OK, Why does it need 4 extra wires for voltage sense though? IIRC the doubled wire on one of the 3.3 pins from the standard layout is for vSense; 2 more cover the +5 and +12V rails. That leaves 2 more unaccounted for. +5VSB and -12V are possible I guess; but for as lightly utilized as they are it seems like overkill to me.
My Enermax is 8 years old now, still running strong and the fan is as quiet as on day one. I could NEVER say that from a Seasonic, and I used quite a few in PCs and had friends battle with them in their own. One friend had to replace one at the very start, then again after a year and again after 3 years.
Bought a fantastic PSU from Hiper over 8 years ago after reading the review here on AT, and still working wonderfully. In fact I think it has vastly outlived the company.
I've learned, over time, that you don't pay attention to the name on the box. It's the OEM that really matters and because of that I'd recommend one of these all day long.
That's not the best way to shop since it's not the OEM that supplies the cable compliment, service, warranty, etc. If you buy it and it dies in a year and you can't find who to send the PSU back to or you have to pay $20 to send the PSU to the Netherlands, you start to think how much those things matter.
I agree! Some vendors have turned pretty crappy designs from questionable OEMs into decent products. Look at OCZ psu's after they purchased PCP&C. Most of them were then built by FSP and let's face it FSP made some real crap back in the day...a lot of the same designs were used by XFX but the OCZ models were consistently better and the warranty was much more honorable.
It still better than buying the brand name. You won't even need to think about the warranty when you have a really good psu. And who wants to deal with warranty claims?
Years ago, PC Power & Cooling offered a one-time rewiring of the PSU free of charge if the end-user covered shipping and handling. I took them up on this in 2008 with a 750 Quad and it cost $18 total ($8 to ship it to them, $10 for them to process and ship it back.)
In exchange, I was returned a completely remapped cable layout to fit my case exactly. This is before modular PSU's were really common place, but even modular PSU's either have too short or too long of cables.
I don't believe any other OEM's offer this kind of service anymore. Very unfortunate. But there are other perks OEM's offer other than warranty, such as color coding components to other products they make, and a verified hardware (quality assurance) guarantee.
Stating the power output of the unit as 'Mediocre' in conjunction with the maximum fan RPM to define it's potential profile is probably not the best description. Wording does make a difference, pointing in this case that the unit should be supplying much higher levels of power and is sub-par; something not usually associated with any seasonic unit other than their less than average for Seasonic TFX units.
Good testing as always, but the article reads like it was written by someone who isn't a native-level speaker of English; the writing feels stilted at times, and that made it difficult to read.
Exactly what I was thinking. I'm sure I couldn't even do him the courtesy of pronouncing his name right, so I have to give him a pass on an incomplete sentence here or there.
His background is electronics not English. The odds of an English major putting together a ripple chart are pretty weak so I'll take the review how it is :) even johnnyguru has some skitch here and there, and sometimes I think he's been drinking but they're still great reviews!
By "Power On" tests, I assume that you are talking about the AC input and care about the inrush current and harmonics.
Power On tests require a very good oscilloscope with current probes and a programmable AC source. These are equipment in the tens of thousands of dollars. Although there are plans to purchase them in the future, you need to excuse me that I do not possess such funds to spend for just a couple of more tests.
...and not practically useful tests either. Power On tests are everything but "critical". They are virtually limited to compliance certification. The inrush current or the harmonics generated by a PSU will not affect its performance. Harmonics may affect other very sensitive devices on the same line, such as audio equipment, but again these need to reach extraordinary levels to become an issue. Inrush current could cause your household circuit breaker to release if it is too high, but 99.99999999% of the readers cannot really calculate and compare the current-time (I-t) curve of a PSU against the I-t curve of the circuit breaker. If I gave them a curve with a maximum current of 170A over a few nanoseconds, most people would think that their house would catch fire, even though that figure is entirely unimportant. 99.99% cannot even differentiate between power and energy, they cannot comprehend that timeless figures do not tell any side of the story at all.
