Simply one of the most important decisions made when building your own system is the power supply you will use. Unfortunately, there are many of us out there that shoot our entire wad on the Video / Motherboard / CPU and minimize on RAM and PSU. Unfortunately, we pay the price as time goes on, there is a definite difference in PSU's and what they offer you in Overclocking, dependability and stability.

Along with clean power delivery there has come to market the need (or desire) to have your PSU play a part in the overall scheme of the system design. To have it play a part in the cosmetics as it where. The other popular trend is modularization of the cables that supply power to all of the ancillary devices inside the case.

To this end, I present to you the . The Atlas brings 2 of the 3 above segments to bear, giving the end user a choice that should meet most if not all of their needs and wants in a PSU. Lets go over the specifications for the .

The Asus Atlas 55GA has two 12V rails; combined they can supply a maximum of 360W. The 5V and 3.3V rail supplies a maximum of 180W and the -12V / +5Vsb 22W. In today's power hungry motherboards and video cards, it is becoming ever necessary to have dual 12V rails to split the load amongst the feeding devices.

The overall aesthetics of the unit is very pleasing. While Asus ensured the unit would compliment the system, they also ensured that it would not distract the eyes away from the centerpiece. Who here wants their PSU to be the center piece of your case Mod? I would guess probably no one.

Notice the pitch of the fan blades is greater than what you typically see in a 80mm or 120mm design. This should provide more than ample air into the unit from below instead of from the front. The rear of the unit is a large mesh which should allow for considerable exhaust from that 120mm fan sucking air in.

I removed the “Warranty Void if Removed” sticker and popped the top to take a look inside.

The one “knock” that could be attributed to the Asus Atlas 55GA is that it is not of modular design for the cables. Although I have grown accustomed to and prefer modular cable solutions, I did not find this to be much of an issue in my case (it is of the larger variety however). It is curious with all of the “High End” appeal Asus has put into the design of this unit, that they would overlook the modularity piece of it. Conversely this does of course reduce the number of failure points.

As to connectors that come with the unit, here is a full list:

• 4- standard Molex branches for a total of 8 devices, 2 of those branches have Floppy connectors.

• 2- SATA specific branches giving connection for up to 4 devices

• P8 to P4 and P8 to P8 (forward looking) for CPU supply

• P6 connector for directly connecting your PCIe video card.

• Main Cable Connector 20+4

Test Bed: Intel 640 (LGA775 / 3.2GHz), Asus P5WD2-E Premium, 1GB OCZ Platinum PC2-5400, HIS X850XT IceQ II Turbo (External Power required), Maxtor SATA-II (250GB, 7200RPM), Hitachi SATA (80GB 7200RPM), AOpen DVD +/- R, Cooler Master Praetorian 720

A check of the voltages at startup had everything well within tolerance from within the BIOS.

Booting of the system was without incident. Once I got into Windows I proceeded to get as much going as possible to “warm her up”. The Asus A-55GA, as with many of its competitors in this space, sport near silent running. The fan adjusts automatically as the heat inside the unit increases or decreases. At the warmest I could get the PSU, I could not audibly hear the fan spinning from my normal sitting position. Getting to the floor level with the case, the large fan was inaudible over the Case / CPU fans.

Testing

I will be testing the Asus A-55G while stressing the system with as many applications as it can handle The programs I will run to stress the PSU is 2 instances of folding (Hyper Threading) while running BNR2 (not only CPU but NIC intensive) and letting BenchemAll go through a battery of tests including Doom3, HL2 and Far Cry.

Notice the nice solid line on the 12V feed (actually 11.8V here, but well within tolerance), this shows you that the 12V line is handling the stress without variation, an important piece of information. The Vcore, however, takes a slightly bumpier road, it does need to be noted that the scale is much larger here in that I am actually only seeing a deviation of 0.03V, I must say I would hope not to see much more then that on my Vcore line.

Overclocking

Overclocking is tremendously dependent on clean power, the Asus A-55G does not shy away from this challenge, allowing me to obtain a 30% increase in CPU speed to 4.16GHz. The Asus was as steadfast in its power delivery at this level of OC as it was at stock speeds, telling me that my PSU is not the limiting factor.

Final Words

The has a sexy stylish design overall which I think many will like. Couple this with almost inaudible and efficient cooling and that is a good basis off the bat. Support for ATX2.01 (and BTX Compatibility), 24 Pin power and P8 power are Modular in design to maintain backwards compliance with ATX. Of course Dual 12v rails help spread the load and you also get a 6 pin PCIe power connector.

One item that I would have liked to have seen is a second 6 pin PCIe power connector for SLI/Crossfire setups. With everything you add to your system needing its own dedicated power source, clean and abundant power is an ever increasing requirement in today's enthusiasts solution. Add to that a requirement that the power supply needs to be aesthetically pleasing and complimentary to your current customizations, you list gets shorter with every word I type. Luckily for you, and me, adds another viable power delivery solution that warrants a second look as your PSU solution.

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