figured out what i was looking for.

https://www.newegg.com/hec-ace-580ub-580w/p/N82E16817339006
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/stress-test,1073-18.html

there's aparently a 480w version as well that extremeOC reviewed (based on your description i'd likely guess this is the one you actually have).
https://www.extremeoverclocking.com/reviews/cases/HEC_ACE_Power_480UB_1.html
 
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I wonder what you'd need 30+ Amps on the 3.3V and 5V line for in a modern computer.
Nothing at all. But if you wanted a solid power supply for an Athlon XP with an SSD, this would probably do the trick - you’d just need to find a place in the case to stash the PCIe cables.
 
I wonder what you'd need 30+ Amps on the 3.3V and 5V line for in a modern computer.

it's from 2005 so take a guess, lol. it still needed to support older systems that were much more reliant on 3.3v and 5v. wasn't til a few years later that they started decreasing the amps on those rails.
 
wow i think i actually found it, holy hell what a pain in the ass... knowing it had two fans helped, tried to come up with every combination possible to search til googles algorithm figured out what i was looking for.

https://www.newegg.com/hec-ace-580ub-580w/p/N82E16817339006
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/stress-test,1073-18.html

there's aparently a 480w version as well that extremeOC reviewed (based on your description i'd likely guess this is the one you actually have).
https://www.extremeoverclocking.com/reviews/cases/HEC_ACE_Power_480UB_1.html
Good sleuthing, by the way. The 480UB is precisely it.
 
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