Now, if you are talking on the DC side, they become critical only if they fail their required specifications. It is very difficult for a PSU not to meet these standards. Once again, a very fast oscilloscope is required for proper testing, but I would report it if something was amiss with the oscilloscope that I am using right now.
The vast majority (99.9% or more) of the PSUs will behave just fine with each rail loaded to its maximum wattage and current specifications. Heavy ripple may appear due to the cross-loading, but I never saw a single PSU that would not work. We have the cross-loading tests just for that. And, by the way, loading a single rail to the maximum while the rest are unloaded is not a proper usage scenario. By that logic, I should be testing them on mount Everest, just to see if they can work at an altitude of 5000 meters. Even for our cross loading tests, the load is terribly unbalanced and it is virtually impossible to represent a real world scenario. Well, unless if what you want to do is to use a PSU to start a car's engine or to power a welder.
And since we are on the topic of learning, you can have AC signal on your DC signal (that's ripple) and random fluctuations (that's noise). Page 4 for ripple. For noise, once again you need a VERY expensive oscilloscope, capable of calculating and displaying ripple and noise separately. My equipment cannot currently filter the noise out of a signal.
And yes, ripple is one of the most important PSU characteristics in my opinion, as it has a significant effect on the lifetime of electronics.
I apologize, because for some reason I didn't noticed the ripple data in page 4. Thanks for including it. Some sites specialized on PSU analysis compare each unit with the certificated specification standards, and other units.
I learnt about the importance of ripple and power on behavior when one of my motherboards died, and a friend told me that my PSU had bad behavior, so the ripple probably damaged it enough for the bad peaks at power on to finish the work. He was working at a university, so he didn’t pay for the equipment. I didn’t knew that it was so expensive.
I'm sorry to hear that you do not have that expensive equipment. I'm accostumed to find here reviews of expensive hardware, and forgot that generally it is lendt or donated by manufacturers.
No worry here a good review which is easy to understand and informative. So sites go too much technical in a sense that you need to poses a PhD in electrical science to understand what they say. Some sites do review the opposite way that they do some basic load tests and efficiency tests I'm not naming it who. Anandtech PSU reviews are overall balanced and yet detailed enough.
Can't remember when/if I saw a Seasonic (based) PSU with 60 mV Ripple, that usually their strong point - bad Sample?
@jonnyGURU:
If you 're working for Corsair now - that's at least what I assume after seeing you in a Techsyndikate Interview regarding single/multi rail designs "recently" - commenting on on a competitiors product seems odd to me.
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YoloPascual - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
I knew it! The looks and the brand name pertains to one and only OEM.Seasonic
Seonic
Cyonic
DanNeely - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
I've noticed this on a few other Seasonic designs, but why do they split the modular 24pin cable into 18+10 pin connectors on the PSU itself?jonnyGURU - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
So it fits on the limited real estate available on the modular PCB. And the extra four pins are for voltage sense (why 28 instead of just 24).DanNeely - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
OK, Why does it need 4 extra wires for voltage sense though? IIRC the doubled wire on one of the 3.3 pins from the standard layout is for vSense; 2 more cover the +5 and +12V rails. That leaves 2 more unaccounted for. +5VSB and -12V are possible I guess; but for as lightly utilized as they are it seems like overkill to me.Innokentij - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
Been loving Seasonic since i got my first PSU from them. Best there is.Beaver M. - Tuesday, August 18, 2015 - link
My Enermax is 8 years old now, still running strong and the fan is as quiet as on day one.I could NEVER say that from a Seasonic, and I used quite a few in PCs and had friends battle with them in their own. One friend had to replace one at the very start, then again after a year and again after 3 years.
tamalero - Wednesday, August 19, 2015 - link
PC Power & cooling here. These units have been top notch all the time.Noone of my units have failed. and I'm on the third 750W Silencer series.
