Awesome. Great review. It's funny to see the 1050W model being quieter than the 650W model


I can't wait for a review of the Platinum series.
http://www.seasonic.com/pdf/datasheet/N ... 0-1000.pdf


Could they be even quieter?

Platinum -- quieter? I doubt it. I had an early first production sample (w/o box) of a 1000w plat. and it sounded about the same, efficiency was better at low power and just made Platinum levels at 50 & 100% load. It was also quite buzz-free, tho I can't recall if it was quite as good as this X1050 in comparison. I do hope the low/no buzz/whine aspect of this sample is typical and extends to the whole X series, not just the biggies.

As for the x1050 being quieter than x650, I don't think it's that surprising. I'm sure Seasonic has improved their production process since the x650 was introduced, and they may also have tweaked the fan profile in light of the real world results (failure rates, etc) gathered over the past 2 years. There's also the simple fact that today, so many more enthusiast cases have the PSU drawing air from outside the case than 2 years ago. Seasonic has to be aware of this, as atuned as they are to the silent minority.

The only better than these Seasonic PSUs is SPCR's review of them

what would it actually take to overtax this psu?

You are so very kind.

Maybe a triple Radeon 7970 system with an overclocked top-of-line 130W 1366 CPU? That + multiple HDDs might top a kilowatt peak demand under heavy gameplay.

Typo on page 2: "54A (648W) on a single rail. We've come full circle from the madness of multiple 12V lines so popular a few years ago."

Should read "87A (1044W) on a single rail."

The length of the PSU should also be 190mm, not 160mm.

Thanks for the review.

flemeister -- thanks for the sharp eyes. Corrected.

Interestingly noise it is much better in the hotbox compared to other PSUs, so it would be suited for hot isolated cases, where it wouldn't draw air directly from outside.

I wonder how it would fare with my overclocked i5 2500K, which caused 3 consecutive otherwise-quiet PSUs to whine and squeal in pain.
This was confirmed by other users - overclocking i5 causes high pitch whine in PSUs. No idea why, must have something to do with aux power for the voltage regulation circuitry.

In my experience, modern PSUs of decent brands (I've got experience with Corsair, CoolerMaster and BeQuiet) rarely generate obtrusive fan noise. Electronic squeal is a whole different matter and while not as loud as fans can get, it certainly is more noticeable.

Hi, are you sure it's the PSU and not the motherboard, I know whine can be very difficult to localise?
Personally I've only experianced it with high-end (ish) video cards when under load.
I had a couple of GTX260s that had bad whine and were "cured" with super-glue and were OK with my "test" Seasonic S12-II 330 and yet a GTX285 made the Seasonic whine badly.
My Signature 650 PSU seems to be whine free, just wish my current GTX560Ti was... it's not loud but very high pitched under load, well running Folding@home anyway.

A better made PSU may be less likely to whine or maybe it's just luck!
Seb

The great gets better...I'm talking about your writing Mike.

While this may be a very good product I'm sure and SPCR has treated it as so in the review, who needs a killowatt PSU? For 99% of the people that buy one of these an X400 or X460 would be sufficient. Tiny differences in efficiency will be more than compensated for by the greater resources required in manufacturing and greater cost of purchase.

Why not use the design resource for a passive, platinum rated X300?

It's still great, much better than typical kilowatt PSUs but still, unless you really do have a massive Workstation, someone REALLY must have something to overcompensate for to buy one of these.

this PSU should really come with a ruler with less than regulation sized inches on it!

A midrange gaming PC should use about 600W already if you account for aging, so add another graphics card and overclocking and 1000W isn't that ridiculous anymore.

Even though the SPCR community does not include many PC users who need/want kw PSUs, such products have been in the marketplace for many years now. We might shrug & roll our eyes, but people do buy and use and sometimes even need such PSUs for their rigs. Additional revenue from this part of the market may help Seasonic develop more/better lower power products.

KadazanPL , I would suggest it may not be the power supply as well. I have two Zalman 850HP's and I always thought it was the first one that I bought that made quite a loud squeal until I swapped my X58 board from my desktop PC into my server (when I got my X79 setup in October - yes October!) The squealing noise changed to my other PC, it was then I figured out the blame should be aimed at the Gigabyte X58 board. I've since tried a friends Asus X58 board and it fixed the problem.

I agree totally. If you are not a gamer I would argue that there is little reason to even need a discrete CPU. Sandy Bridge (and soon Ivy Bridge) CPUs are very power efficient and the increasing adoption of SSDs also reduces power requirements. My latest PC build is am i3-2100 based HTPC in an HD-Plex case with an 85W PS.

A most ridiculous statement! Most don't need more than 300W and a 400W psu should suffice. Only gamers need about 600W psu's with their highend cards. Anything over that it's most about dual graphic cards coupled with highly overclocked cpu's.

My system does not draw more than 250w at avarage.