OCZ Silencer 750 Quad Crossfire edition review

PSU - Power Supply Units 108 Page 2 of 6 Published by

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Page 2 (Specs)

 

Welcome lad, to page two. Things will get red from here on. Today we'll peek at the PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Watts. A product that has been reviewed by a lot of press already. Praised into heaven... or with it's red colour into hell (hey whatever floats your boat man). 750W folks... but it's a PC Power & Cooling product ( PCP from now on) and I already stated... this is professional gear. So while it is a 750 rated PSU it literally can peak with an output of 825W with a max of 60A on the +12V rail. Now for real... that'll last a while with all the dual and quad craziness lately.

Features:

  • 750W Continuous @ 40C (825W Peak)
  • Up to 90% (10dB) Less Noise per Watt
  • NVIDIA SLI Certified (Dual 8800 GTX)
  • High Efficiency (83%); .99 Active PFC
  • +12VDC @ 60A (Powerful Single Rail)
  • Rock-Solid, Super-Clean DC Output
  • 24-pin, 8-pin, 4-pin M/B Connectors
  • Quad PCI-E and 15 Drive Connectors
  • Automatic Fan Speed Control Circuit
  • 3-Year Warranty and Tech Support

On the next page we'll start our photo-shoot and you'll notice that the PSU definitely is less sexy than other products we have tested lately. No LEDs, 14CM fans, modular cabling. No this is for the high-end freaks. See modular cabled for example... with everything you change in a cable you'll add more resistance, ripple, noise etc. This product is pure. Much like audiophiles are with pure music. The same goes for the voltage rails... everywhere you'll see dual, quad or even more voltage rails. This mainly has to do with the legendary ATX/EPS 12V Power Supply limitations of 18A ~ 22A on all 12VDC rails.

PCP however is pushing the entire 12V enchilada over one single rail which can peak up to 60 AMPs (60x12= 720 Watt), crazy. I did some research on this because, there is some concern with that, Power Supply Design Guides state that no 12V rail should exceed more than 20 amps (240VA) for one reason only ... your safety.

See chances are that you will survive a 230 Volts yab just fine. But it's way more dangerous if you get in contact with that 60A/12V line (if for example there should be damage to a cable or something). Though I agree there's a very slim chance for that.  Anyway, the PCP Silencer 750 has an efficiency of 83% and is capable of a continuous output of 750W, with 825W peaks. The PSU delivers a max of 30A on the +5V rail, 60A on the +12V rail, 0.8A on the -12V, 24A on the +3.3V and 3A on the +5VSB. The Silencer 750 is cooled by a 80mm fan which is rated at 26-40dBa. As you just noticed (of course you did !)PC Power & Cooling is rare in it's choice to make one big single 12 volt rail.

PCPower&Cooling Silencer 750 EPS12V
Operating Range: 90-264 VAC
.99 power factor
Frequency: 47-63Hz
Current: 12A
Efficiency: 83%
DC Output: +5V @ 30A
+12V @ 60A
-12V @ 0.8A
+3.3V @ 24A
+5VSB @ 3A
continuous = 750W
peak = 825W
 
Regulation: 3% (+3.3V, +5V, +12V)
5% (-12V)
Ripple: 1% (p-p)
OV Protection: +3.3V, +5V, +12V
OC Protection: 135% OPP
Agency Approval: UL/ULC/CE/CB/RoHS
Operating Temperature: 0° - 40°C
Humidity: 20% - 80% RH
Fan Type: 22 - 55 CFM ball-bearing
Noise: 28 - 42dB(A)
 
Compatibility: EPS12V / NVIDIA SLI certified
M/B Connectors: 24-pin, 8-pin, 4-pin, dual 6-pin Video
 
Drive Connectors: 15 (6 SATA, 1 mini)
MTBF: 100,000 hours

There's enough overall juice for a pretty darn high-end spec'ed system.

This newer revision of the PSU also offers four PCIe connectors for your graphics cards, 2x 6-pin and 2x 6+2-pin connectors for the latest 150 Watt feeding connectors. The new 8-pin connectors are not mounted on this PSU. Again, for us geeks the most important voltage rail is 12 volts... and 60 AMPs on the 12v rail will be sufficient for any current high-end overclocked gaming rig under the one condition that it can deliver that ampage stable.
To get you a broader overview, one GeForce 8800 GTX draws 9A.

Cabling... looking good there. It's a lot of non-modular cabling to get heaps of stuff connected.

Included with the PSU, you get the following connectors; 24-pin baseboard, 8-pin & 4-pin CPU, 8-Molex (1-floppy), 6-SATA, 2x 6-pin & 2x 6+2-pin PCIe. The connectors are nicely sleeved, and lengths are long enough to have enough reach even in a large chassis. The connectors themselves are all a little old-fashion though, for example the older white Molex connectors. nowadays we see the black easy grip Molex connectors everywhere. Stuff like that is preferred.


OCZ PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Watt PSU

Power Efficiency
Judging from the specs the power efficiency of the PSU is rated at +80% overall efficiency with a load of 100%. Measured at 230V (which we use here in Europe).

But what does that mean? The Power Efficiency of a power supply?

First and foremost; the higher the better, efficiency is good. When power is drawn from your wall socket and travels into your power supply, not all of it is transformed into electricity that your computer consumes. A rather large part of that current will get lost as there is heat that is dissipating in the capacitors or leakage in circuits and other insufficiencies. So it boils down to this: If your computer requires 500 watts of power, a power supply will draw more than that from your electric company. Here's an example:

If you have a generic power supply with an average 70% efficiency a 350 power draw (350/70x100) watt load would mean it is drawing 500 watts of current from your wall socket while your PC only uses 350 watts, interesting eh?

Let's do that math again with the Silencer, yet this time with a 83% power efficiency in mind: 350/83x100= 422 Watt. So that's saving 72 Watts over a 70% efficient product. If you have your PC powered on a lot , think about this theory and what it can save you in the long term. The higher the efficiency the less power loss, the less money you have to pay. And hey... it's good for mother nature as well.

Active PFC
This model has a very nice feature called Active PFC. To put it in simple terms, Active PFC PSUs are more expensive and, from a power consumption point of view, more efficient. Power Factor Correction (PFC) allows power distribution to operate at its highest efficiency. There are two types of PFC, Active PFC and Passive PFC. This PSU has Active PFC. Active PFC uses a circuit to correct power factor, Active PFC is able to generate a theoretical power factor of over 95%. Active Power Factor Correction also markedly diminishes total harmonics, automatically corrects for AC input voltage, and is capable of a full range of input voltage. Since Active PFC is the more complex method of Power Factor Correction, it is definitely more expensive to produce an Active PFC power supply.

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