dananski - Wednesday, August 19, 2015 - link
Bought a fantastic PSU from Hiper over 8 years ago after reading the review here on AT, and still working wonderfully. In fact I think it has vastly outlived the company.Flunk - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
I've learned, over time, that you don't pay attention to the name on the box. It's the OEM that really matters and because of that I'd recommend one of these all day long.jonnyGURU - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
That's not the best way to shop since it's not the OEM that supplies the cable compliment, service, warranty, etc. If you buy it and it dies in a year and you can't find who to send the PSU back to or you have to pay $20 to send the PSU to the Netherlands, you start to think how much those things matter.Samus - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
I agree! Some vendors have turned pretty crappy designs from questionable OEMs into decent products. Look at OCZ psu's after they purchased PCP&C. Most of them were then built by FSP and let's face it FSP made some real crap back in the day...a lot of the same designs were used by XFX but the OCZ models were consistently better and the warranty was much more honorable.YoloPascual - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
It still better than buying the brand name. You won't even need to think about the warranty when you have a really good psu. And who wants to deal with warranty claims?Samus - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
True. But support is everything with technology.Years ago, PC Power & Cooling offered a one-time rewiring of the PSU free of charge if the end-user covered shipping and handling. I took them up on this in 2008 with a 750 Quad and it cost $18 total ($8 to ship it to them, $10 for them to process and ship it back.)
In exchange, I was returned a completely remapped cable layout to fit my case exactly. This is before modular PSU's were really common place, but even modular PSU's either have too short or too long of cables.
I don't believe any other OEM's offer this kind of service anymore. Very unfortunate. But there are other perks OEM's offer other than warranty, such as color coding components to other products they make, and a verified hardware (quality assurance) guarantee.
dwatterworth - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
Stating the power output of the unit as 'Mediocre' in conjunction with the maximum fan RPM to define it's potential profile is probably not the best description. Wording does make a difference, pointing in this case that the unit should be supplying much higher levels of power and is sub-par; something not usually associated with any seasonic unit other than their less than average for Seasonic TFX units.yt2005 - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
Good testing as always, but the article reads like it was written by someone who isn't a native-level speaker of English; the writing feels stilted at times, and that made it difficult to read.Peichen - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
Does Emmanouil Fylladitakis sounds American/British to you?DCide - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
Exactly what I was thinking. I'm sure I couldn't even do him the courtesy of pronouncing his name right, so I have to give him a pass on an incomplete sentence here or there.Samus - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
His background is electronics not English. The odds of an English major putting together a ripple chart are pretty weak so I'll take the review how it is :) even johnnyguru has some skitch here and there, and sometimes I think he's been drinking but they're still great reviews!ImSpartacus - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
Good to see a review for a psu that I might buy. Nice job.romrunning - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
Kudos for reviewing a PSU with a lower power output (450-550W) than the higher output ones!This is exactly what I was looking for to run a single-GPU system.
marraco - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
Anandtech needs to learn a lot about reviewing a PSU.Where are the power on tests? They are critical.
How does it behaves when each rail is fully loaded? Does it really deliver? Most PSU don't.
How much AC noise and ripple contains the signal under different loads? Those small peaks may slowly erode your hardware
E.Fyll - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
By "Power On" tests, I assume that you are talking about the AC input and care about the inrush current and harmonics.Power On tests require a very good oscilloscope with current probes and a programmable AC source. These are equipment in the tens of thousands of dollars. Although there are plans to purchase them in the future, you need to excuse me that I do not possess such funds to spend for just a couple of more tests.
