PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610 PSU review
A look under the hood
Now, let's take a look under the hood to see what this PSU is made of. Surprisingly, there aren't any "warranty void if seal is broken" stickers. I noticed the same thing while I was testing the Silencer 750 last year. Still, I would like to remind you that it's not a good idea to open a power supply. Even when the PSU hasn't been used for hours there could still be enough current in the unit to seriously harm or even kill you.
For a power supply, the Silencer 610 is pretty roomy, you can see that there's enough room for ventilation. PC Power & Cooling explains they left 1 inch (about 2.5cm) of room between the components and the inlet side of the fan to minimize air turbulence. The firm claims this "noise suppressing air gap" reduces noise levels by up to 10dB. We have no way to test this so we'll have to take their word for it.
The PSU features two large aluminum heatsinks with some fins to dissipate the heat and we can also see that the 80mm fan is made by Adda. This fan has a noise level of 26 to 38dBA.
The primary side of the Silencer 610 features a big Hitachi capacitor rated at 390µF 400V and the secondary side features Nippon Chemicon caps.
The Silencer series from PC Power & Cooling uses a large single +12V rail instead of two or four smaller rails. On this particular unit, the +12V line can deliver up to 49A.
The firm explains the advantages of large single rail on their Myths page:
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.
Previous Page (2/4)
Added: January 8th 2008
Product reviewed: PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610 PSU
Reviewer: Thomas De Maesschalck
Score: 9/10
Page: 3/4
