A look under the hood
As in most of my power supply reviews I'm going to give you a look under the hood of the PCP&C Silencer 750W power supply. Be aware that opening a power supply is dangerous as even if the PSU hasn't been used for hours it may still hold enough current to kill you. Normally this also voids the warranty of your PSU but I'm not 100% sure if this is the case with the Silencer 750 as it didn't have any "warranty void if seal is broken" stickers.
The layout of the PSU looks pretty roomy and features two big aluminum heatsinks. As you can see on some of the photos PCP&C left quite a bit of room between the components and the fan, the firm claims this greatly reduces air turbulence and thus makes the PSU less noisy. According to the specifications the Silencer 750 is the only PSU on the market with no obstruction within one inch of the fan inlet.
The PSU uses a single 80mm fan from ADDA to keep its components cool. The fan is temperature controlled and produces between 26dBA and 40dBA, not really as quiet as you would expect from a "Silencer".
The Silencer 750 is designed by PCP&C but the actual production is outsourced to Seasonic. The primary side features a single big capacitor from Hitachi rated at 560µF 400V.
Just like some other PSUs I've reviewed this year the Silencer 750 features a big single +12V rail. This is actually against the official ATX specifications but it can have several advantages. Here's a quote from PCP&C's website:
Here are the facts: A large, single 12-volt rail (without a 240VA limit) can transfer 100% of the 12-volt output from the PSU to the computer, while a multi-rail 12-volt design has distribution losses of up to 30% of the power supply’s rating. Those losses occur because power literally gets “trapped” on under-utilized rails. For example, if the 12-volt rail that powers the CPU is rated for 17 amps and the CPU only uses 7A, the remaining 10A is unusable, since it is isolated from the rest of the system.
Since the maximum current from any one 12-volt rail of a multiple-rail PSU is limited to 20 amps (240VA / 12 volts = 20 amps), PCs with high-performance components that draw over 20 amps from the same rail are subject to over-current shutdowns. With power requirements for multiple processors and graphics cards continuing to grow, the multiple-rail design, with its 240VA limit per rail, is basically obsolete.
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