...and not practically useful tests either. Power On tests are everything but "critical". They are virtually limited to compliance certification. The inrush current or the harmonics generated by a PSU will not affect its performance. Harmonics may affect other very sensitive devices on the same line, such as audio equipment, but again these need to reach extraordinary levels to become an issue. Inrush current could cause your household circuit breaker to release if it is too high, but 99.99999999% of the readers cannot really calculate and compare the current-time (I-t) curve of a PSU against the I-t curve of the circuit breaker. If I gave them a curve with a maximum current of 170A over a few nanoseconds, most people would think that their house would catch fire, even though that figure is entirely unimportant. 99.99% cannot even differentiate between power and energy, they cannot comprehend that timeless figures do not tell any side of the story at all.
Now, if you are talking on the DC side, they become critical only if they fail their required specifications. It is very difficult for a PSU not to meet these standards. Once again, a very fast oscilloscope is required for proper testing, but I would report it if something was amiss with the oscilloscope that I am using right now.
The vast majority (99.9% or more) of the PSUs will behave just fine with each rail loaded to its maximum wattage and current specifications. Heavy ripple may appear due to the cross-loading, but I never saw a single PSU that would not work. We have the cross-loading tests just for that. And, by the way, loading a single rail to the maximum while the rest are unloaded is not a proper usage scenario. By that logic, I should be testing them on mount Everest, just to see if they can work at an altitude of 5000 meters. Even for our cross loading tests, the load is terribly unbalanced and it is virtually impossible to represent a real world scenario. Well, unless if what you want to do is to use a PSU to start a car's engine or to power a welder.
And since we are on the topic of learning, you can have AC signal on your DC signal (that's ripple) and random fluctuations (that's noise). Page 4 for ripple. For noise, once again you need a VERY expensive oscilloscope, capable of calculating and displaying ripple and noise separately. My equipment cannot currently filter the noise out of a signal.
And yes, ripple is one of the most important PSU characteristics in my opinion, as it has a significant effect on the lifetime of electronics.
ImSpartacus - Tuesday, August 18, 2015 - link
Whoa, let's calm down there, hondo.It's not worth arguing with random people on the internet.
It's good to read comments and feedback, but spend your time writing articles, not massive comments.
dqniel - Tuesday, August 18, 2015 - link
His comment was filled with useful information, so I'm glad he posted it.marraco - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link
Thanks for your answer.I apologize, because for some reason I didn't noticed the ripple data in page 4. Thanks for including it.
Some sites specialized on PSU analysis compare each unit with the certificated specification standards, and other units.
I learnt about the importance of ripple and power on behavior when one of my motherboards died, and a friend told me that my PSU had bad behavior, so the ripple probably damaged it enough for the bad peaks at power on to finish the work.
He was working at a university, so he didn’t pay for the equipment. I didn’t knew that it was so expensive.
I'm sorry to hear that you do not have that expensive equipment. I'm accostumed to find here reviews of expensive hardware, and forgot that generally it is lendt or donated by manufacturers.
kuttan - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link
No worry here a good review which is easy to understand and informative. So sites go too much technical in a sense that you need to poses a PhD in electrical science to understand what they say. Some sites do review the opposite way that they do some basic load tests and efficiency tests I'm not naming it who. Anandtech PSU reviews are overall balanced and yet detailed enough.Folterknecht - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
Can't remember when/if I saw a Seasonic (based) PSU with 60 mV Ripple, that usually their strong point - bad Sample?@jonnyGURU:
If you 're working for Corsair now - that's at least what I assume after seeing you in a Techsyndikate Interview regarding single/multi rail designs "recently" - commenting on on a competitiors product seems odd to me.
sheh - Tuesday, August 18, 2015 - link
I still think it would be useful to test with a 50W load, and even 25W. Modern computers don't use much power in light usage.Beaver M. - Tuesday, August 18, 2015 - link
Exactly. A test like that is mandatory nowadays. You can actually get systems down to 10-15W, if you put some effort into it.DanNeely - Wednesday, August 19, 2015 - link
It was tested at a sub 50W load. Eyeballing it I'd say it's at most 30W; might only be 25.