Introduction

We would like to thank Spire for supplying the review sample.

Spire is a company known mostly for their cooling solutions and their enclosures. Spire's production facilities are located in Shenzhen, China and they have branches in the USA, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Japan and Brazil. According to them all above locations were strategically selected in order to provide direct communication with their customers. Although their PSU products are not so known (at least to us) they have a pretty rich portfolio meaning that they are pretty active in this area, too and recently they released a new PSU series which they named BlackDragon.

Let's take a better look at the BlackDragon series. For starters it consists of only three units with 600W, 500W and 400W capacities. According to Spire these new PSUs are intended for gamers although their relatively small capacity most likely will not be enough for high-end SLI or Crossfire systems. The test subject of today's review, the 400W model, promises very low noise output (only 10dBA at 45°C operating temperature), 86% efficiency at typical load, utilizes a non-modular design but thankfully its cables are fully sleeved and among others it is equipped with an LED fan. Also it is compatible with the 2.30 ATX spec (most recent is 2.31 with minor changes) and is backed by a two year warranty. Regarding its official efficiency rating Spire does not provide any info on this subject and we couldn't locate this PSU on the 80 Plus site, so most probably it is not yet tested by them.