Where to buy a Seasonic S12-500?

[I.S.T.]

I looked at the review for it here and it's just amazing. However, it's not at the usual places I go to, and I have little knowledge of reputable dealers on the internet. >.<

[dhanson865]

The S12-500 is a discontinued model. Soon to be replaced by the S12II-500.

Even then if you liked the S12 you should probably look at the Corsair VX450W or Corsair HX520W instead as they are both less expensive and better quality than the original S12-500.

And if you didn't know already Seasonic makes those PSUs and Corsair puts their name on it.

[I.S.T.]

I looked those up and they don't seem to be as efficient. Did I find bad information or something?

[dhanson865]

Code: Select all

Model       Output (W)  40      65      90      150     200     250     300     400
        Efficiency
Seasonic S12-500          .?%   75.1%   78.0%   81.2%   82.0%   81.8%   81.1%   79.0%
Corsair VX450W          72.8%   79.1%   80.1%   82.6%   84.8%   83.3%   83.0%   81.8%
Corsair HX520W          67.7%   72.5%   77.1%   81.0%   84.5%   85.2%   85.1%   83.7%
Seasonic S12-550E+      68.8%   74.7%   78.6%   81.9%   84.8%   84.3%   84.1%   82.9%
Corsair HX620W          64.9%   70.0%   76.1%   79.9%   83.6%   84.5%   84.7%   83.9%
Seasonic M12-700        65.1%   71.7%   76.7%   80.3%   83.5%   83.8%   83.6%   82.8%

         Noise (dBA@1m)
S12-500                 21      21      21      22      25      28      34      39
VX450W                  21      21      21      21      21      22      26      35
HX520W                  22      22      22      22      22      22      22      29
S12-550E+               20      20      20      20      20      21      25      38
HX620W                  22      22      22      22      22      22      22      29
M12-700                 21      24      21      21      21      21      25      35

Where are you seeing numbers that make the S12-500 look better?

[I.S.T.]

Here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article247-page4.html

[johnniecache7]

The Seasonic S12-550 energy + still exist thought and it better or get the Corsair HX520W.

[dhanson865]

Here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article247-page4.html

You need to look at the bottom of that page, specifically:

POSTCRIPT: Efficiency Correction
October 22, 2005

Recently, we discovered that our power supply testing equipment and methodology were providing erroneously high efficiency results. In general, the biggest errors occurred at higher output load points above 300W. At lower output levels, the efficiency error was often no more than one or two percentage points. No other tested parameters were significantly affected.

Through a fairly arduous process of discovery, analysis and old fashioned problem solving, we modified our testing equipment and methodology to improve the accuracy of the efficiency results and described it all in the article SPCR's PSU Test Platform V.3. As part of this revision, we re-tested most of the power supplies on our Recommended PSU List. In most cases, the same sample was used in the second test.

The corrected and original efficiency results for all the re-tested PSUs are shown in in the article, Corrected Efficiency Results for Recommended Power Supplies. The relative efficiency of the tested power supplies has not changed. If the tested PSUs are ranked by efficiency, the rankings remain the same whether we use the original results or the new results.

This data is also being added to relevant reviews as postscripts like this one.

In this case, our original efficiency calculations were 2~5% too high through to about 200W output. Above that, the the error kept increasing with rising output power till it reached 8 percentage points off at 400W load. The new figures show that these models are still very high efficiency, but never reach past 82%, which is in line with Seasonic's own specifications.

The numbers in my table are straight from the corrected numbers in that page

Code: Select all

Model       Output (W)  40      65      90      150     200     250     300     400
        Efficiency
Seasonic S12-500          .?%   75.1%   78.0%   81.2%   82.0%   81.8%   81.1%   79.0%

[I.S.T.]

I suppose that I'm blind. Sorry, people. >.<