Introduction
Contents
Silencer 610 EPS12V is a 610 W power supply from PC Power & Cooling using the traditional PC power supply design with a single 80 mm fan on its rear side. Besides its Spartan looks this unit features active PFC, two video card power connectors for SLI and CrossFire, EPS12V connector and is labeled at 40° C, so the manufacturer guarantees that you will truly get 610 W of power. In fact, this unit came with a testing report generated by a Chroma 8000 machine (probably the most high-end power supply load tester available today), showing that not only this unit can deliver its 610 W but it can peak up to 680 W. We completely disassembled this power supply to take an in-depth look at its design and components and also tested it by ourselves to see if it can truly deliver 610 W of power.
Figure 1: PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610 EPS12V.
Figure 2: PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610 EPS12V.
You can see the report that is included with this power supply in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Chroma 8000 report for this power supply.
According to the report the unit we had in hands could truly its rated power, peaking to 680 W and providing 84.5% efficiency at 615 W, which is absolutely great (the manufacturer says this unit has 83% efficiency). Of course we will make a load and efficiency tests by ourselves to see if we can really trust the numbers provided by the manufacturer.
The higher the efficiency the better – an 80% efficiency means that 80% of the power pulled from the power grid will be converted in power on the power supply outputs and only 20% will be wasted. This translates into less consumption from the power grid (as less power needs to be pulled in order to generate the same amount of power on its outputs), meaning lower electricity bills – compare to 50% to 60% on regular power supplies.
Active PFC (Power Factor Correction), on the other hand, provides a better usage of the power grid and allows this power supply to be comply with the European law, making Corsair able to sell it in that continent (you can read more about PFC on our Power Supply Tutorial). This power supply doesn’t have an 110V/220V switch, feature available on power supplies with active PFC.
This power supply comes with seven peripheral power cables: two auxiliary power cables for video cards, one peripheral power cable containing two standard peripheral power connectors and one floppy disk drive power connector, two peripheral power cables containing three standard peripheral power connectors each and two Serial ATA power cables containing three SATA power connectors each.
One of the video card power connectors can be transformed into an 8-pin one, as you can see in Figure 4.
Figure 4: This 6-pin video card power connector can be transformed into an 8-pin one.
The plastic sleeving used by the main motherboard cables comes from inside the power supply, which is something we always point out that manufacturers should do.
This power supply has one ATX12V connector, one EPS12V connector and the main power supply connector can be used both on older 20-pin motherboards and on current 24-pin motherboards.
All wires used on this power supply are 18 AWG, which is good enough for this power supply power range. Cheap power supplies use 20 AWG wires or even 22 AWG, which are thinner.
Even though PC Power & Cooling paid to have its own UL number, JonnyGuru says that this power supply is really manufactured by Seasonic, but we couldn’t confirm this information.