At first glance Apevia may seem like a new company you have never heard of, but they have actually been around for quite a while. Most of you might recognize them by their former name, Aspire.
Aspire is probably most known for their cases and they have produced quite a few of them, X-Alien, X-Infinity, X-Spider etc., as a matter of fact the case my current test rig in is an Aspire X-Alien that I have had for several years. Today however we are looking at a power supply from Apevia, more specifically the Apevia ATX-IB680W-BL Iceberg. Apevia has put out several power supplies before under the Aspire name, most notably the Chameleon. The 680W Iceberg we are looking at today could be called the big brother of the Chameleon. More power with similar features like fan speed control and the ability to change the color of the LED fans, or to even turn the LED's off completely.
First lets take a look at the technical specs (Taken from Apevia's website) and then we'll take a look at the unit itself.
The Iceberg is a dual 12V rail PSU, what that means to you is you can split up your devices on different rails. For example in my test setup I have my HDD's on one and my Optical drives and Video cards on the other, with other devices like fans split up as evenly as possible.
The PSU arrived unharmed which is more than I can say for the box it was shipped in. It looked like the UPS folks used it as a soccer ball. Packaging for the Iceberg is pretty plain, a few product shots and some info about the unit on the front as well as a list of the types of connectors (with pictures) on the side. There is also a small window on one side to give you a peak of the unit itself.
As you can see in the picture above, the Iceberg 680W has a clear acrylic top that gives you a nice look at all of the internals. To be honest I was expecting larger heatsinks, the name Iceberg says cool to me, a couple of massive heatsinks keeping things cool inside the PSU are what I was expecting. Right off the bat the first thing that caught my eye was that one of the heatsinks looked angled wrong, on closer inspection it looks like it is glued down at one point. The glue had come loose and so the heatsink was able to move out of place. My guess this is something that happened during the soccer game UPS was playing with the box, and not the result of shoddy workmanship. The heatsink was still secured in place and didn't appear to be in danger of moving anymore so I just ignored it and went about the review.
Cooling is handled by 2 80mm crystal clear LED fans, one drawing air in from inside the case, and one exhausting air out the back of the unit. Fan speed is adjustable to fine tune the ratio between silence and cooling performance.
The label that is normally on the side of the PSU displaying the output figures is placed on the top (aluminum side) of the Iceberg (or bottom, depending on which direction you install it) Obviously with the acrylic top and sides placing it on the side would obstruct the view and just plain look bad.
One thing I was surprised to not see is a UL number, this is the number that is used to identify who the manufacturer of the unit is. In most cases many companies do not build their own power supplies, and it isn't uncommon for one company to be the manufacturer for many different OEM's that rebrand the product.
Connection wise all of the bases are covered.
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1 x 20/24pin Main Power
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2 x PCI Express (6P)
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1 x 12V (P4/P8)
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8 x 4pin Peripheral
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4 x Serial ATA
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2 x Floppy
The 20/24 pin Main power plug does not snap together like I'm used to seeing on most current PSU. Meaning you will either need to hold the 2 pieces together to plug them in, or try and plug them in one at a time.
The 4/8 pin 12V for the CPU did however snap together.
The rest is your standard faire of molex, SATA PCIE and floppy connectors
All of the cables are sleeved in blue nylon mesh sleeves and shrink wrapped on the ends. The cables are a little short but in the full tower case I am currently using they were able to reach everywhere needed, however due to the shortness of the cables it does make "creative routing" of the cables in order to hide them a bit more difficult.
Once the unit is installed you have your choice of 4 lighting options. Blue, green, red or no lights at all. This is achieved by simply pressing a button on the back of the unit. So, no matter what color the theme of your computer is you will have lighting effects to match, or if you don't want any lighting at all, or just want to be able to turn the lights off without having to shut your PC down you can do that as well.
Testing
The testing involves using a digital multimeter to test the output of the 12v-1, 12v-2, 3.3 and 5v rails at 5 different points. Post, Windows Load (when the loading screen shows up), Idle, Under load and shutdown. This will provide a more accurate representation of how the PSU performs in different states. Ideally there will be little to know fluctuation in the output at any point. A 5% variance is considered acceptable, but less is better.
The test system consists of
Intel 3.4 GHz P4 LGA775
Foxconn NF4SLI7AA-8EKRS2
2GB RAM
1 WD 80GB HDD
1 WD 74GB Raptor HDD
2 X Asus 7600GT
Asus DL DVD Burner
LiteOn DVDR
| Voltage |
Post |
Windows load |
Idle |
Load |
Shut Down |
| 12V-1 |
12.06 |
12.06 |
12.01 |
12.03 |
12.05 |
| 12V-2 |
12.04 |
12.02 |
12.03 |
11.99 |
12.01 |
| 5.00V |
5.08 |
5.11 |
5.19 |
5.18 |
5.15 |
| 3.3V |
3.33 |
3.34 |
3.34 |
3.32 |
3.32 |
Although there is some fluctuation all of the results are well within the recommended +/- 5% minimum/maximum output.
In case your wondering what those minimums and maximums are, they are as follows.
|
Minimum |
Maximum |
| 12V |
11.4V |
12.6V |
| 5V |
4.75V |
5.25V |
| 3.3V |
3.14V |
3.47V |
Final Thoughts
A PSU is still one of those things that many people don't put a lot of thought into when in reality it should be one of the components you put the most thought into. Would you build a performance car with "no name" brand, or inferior quality parts? The Apevia Iceberg we tested was well within spec and didn't have any wild fluctuations that would lead me to believe there are any problems with the unit. My only real gripe about this PSU is the shortness of the cables, The cables on the PSU I removed in order to test the Apevia were about twice as long, giving plenty of room to route them out of site and still reach their destination. My only other concern is the lack of a UL number, I personally like to see who makes my PSU, this gives me the opportunity to do a little background research and find out if there have been any issues with their units in the past.
All in all the Apevia Iceberg performed great in our tests, and so far has proven to be a very stable PSU in the week or so it has been running in my rig. I have left the multimeter on one of the 12V rails since it was installed and have not seen any out of the ordinary voltage fluctuations.
