After having read some reviews by fellow staffers here at PimpRig and others across the internet of Aspire's line of products, I must say I was excited to be offered one of their latest power supplies to review. I am not sure exactly how long Aspire has been around, but lately their name has become much more recognizable as a player in the custom PC market. I was asked to do a review on one of their higher-end models, the ATX-AS600W-BL. Then I heard that these power supplies had a nickname... Dark Side!

Now I am not the big Star Wars geek like you might think, but I must say the notion that the Pink Floyd gods were smiling down on me passed through my mind and brought a smile to my face. Considering I will eventually get around to doing a Dark Side of the Moon mod, this power supply - if it is up to the task - will end up in that particular case. But I digress, let's get on with business and the reason you are here.

Packaging

My lucky streak has continued once again with packages delivered in excellent condition as you can see by the picture below. I am beginning to wonder when I will see a completely crushed box, but I hope it isn't any time soon.

After opening the brown box, I saw that the PSU box was tightly fitted inside the outer box with no room to spare for peanuts or other packing material but with no damage to the outer box I had no worries. The inner box is quite appealing from a design standpoint and is layed out well with many pictures of the different connectors as well as the other colors available in the Dark Side line..

As you can see below, I could not get a good enough angle in the shot to see inside the window. No worries though as we are about to open her up and look inside anyway.

Documentation

While the documentation is rather sparse as far as a user's manual is concerned, I did notice something while reading through it that made me take pause. In the manual it states that this PSU is SLi certified yet it does not show up on nVidia's list of certified PSUs, nor does it have dual PCI-E connectors. I am hoping this is because they are planning to expand this line of power supplies, as on the box it does mention that SLi is optional. I suppose that a 6600GT or other card that does not require an external connector would qualify, but if you are using higher-end cards that require the extra PCI-E connector, then this would be a bit misleading.