About NorthQ by Datapoint:
NorthQ by Datapoint is a Danish based company that develops, produces and sells PC, equipment, among others power supplies, CPU coolers and alarm systems, as well as TV and video equipments. The headquarter is situated in Denmark, but North Q by Datapoint has distributors in several European countries as well as the U.S. For more information about products, please visit www.northq.com

NorthQ, an official sponsor of MeetYourMakers.com, have been making fast and reliable power supply units for many years now, and have turned it into somewhat of a fine-art. Today i was lucky enough to get the chance to test out their latest PSU, and in this review I will proceed to tell you how it stacked up against the competition.

The PSU in question is of course the NQ-4775-1000 Giant Reactor, better known as the Giant Reactor. The power-supply is one of the first of its kind to reach the impressive 1kw power rating, a feature that will be very useful in the future as CPUs and graphics cards continue to guzzle even more power by the minute. In addition to this huge amount of power, the Giant Reactor also promises to be much smaller than other competitors also featuring a 1kw core. Will the unit ever live up to this impressive hype? Let's take a look.

Basic Information:

• Extreme 1000 Watt Real Power
• 12V ATX 2.2 Standard / ESP 12V Standard
• Quad SLI 4 x PCI-Express
• 8 x S-ATA
• 80% Efficiency
• 135 mm low noise FAN
• 17-25 dB under normal load
• Active PFC
• ROHS Certified

First Impressions:

The box itself, although being slightly bland, details all of the useful information about the unit itself, as well as being strong and supportive, ensuring that the unit is kept safe upon delivery. In order to keep costs down the Giant Reactor does not come with a lot of unnecessary freebies and the like included in the package, just the bare essentials, which is refreshing.

Cracking open the box, I was pleasantly surprised to find a sleek, modern black Power Supply Unit, looking simple yet alluring. Externally, everything is kept simple and clean, with the entire side being grated to allow you to see inside. The unit has a huge fan mounted on the top, in order to keep the core nice and cool, even under the heaviest strain. Although it creates a large airflow, the fan itself spins slowly, meaning that the PSU is kept quiet whilst running.

Moving on to size, this is where the Giant Reactor really excells, defying it's name and actually being extremely small for a 1km PSU. This is really useful as other 1kw PSU's are often very large, and will not fit into a regular ATX slot, requiring significant modification. Inside the actual case, there is still a huge amount of room left, with all the components being positioned perfectly to ensure maximum heat loss.

The unit comes with a plethora of cables ensuring maximum connectivity, all of which are detailed below:

• 8 * SATA connectors
• 8 * Molex connectors
• 1 * Floppy connectors
• 4 * PCI-Express
• 1 * 20 + 4 pin ATX connector
• 1 * EPS12V/P4 connector

The stage-one cables are enclosed in a sleeve, which means your case is kept nice and tidy from any excess wires, however this could possibly have been improved by adding casing to the stage-two connectors listed above.

Testing:

Connecting the unit to my PC and switching everything on, I was somewhat alarmed that absolutely no sound was coming from the unit. Initially I thought I hadn't connected it properly, but on closer inspection I realised the unit was running perfectly, just in dead silence!

In terms of performance, I immediately noticed an improvement in speed just doing day-to-day things such using Photoshop and rendering movies. Jumping into a game, this became even more apparent as I recorded a whopping 15fps increase whilst playing the demanding "Company of Heroes".

Running various benchmarks I saw that the temperature stayed at a respectful level even when using 100% of it's power, only rising around 10°C above room temperature at the most strenuous of times. And even under this heavy strain the unit remained extremely quiet, only making a faint noise once or twice, and otherwise staying silent.

Summary:

Having thrown everything I had at the Giant Reactor, it remained cool and efficient throughout. For around 180 Euros, this is a huge bargain for a 1kw Power Supply, especially as other similar models I have seen from competitors are greatly more expensive. Add to this the small size of the unit, and the complete lack of noise given off by the unit under heavy pressure, the NorthQ Giant Reactor is one of, if not the best PSUs I have ever tested, both in performance and value for money.

For any PC enthusiasts out there, the Giant Reactor is a must, as current high-end hardware is more power-hungry than ever. If you have some spare cash and are looking to upgrade, look no further, this really is a treat.

Rating Explanation: