HuntKey Jumper/R90 300W 80Plus Gold

A Great Product, HuntKey!

While it can be pretty easy to find 80Plus Silver power supplies with output ratings of 700W or more, finding such PSUs in sub-500W offerings is rare. Even if we drop the requirement to 80 Plus Bronze, Newegg as an example lists only 12 PSUs rated at 400W or less. Of those, five come from Seasonic, and the only 80 Plus Gold offering is the $130 X-400FL we've mentioned throughout this review. HuntKey looks to add a second with their R90 / Jumper 300G, and it's the first 300W 80 Plus Gold we've seen. Perhaps more importantly, it's already available in Japan for retail customers, not just OEMs. Unfortunately, those of us in the US and Europe will have to wait a bit longer, as HuntKey is still looking for distributors that are willing to carry this sort of product. Hopefully they can find them soon, as this is a very compelling power supply, particularly if they can match or exceed the current 7980 Yen ($96) price point. Let's recap.

Starting with the cables and connectors, while it might be useful to have a longer ATX12V/EPS12V cable, the number of available connectors is outstanding. The R90 has two PCIe connectors (on one cable), along with two peripheral cables with four SATA and four Molex connectors. It might be nice to have a floppy Molex adapter, but you can buy one separately if you really need it--but shop locally, as shipping will probably be five times as much as the cost of the adapter! All told, there are enough connectors here to match most 500W PSUs, which is one more reason the expected price of ~$90 is acceptable.

Moving to the internals and overall build, the R90 / 300G has a good PCM, high quality capacitors, and a small high frequency transformer to save PCB space. This is one reason why the power of this design should not be underestimated. It's a strong PSU in a 14cm housing. In addition, HuntKey implemented all of the important safety functions on several ICs, and these features worked properly in testing. The high efficiency comes courtesy of the active rectifying, resonant topology, and well chosen MOSFETs with good characteristics. I've had a quick look at a SuperFlower PSU with almost the same quality, but it lacked OCP and used a cheaper material for the PCB. Right now, there really isn't anything comparable to this HuntKey model. Here's a recap of the performance to sum things up.

Our testing confirms that the R90 achieves the necessary marks for 80 Plus Gold certification, and efficiency is 85% even at a 30W load. The power factor is always above 0.90, though it's a bit lower if used on a 230VAC power grid. Ripple and noise are also well within specification, and the 3.3V rail in particular is virtually flawless; the 5V and both 12V rails are also good, with ripple less than half of the allowed maximum. Overall, we can't find any real points of criticism--even the appearance and cable sleeving are nice (though the 300G skips the sleeving).

We definitely look forward to seeing HuntKey's 90R / 300G in other markets outside of Japan, as this PSU would be perfect for HTPCs. The Seasonic X-400FL is still a viable alternative, though, depending on the pricing of the R90. Besides HTPCs, average PCs looking to "go green" and even gamers with moderate GPUs might be interested in this small, energy-saving PSU. HuntKey informs us that the GTX 460 (about the same as the HD 6950) are the maximum level of GPU they can support on this unit, and that's quite realistic, since +12V OCP is 28A. HuntKey's R90 is the sort of power supply we'd like to see more readily available, especially since the vast majority of PCs rarely need more than 200W (and often less than that). We'd give them an award, but we'll wait for more information on pricing and availability outside of Japan first.