The Power Supply

The custom made power supply, which comes standard with this unit is specified at 420W with a black chrome mirror finish. I placed a standard 350W OEM power supply, which is generally a bit shorter than brand name parts, next to it. The Aspire power supply was still about an inch shorter than the OEM unit. On the bottom the power supply has another blue LED fan, but this time an 8 cm one. While most power supplies come with 12 or even 14 cm fans these days, anything else besides an 8 cm would not fit here. On the top, there is a black label with the specifications of the unit. One of the more important specifications, the 12V rail has a total of 30A, split to 14A and 16A. Let's hope that is enough to drive a high-end graphic card, but more on that later.


The power cables are nice and short, as well as sleeved, that will help reduce cable clutter and improve air flow. On the other hand, the one thing I missed dearly, was at least one PCI-E power connector. There is one 20/24 pin ATX connector, one S-ATA connector, four 12V Molex and two floppy power connectors. I do not know why Aspire decided to include two floppy connectors instead of only one, considering there is only one drive bay for one. A very popular option these days is having a modular power supply, where you can plug in the needed cables. This may be a point of improvement for future revisions.