Reader Review: FSP Hydro PTM 750W PSU and Windale 6 CPU cooler

You’ve probably noticed that over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been running a series of daily giveaways for the holiday season. These are all ‘reviewer’ giveaways, in hopes that readers will come back and share their thoughts on what they won with us and other KitGuru visitors. Our first reader review came in last week and today, we're happy to be sharing the second reader review with you. This one is from Simon Elbourn, who won an FSP Hydro PTM 750W power supply and a Windale 6 CPU cooler earlier this month.

There are no hard and fast rules for reader reviews, they can be written or put forward in video form. Simon chose to share his thoughts in the form of a written review, which you can read below:

FSP Hydro PTM 750W PSU:

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The power supply box is certainly eye catching with what appears to be an aura of light around the power supply. If this was on a shop shelf it would definitely make you want to look at the product. However, as nice as the box is, there are a few things that don't make much sense, such as the VR Ready logo. How can a power supply really be VR ready? Aren’t basically all power supplies sold today technically VR ready? This seems to be a marketing gimmick in my view and I imagine a lot of custom PC builders will see it the same way. The box also says ‘0 dB' but this unit doesn't seem to have a mode to switch off the fan at low loads. This is nitpicking on my part though.

On opening the box you are presented with a little envelope containing the user manual, a document about recycling and a pair of green and red stickers so you can replace the factory installed blue ones to match your build. A nice touch in my opinion. I have left the blue ones on as this will pair with the blue led on the Windale 6 cooler that I will discuss later.

There is a very large selection of cables included with the power supply. Highlights include two 4 + 4 pin cpu connectors suitable for today’s latest power hungry processors like Threadripper and Kabylake – X, three dual 6 + 2 pin GPU connectors for up to 3 graphics cards and enough sata cables of different types to be able to power a server full of hard drives.

The power supply itself looks quite cool with silver metal accents and angled air vent holes. My only concern is that this could make it easier for thin objects to slide into the power supply.

One thing that system builders should take note of when considering this power supply is how large it is. It's a very efficient power supply with a Platinum rating, but it does fall on the bigger side of the spectrum. In my Micro ATX case (Aerocool QS240) which is not that small for a case of that form factor, it only just fit against the hard drive cage. Some micro atx cases will not be compatible with this power supply from my limited experience with this. It is certainly a lot longer than my old power supply, which was a Cougar LX600. The difference in length is around 3 to 4 centimetres.

Overall this is an amazing power supply. Considering its price in the USA ($115 at time of writing at Newegg and Amazon), if this came to retailers in the UK it would sell very well in my opinion. It comes with lots of features such as a 10 year warranty (one of the best) and a high level of compatibility with hardware. It runs at a noise level unnoticeable above the noise of Corsair SP120 case fans which is great. Overall this is an excellent power supply.

FSP Windale 6 CPU cooler:

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The cooler is available in the UK and is priced at £44.12 on Amazon. This puts it in competition on the AM4 side with more budget options such as my previous cooler the Arctic Freezer 13 CO (£25.99) and more expensive options such as the Noctua NH U12S. In my opinion it looks a lot more premium than both of those and given its cooling performance, I could see it selling quite well.

In the box you find the heatsink painted in matte black, a 120mm FSP fan (blue LED) and both AMD (including AM4) and Intel mounting hardware. A neat thing that FSP includes is a second set of anti-vibration rubber grommets for mounting a second 120 mm fan of your choice in a push pull configuration for even more airflow. However this would probably only need to be used for very high end processors.

Very few coolers support AM4 out the box at the moment. You have some Arctic ones, a few Deepcool and a couple of others however most require you buying additional mounting brackets at £5 – 10 quid each on top of the cooler price. When you consider that then the price of this is very competitive. It is a 6 heatpipe design rated at 240w of cooling performance. I run a Ryzen 5 1600 at 3.75 GHz and 1.26875 volts (using MSI B350m Mortar). This is a modest but comfortable long term overclock on the chip. Before installing the new cooler I stress tested the CPU using prime95 max heat stress test. On the Arctic Freezer 13 CO I hit 66 °C after 10 minutes according to Ryzen Master. When the FSP Windale 6 was installed this dropped to 58 °C after the same period. This was done with both running at approximately the same volume when custom fan curves had been set. This is a marked improvement and has left me contemplating pushing my overclocks to see if I can get more out of my chip as there is so much thermal head room now.

All in all these are both very good components and if FSP increased UK availability I think they could sell very well. Above is the finished system build with them in. Ignore the cable management inside as that was very difficult due to size restrictions of the case plus the size of the new power supply. The all black cooler and fan give a really nice premium look to the build. I changed the colour of my LED strip to match the cooler so the system gives off a blue glow.

KitGuru Says: Thanks to Simon for sending in a review- it's appreciated by all of us!

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