If you’re looking for a budget RGB power supply, Gamdias has you covered.
Howdy howdy guys ponchato here and today we’re taking a look at the Gamdias Astrape M1 650
RGB power supply.
Thanks to Gamdias for sending this over for review, and let’s get started.
The Astrape M1 650 was released in March of 2018 and fits into the entry level category.
The Astrape series of power supplies is available in 550, 650, and 750 watt models with various
80 Plus ratings, and this one here is the M1 650W which carries the standard or 80 Plus
White efficiency.
As a budget power supply it is non-modular but it does have the benefit of being very
small, only 140mm long, which means it’ll more easily fit into cramped cases.
The 120mm RGB fan comes with a fluid dynamic bearing and can be toggled between a temperature-controlled
“silent mode” or simply left on full blast all the time.
Finally the warranty is about what you can expect in this price range at 2 years.
The front of the box shows the power supply with its RGB fan, along with some basic info
about the lighting and features.
The sides show info on the 26 lighting effects available, along with how the “Silent mode”
switch works: on means the fan is temperature controlled, while off means it’ll run at
max speed for the best heat dissipation.
Finally the back shows more detailed info including the available connectors and electrical
specifications.
Inside the box right on top is a small bag with the mounting screws and a few plastic
zip ties, with the M1 650 below covered in protective bubble wrap.
Gamdias elected to not print out a paper manual and instead offer a digital one through their
website, something I appreciate.
The RGB ring fan is the M1’s main attraction.
By pressing a button on the back of the power supply, you can cycle through 26 lighting
options with 3 main effects: breathe, solid color, and spinning.
Each of the three effects can be used with 8 different colors: red, yellow, green, blue,
cyan, purple, white, and rainbow.
The final two options are the multicolor breathe which cycles through each color, and finally
having the LEDs off.
Looking at the electrical ratings, the M1 650 actually offers pretty respectable performance.
It can deliver close to its rated capacity of 650W on the 12V rail, whereas a lot of
budget power supplies really push their ratings.
The M1 650 comes with most of the circuit protections you’d want in a power supply:
over power, over voltage, under voltage, short circuit, surge, and inrush current protection.
The only one missing is temperature protection, which is usually the first to go when cutting
costs for budget parts like this.
In terms of connections, the M1 650 has the main 24-pin ATX cable, one 4+4-pin CPU cable,
two 6+2 pin PCIe cables, 5 SATA connectors, 2 Molex, and 1 floppy.
The cables are mostly sleeved in that typical black mesh so you won’t have a huge unruly
mass of ketchup and mustard cables to deal with during cable management.
My test setup for power supplies is a Ryzen 3 1200 overclocked to 4.1GHz at 1.35V with
8GB of DDR4-2400 memory and a stock GTX 1060 3GB.
Idle results are taken with no programs running, load results are taken with Prime95 and Unigine’s
Valley running stress tests, and power measurements are for the entire system as measured at the
wall.
Looking at the idle results, we can see the effect of only being 80 Plus White rated.
It drew less power than the unrated Raidmax RX-500 XT, but fell pretty far behind all
the 80 Plus Bronze and Gold power supplies.
In terms of noise, it actually wasn’t too bad compared to other supplies lacking a fanless
mode at about 38.4dB.
Now for the load results, we can see a bit more stratification.
Pulling 236 watts from the wall, it wasted around 20 watts more than the much more expensive
Seasonic Prime AirTouch I recently reviewed but around 10 watts less than the Raidmax
supply.
In terms of noise it was the loudest of the 80 Plus rated power supplies I’ve reviewed
but not by a large margin – only 0.3dB louder than the Thermaltake Smart 500.
As a side note, with silent mode off it produces 62.5dB of noise.
I’d consider anything above 55 or 60dB to be too loud for typical use, so turning silent
mode off is really only reasonable if you’re wearing headphones or your computer is far
away from your desk.
Now for the pros and cons.
On the pros side, the M1 650’s main focus is its RGB lighting and it does that well.
Gamdias didn’t skimp out here; the LEDs are bright and colorful, and could make a
bland windowed case look much more spicy.
Second, despite being a budget power supply it’s not too loud as long as silent mode
is on.
Companies are all too quick to save that extra 50 cents for a cheaper fan controller and
kill any silence they might otherwise have, but Gamdias didn’t.
Though it serves its main purpose well, the Astrape M1 650 does come with some drawbacks.
The first is their decision to put the silent mode switch right next to the actual power
switch.
Not that it’s likely for someone to be fumbling around back there in the middle of a game,
but putting two rocker switches next to each other when one of them will shut off your
computer is just asking for trouble.
Second, it would’ve been nice for the cables to be sleeved on each section, rather than
just the first section.
What I mean is that after the first connector, for example on the SATA cable, there isn’t
any sleeving on the remaining segments.
It’s a minor hitch but it does make it feel a little less polished.
Overall, if you’re looking for an RGB power supply that won’t break the bank, the Astrape
M1 650 from Gamdias is for you.
The LEDs are bright, add plenty of color to the inside of a computer, and in terms of
electrical and noise performance, it does pretty well.
For $50, the M1 650 is a very attractive power supply.
Follow the link in the description to pick one up for yourself.
If you want to get notified of new videos as soon as they’re up, hit subscribe then
click the bell icon to enable notifications.
So guys if you liked this video hit the like button, if you want to see more hit subscribe,
and if you have any questions on M1 650, leave them in the comments below.
Thanks for watching, I hope I helped, and I’ll see you in
the next video.