Page 3 - Physical Look - Inside
As always, we opened up our FSP AURUM Gold 600W power supply to take a detailed look at what's going on inside. Please note that doing this at home will void your warranty, thanks to the warranty seal that FSP applied over one of the attachment screws. But for the benefit of you, we cracked ours open so you don't need to, haha. There are no user serviceable parts inside.
The FSP AURUM Gold 600W is made by FSP themselves, which is unsurprising, since the company is a large PSU OEM for many other brands. Our photo above shows an overhead view of the FSP AURUM Gold 600W's internal components. At first glance, the AURUM Gold is surprisingly simple inside. The company has spent a considerable amount of time developing the AURUM Gold in order to reduce as many components as possible. We will cover that in just a moment. In the end, it paid off. While other PSUs I have seen in the past are usually quite packed up, the AURUM Gold does not have too much going on here. Not only that -- there is only one small black painted heatsink and one even smaller silver heatsink inside, as shown in our photo above. This simple heatsink arrangement along with a loosely packed interior has a lower airflow impedance benefit, so FSP is able to get away with a slow running 120mm fan. We will see how quiet the AURUM Gold is on the next page, but for now, I am not going to waste any of your time -- let's take a closer look.
The transient filter stage is the first input stage of a computer power supply, so we'll take a look at that first. FSP met or exceeded the recommended requirements accordingly, other than the notably missing is the metal oxide varistor, otherwise known as the MOV. The MOV is used to stabilize spikes from the AC line. FSP claims this is not necessary due to the MIA IC's over voltage protection system (More on the MIA IC in just a second), which already absorbs excess surge from the AC line on the primary side to protect the buck capacitor. The FSP AURUM Gold has three ferrite coils, two metalized polyester X-capacitor, and four ceramic Y-capacitors. That is twice as many X and Y capacitors and one more ferrite coil than recommended; everything else is just standard. For a power supply of this caliber, this is about what I have expected, and it certainly gets the job done right.
On the primary side, our 600W version of FSP's AURUM Gold incorporates one Matsushita/Panasonic capacitor rated at 330µF x 420V. If you have a model with different rated wattage, chances are that this value will be different. As with all quality power supplies, these units are rated at 105c; whereas typical power supplies usually use 85c rated capacitors.
A close inspection of the PCB will reveal the 600W and 700W FSP AURUM Golds are built on the same baseboard. The difference comes down to mainly the PFC Choke and capacitor on the primary side, and MOSFETs on both the primary and secondary side. The active PFC circuit featured on the FSP AURUM Gold 600W uses one RFE International GBU1506 bridge rectifier, and is controlled by a FSP6600 PFC/PWM controller combo. At 115V, the maximum rectified forward current capacity with heatsink is 15A, so you can theoretically pull up to 1725W (15A * 115V) from the bridge rectifier at 100% efficiency -- of course, this is limited by the fact that it is not 100% efficient, and also neglects the fact that not every component in the system are able to keep up. More Infineon CoolMOS power MOFSETs are used on the active PFC circuit, with one more as a switching transistor on the FSP AURUM Gold 600W power supply. These are all low RDS(on) MOSFETS, which are especially beneficial for less wasted power during operation.
One of the biggest highlights of the AURUM Gold is what the company refers to as the Active Clamp Topology and Multiple Intelligence Ability, or MIA IC. The MIA IC is a multi-function integrated circuit. Working in conjunction with its Active Clamp Topology, this allows a large reduction in physical components; and FSP claims large strides in AC to DC conversion efficiency. We have no question about the former; it is evident right from the pictures above. The latter is achieved with zero current switching and zero voltage switching between the AC input and DC output.
On the secondary side, we see capacitors made by Chinese manufacturer CapXon. Two International Rectifier IRLB3036GPbF MOSFETs located on the small silver heatsink are responsible for the rectification process. As with modern high efficiency power supplies, all rectifiers produces the +12V out -- while the +5V and +3.3V outputs are generated from the +12V output using a DC to DC converter within the power supply unit. The IRLB3036GPbF's rated continuous drain current is 190A at 100c, and a pulsed drain current of 1100A. Drain source voltage is rated at 60V, and a RDS(on) value of only 0.0019 ohm. This is very impressive.
The DC-to-DC converter is controlled by one proprietary FSP6601 integrated circuit chip and four Infineon OptiMOS 3 Power-Transistors for its +3.3V and +5V outputs. Meanwhile, a Weltrend WT7579 monitoring IC provides the AURUM Gold's OVP, UVP, OCP, SCP, and OPP. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any information on this IC; I've dug through every section of Weltrend's website without any luck.
Lastly, we see a 120mm fan that provides cooling to the FSP AURUM Gold 600W's internal components. It is connected to the mainboard using a 2-pin connector. A 120mm fan is standard size for standard ATX power supplies with a bottom fan mount, and it is beneficial in most cases in providing lots of airflow at lower speeds for quiet operation. Protechnic is the fan OEM; further research indicates the MGA12012HF-A25 is a 120x120x25mm "Series G" fluid dynamic bearing fan specified at 0.45A for a maximum of speed of 2400 rpm. The rated airflow is 84.8 CFM at 37 dB of noise.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Outside
3. Physical Look - Inside
4. Minor Tests and Conclusion
