Fractal Design Newton R2 800W Modular Power Supply Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
1,353 words · ~6 min read
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so today I'm having a look at another product from fractal Design This is
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their Newton R2 800 wat power supply so we had a look at the Tesla the other day
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which is according to them a very similar platform but the big difference
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is that the Newton is modular okay there
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are a couple other key differences they're both 0 plus but the Newton also
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includes a 135 mm fan instead of a 120
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mm fan so let's have a look at what it says about itself on the box first of
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all they have a chart here that gauges the noise level versus the wattage of
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power output so they're saying it stays under 30 DB even if you're going up to
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800 watts of power but you can see The Sweet Spot is in the 350 to 400 watt
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range like most power supplies you get the quietest most efficient operation at
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about half of the rated output okay attached cables and modular cables we'll
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get into those when we open it up so I'm not going to worry too much about that
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we've got a picture of it it's an award-winning series with a focus on
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high power output and low noise level that seems to be what fractal design is
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all about in general another key difference with the Newton series is
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that we're looking at a single 12vt rail so that's a 60 amp 12vt rail capable of
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providing up to about 720 watts of power now I do like to see power supplies that
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can provide at or near their entire rated output on the 12volt rail because
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systems are so 12vt heavy these days
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that that's really the most important one but I mean you got to not everyone's
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going to be specking their power supplies out the same way and you got to
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accept that so let's get this
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open yeah there's nothing really along there okay so opening up the box taking
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off the check this out I have a knife today yes success okay we have a users
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manual the users manual is in probably six different languages like there other
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users manuals including Swedish because that's where the company is based so it
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talks about the warranty a little bit gives you the specs introduction to the
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company and tells you how to install it great thank you for that next we we have
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a couple of velcro cable ties as well as four screws for installing at the back
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of the case now these are longer than normal screws and I discovered why that
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is yesterday because the fractal design R2 case actually has padding at the back
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near the power supply for noise deadening so that's why the screws have
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to be a little bit longer to reach through that padding so then we have a
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European style power cord which I'm assuming the North American models will
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ship with a North American model plug but this is this is just a sample so I'm
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guessing that that didn't happen so much do not eat this thank you that is all
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piece of foam don't eat that either decorational bag do not eat uh
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sorry sorry the joke's old now I know uh let's have a look at the power supply
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first and then we'll look at the modular cables that are included with it so it comes in a nice little frackle design
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bag that has the string wrapped 352
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million times around the power cord so I'll have to detangle that somehow
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before I can open it there we go very clean modular interface on this unit I
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really like that all of the modular cables look like they are the same and I
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can't see if it's labeled right it wouldn't be labeled which rail they're running off of because there is a single
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12vt rail so my bad you know what there
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there okay fractal designs has figured out some things that it seems to take
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other companies way too long to figure out there are two attached cables and
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that is it there's a 20 plus 4 pin so a 24 pin ATX connector and then there is a
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4 plus4 8 Pin uh P4 connector that's it
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you see so many fully modular power supplies that have a 24 pin a four pin
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and a separate eight pin how many motherboards take a four pin and an
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eight pin very few very few although there are some that do so I'll give them
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that okay let's have a look at the overall finish of this unit it's a matte
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black it's fairly fingerprint resistant based on my Quick Test here where I
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basically put my finger on it and see if it leaves a print at the back we've got
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a standard honeycomb sort of of a mesh onoff switch as well as the power plug
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receptacle there here we list the specs again which we already had a fairly
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close look at but it also says something about warranty void if the seal and
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label is broken so be careful of that on the top you've got that it passed all of
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its tests that's really good if you don't see those stickers maybe uh maybe
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return it and then on the bottom we find 135 mm fan so there you go past warranty
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voider removed okay let's have a look at all of the cables that we plug into this
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modular interface so they allow us to plug 10 additional cables into this guy
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so let's get started here in the first
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pouch we have two 6 plus2 pin PCI
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Express okay oh no we have three that's
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kind of random 3 6 plus two pin okay hopefully there will be another one
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later because I can't think of any configuration that would need three
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except maybe no not even that okay yeah no I
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can't think of anything there it is another 6 plus2 cable there you go so
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you can plug in up to four six pin or 8 Pin PCI Express plugs next we have two
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Molex actually we've got more you know what I'm just going to take all of these out so that I can talk about them all at
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the same time there we go that would be more
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efficient right okay so let's get all the Molex ones together here so we have
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three Molex plugs that we could potentially use one of them has four
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Molex connectors on it one of them has
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uh another four Molex connectors on it and another one has two Molex connectors
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and one floppy connector okay and then next we have SATA and this seems like a
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bit of a deficiency oh no that's not too bad I thought it was only only 2x3 but
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it's actually 2x4 so you can plug in eight SATA devices and you can see these
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cables are nice and long I mean can you imagine a tower that's actually that
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tall to your optical drive at the top very few okay maybe there is one but I I
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kind of I kind of doubt it and actually that's another thing I wanted to point
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out you can see that the cables for the a pin here is also very long and there's
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a reason for that their R2 case actually
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has a bottom mounted power supply so they've accounted for you to have to
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Route it up behind the motherboard tray and then bring it around to where the normal eight pin or four pin connector
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would be on your motherboard thank you for checking out my unboxing of the
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Newton 800 W modular power supply