PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610 PSU review
Testing
To test the performance of the Silencer 750 I installed the unit into a test system and checked if the voltages under idle and load conditions are in line with the ATX voltage specifications. The output of the +12V, +5V, and +3.3V rails is measured with a digital multimeter. The idle measurements were taken after booting into Windows XP and leaving the system idle for a couple of minutes and to get the load measurements I loaded several benchmarks and programs to stress all the major components.
Test system
Here are the results:Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 processor with OCZ Vendetta HSF Asus Commando motherboard EVGA GeForce 8800GT Overclocked 2GB OCZ Flex XLC PC2-6400 CL3 memory Seagate 320GB HDD CoolerMaster Cosmos case PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610 PSU Dell 2407WFP LCD display Operating system: Windows XP SP2
The voltage regulation appears to be pretty good with only a couple of small 0.01V drops. Unfortunately, I don't own a dedicated PSU test platform that allows me the check the ripple, voltages, and efficiency at various load levels but reviewers who do use this kind of equipment report the Silencer 610 scores well and has an efficiency of up to 83-85%.
Noise: During subjective hearing tests I couldn't hear the unit because fans from other components like the graphics card were a lot noisier. I also noticed that the PSU remained fairly cool during all my tests.
Conclusion
The looks of the Silencer 610 may not impress you but the performance is splendid. This unit delivers a lot of power, a fine build quality, high efficiency and it's backed up by a long 5-year warranty. The only minor inconvenience is that you need a lot of room to tuck away the unused cables as this unit isn't modular. The Silencer 610 retails for about $119 (or less) which is a pretty good price for a high-quality power supply.
The Good Stuff
- Very stable
- Powerful
- High efficiency
- 5 year warranty
- Relatively quiet
- Good price/performance ratio
The Bad Stuff
- Non-modular cables make cable management a bit harder
- It's a bit longer than a normal ATX PSU, this could cause clearance problems in some cases.
I give the PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610 a 9/10 and our Seal of Approval.
Previous Page (3/4)Added: January 8th 2008
Product reviewed: PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610 PSU
Reviewer: Thomas De Maesschalck
Score: 9/10
Page: 4/4
