Silver Power SP-SS750M 750w Review
Cables, Connectors & Internal
Published: 27th May 2010 | Source: Silver Power | Price: £94.58 |
Cables & Connectors
Starting with the usability of the modular connector system we immediately hit a rather major flaw. As the image below-left shows, it is possible to plug one of the Molex/SATA cables into one of the PCI-E headers. What does this mean? Well imagine accidentally plugging your £400 SSD Drive (that is designed to run at 3v/5v) straight into 12v....not a pretty sight. In short, Silver Power haven't done enough to make sure that numpties don't fry their hardware when plugging in modular connectors.
On the up-side though, Silver Power have opted to use the 'ribbon' style modular cables often seen on high-end PSU's manufactured by Corsair and ULTRA. These look so much more tidy that traditional sleeved cables and have a tighter bend radius under most circumstances. A total of seven cables are provided, meaning that one cable will always be left over if you decide to make use of all the modular headers. However, this does give you the flexability to use 3x Molex and 1x SATA cables if you have more Molex than SATA devices, or visa-versa if your PC is filled with something ridiculous like 12 hard disks (ahem Tom!). *Editors note. Whats up with 12 hard drives its a server?!*
Going in for a closer look at the ATX 24-Pin, EPS 8-Pin and PCI-E 8-Pin connectors we can see that Silver Power have retained compatibility with older/lower range motherboards and graphics cards by allowing certain parts of the connectors to be snapped off in order to support 20-Pin, 4-Pin and 6-Pin standards respectively. This is a feature that has been dropped by a lot of manufacturers on their higher-wattage models, so it's good to see that Silver Power aren't so quick to ditch the legacy standards.
| Silver Power 750w Connectors | ||
| ATX Connector | Hard Wired | 1x 20+4 Pin |
| EPS-12v / P4-12v Connector(s) | Hard Wired | 1x 4+4 Pin |
| Molex Connectors | Modular | 6x |
| Floppy Disk Connectors | Modular | 1x |
| SATA Connectors | Modular | 9x |
| PCI-E Connectors | Modular / Hard Wired | 2x 6+2 Pin / 2x 6+2 Pin |
The table above shows the number of connectors included with the Silver Power 750w in both modular and hard wired formats. Yet again we can see that manufacturers seem to be favoring SATA over Molex connectors despite SATA being limited to Hard Disk and optical devices. But anyway, let's not get too tied up with the cables and instead move on to the PSU's internals...
Internal Components
Well, well, well. Lookie what we have here. If I'm not mistaken, this particular Silver Power unit was was given birth to at the Seasonic factory. In fact, wouldn't you say that those internals look mighty similar to the XFX Black Edition that I reviewed at the end of last year? However, before you all dismiss the Silver Power as being likely to explode under heavy loads, what we need to remember is that the XFX unit had a single +12v rail with no OCP, whereas the Silver Power is listed as having two rails, more than likely to be virtually split using OCP.
As seen in the specifications the Silver Power 750w uses 'DC-DC Technology' which essentially means that the primary transformer in the unit converts 240VAC down to a single 12VDC output that is then converted to 3.3VDC and 5VDC by a set of VRM modules. The smaller of the two transformers is used exclusively for the +5vSB stand-by rail.
The primary (high voltage) capacitors are manufactured by Japanese company Nippon Chemicon and carry the rating of 400v / 390uF / 105°C. This high quality is also carried over to the secondary (low voltage) side of the unit where a range of Nippon Chemicon KZE capacitors has been used, most with specs of 16v / 2900uf / 105°C. Even looking at some of the smaller capacitors, everything is Nippon. So hopefully this will translate to some really nice scope results and a long PSU life.
Last but not least we come to the fan. Silver Power have opted for a Sanyo Denki San Ace 120 unit carrying the model number of 9S1212H403. Unfortunately the specifications for this fan seem to be quite elusive as a quick search of Google and Sanyo's website didn't turn up any accurate results. However after extensive digging around non-english websites, a few seemed to suggest that the fan is capable of 83CFM at <36dbA.
Now that the internal examination is complete, it's time to see just how the unit performs over on the next page...
Most Recent Comments
im thinking in geting one of the new gorilla !, and change my 500w also silver power wich for its 50€ back than, stil does a very good job today
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