SilverStone Nightjar 500 W Power Supply Review

Conclusions

There is both good and bad news about the SilverStone Nightjar 500 W. On the good side, we have very high efficiency, above 85% most of the time, excellent voltage regulation (3% tolerance) most of the time, and the use of very high-end components, especially capacitors. Also, although officially this power supply has received the 80 Plus Silver certification, the manufacturer downgraded it to 80 Plus Bronze. It is always good to see a manufacturer that is honest with its consumers.

However, the Nightjar 500 W isn’t a flawless power supply. Efficiency at 20% load (100 W) dropped below the 82% mark, which is a major concern, as fanless power supplies are targeted to home theater PCs (HTPCs) and similar applications, where it is quite common to have the computer running at low power. On the other hand, we tested this unit at very high temperatures (which is our normal procedure), and efficiency drops with higher temperature. Also, even though this unit uses very high-end capacitors, noise and ripple levels were very high, with the noise and ripple levels at the +5VSB output going out of the appropriate range when the power supply was delivering 500 W.

The main problem with this unit is its price, USD 200. We know that it is expensive to design and build a fanless power supply, especially when you use only high-end components and opt for a more expensive design. At this price, we expected this unit to be flawless (this is the minimum we expect to see on a power supply to consider it “flawless”: three percent voltage regulation, noise and ripple levels at half of the maximum allowed or less, and high efficiency in all load patterns at high temperatures), which, unfortunately, isn’t the case.