Sunbeamtech NUUO 550W Power Supply

Interior of the NUUO 550W:

The NUUO is actually designed to work in higher temperatures than the ATX12V guidelines specify. While most power supplies have a maximum operating temperature around 50C, the NUUO can go much higher. The fans will automatically go into high mode if the temperature exceeds 70C, and OTP (Over Temperature Protection) will be tripped around 100-110C (turning the PSU off). The capacitors are rated for 105C, whereas most I've seen in other PSUs are about 70-85C, which is inline with their 50C operating temp. The reality of your PC or PSU ever getting that hot is extremely unlikely, but the rugged design would allow for normal operation in harsher environments where other PSUs might fail after a short period of time.

The inside of the PSU is more or less the standard PSU design. Since it is a modular cable design all the power cables are soldered to a PCB mounted on the front. Unfortunately I wasn't able to pull the PCB out of the chassis to check for true dual +12V rails. However from the labeling and design on the top of the PCB I'm fairly confident that everything is as it should be.

How We Test Power Supplies:

In order to thoroughly test a power supply we have built a special rig that is capable of dynamic load levels on each rail. A short article covering our power supply testing methodology in detail can be found here. Please read over the guide if you haven't already, you might just learn a thing or two. Simply plugging a power supply into a regular PC for "testing" is not accurate by any means, nor can any useful numbers be extracted by testing that way.

Also worth reading is our power supply primer article titled, Powering Your PC: Truths and Misconceptions - A Guide To Power Supplies, which covers how power supplies work in great detail.

If you have read the power supply testing article, you know that we publish four (4) groups of numbers for each power supply to give a simplified overall representation that can be compared to other power supplies. Many other load ranges are tested (but not published unless there is a serious problem) to ensure voltage levels remain within ATX12V specifications. I like to refer to it as "working the switchboard" since it involves flipping lots of switches tied to resistors on each rail to achieve various loads. Unfortunately we can't always dial in exact maximum numbers because of the fixed levels of resistance, but load levels we test are often far in excess of any load a regular PC will create.