The Single 12V Rail SilverStone Olympia OP650
by Christoph Katzer on July 13, 2007 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Final Words
Compared to former power supplies from Silverstone we can say that the company made an aggressive but logical step forward. With 650 watt it is one of the higher performing power supplies and therefore not suiting every users needs. With an efficiency of over 80% at lower loads (with 230VAC) it could run a decent medium class PC without wasting too much energy.
Due to the increasing temperature of our tests, we saw the voltages drop, especially on the lower voltage rails. The chosen high-end components have been a good fit for the most part but heat is still an issue. The new crew of engineers has come up with a good PCB design as well. From the high overall quality, one can literally see the robots installing these components.
The heatsinks have a very clever shape to let much air through to the PCB to cool down most of the components where they stand. They have a decent thickness as well which allows for a lot of heat conduction. The temperature of the heatsinks was average but we have seen colder ones. As for fan speed, the produced noise level was not the best result we could have hoped for, but it seems to be necessary to cool down the power supply to keep it working properly. We would love to see Silverstone take a second look at the fan speed and adjustments. The sound issue shouldn't be a real problem for most users who chose this PSU, as they will not be able to load the PSU anywhere near 80%. Not many people will ever hear this power supply with full load.
Protection features work fine in this model. The power supply correctly shuts down with any potential threat to its life such as over current or over power. Our short circuit test on each line during different loading stages had a positive outcome too with no damage to our unit.
In case of efficiency the OP650 has surprised us in a good way. At 230VAC it reached 80% efficiency with the impressively low load of 20%. At a medium load we saw an impressive 83% efficiency which held on until our highest load tests. At the lowest input of 115VAC we could only reach an efficiency of 81% which is still a very good result. In case of standby efficiency we measured just about 1.19W at 115VAC and 1.7W at 230VAC which is not a very high energy loss: exactly what we would like to see.
The price of the OP650 is just about $160 in the United States and around 139€ in Europe which is a reasonable price for a 650W power supply. It is a good price for the quality and performance this power supply brings to the table.
The build quality of the Olympia series is unmatched from other series of Silverstone PSUs which makes it the highest performer the company offers. We are looking forward where this leads in the future and what power supplies Silverstone will put out next.
Compared to former power supplies from Silverstone we can say that the company made an aggressive but logical step forward. With 650 watt it is one of the higher performing power supplies and therefore not suiting every users needs. With an efficiency of over 80% at lower loads (with 230VAC) it could run a decent medium class PC without wasting too much energy.
Due to the increasing temperature of our tests, we saw the voltages drop, especially on the lower voltage rails. The chosen high-end components have been a good fit for the most part but heat is still an issue. The new crew of engineers has come up with a good PCB design as well. From the high overall quality, one can literally see the robots installing these components.
The heatsinks have a very clever shape to let much air through to the PCB to cool down most of the components where they stand. They have a decent thickness as well which allows for a lot of heat conduction. The temperature of the heatsinks was average but we have seen colder ones. As for fan speed, the produced noise level was not the best result we could have hoped for, but it seems to be necessary to cool down the power supply to keep it working properly. We would love to see Silverstone take a second look at the fan speed and adjustments. The sound issue shouldn't be a real problem for most users who chose this PSU, as they will not be able to load the PSU anywhere near 80%. Not many people will ever hear this power supply with full load.
Protection features work fine in this model. The power supply correctly shuts down with any potential threat to its life such as over current or over power. Our short circuit test on each line during different loading stages had a positive outcome too with no damage to our unit.
In case of efficiency the OP650 has surprised us in a good way. At 230VAC it reached 80% efficiency with the impressively low load of 20%. At a medium load we saw an impressive 83% efficiency which held on until our highest load tests. At the lowest input of 115VAC we could only reach an efficiency of 81% which is still a very good result. In case of standby efficiency we measured just about 1.19W at 115VAC and 1.7W at 230VAC which is not a very high energy loss: exactly what we would like to see.
The price of the OP650 is just about $160 in the United States and around 139€ in Europe which is a reasonable price for a 650W power supply. It is a good price for the quality and performance this power supply brings to the table.
The build quality of the Olympia series is unmatched from other series of Silverstone PSUs which makes it the highest performer the company offers. We are looking forward where this leads in the future and what power supplies Silverstone will put out next.
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Araemo - Friday, July 13, 2007 - link
That makes sense, and makes me think my guess about the 20A limit is possibly a contributing factor - It would be a safety issue if someone hung 40A worth of fans, lights, motorized case windows, whatever you want.. off of one pair of wires (IE, one molex connector feeding into the mass of extenders and passthrough connectors that most fans and lights I've seen use.).You'd likely overheat the wires carrying all that power, if not the connectors as well, which could cause fire or electrocution hazards.
While a GPU may draw significantly more than 20A, they are also using 3 pairs now, so the actual power draw will be closer to 20A per pair.
DerekWilson - Friday, July 13, 2007 - link
The PCIe V2.0 PSUs I've seen suggest only using connectors from the same 12V rail for PCIe graphics cards -- because if you don't, you'll be connecting the common from two different 12V rails together.This can cause issues.
If a graphics card has one 4pin and 1 8pin connector, like the HD 2900 XT, the GPU can potentially draw up to 225W from a single 12V rail through 2x PCIe graphics power connectors (3 pairs). That's about 19 amps through one rail for one PSU, but not over each pair.
SilthDraeth - Friday, July 13, 2007 - link
They explained it.The Intel ATX standard calls for no more than 20 Amps per 12V rail. So in order to avoid maxing out a single 12V rail at 20 Amps, PSUs have multiple rails support up to 20 Amps each.
If you use a single rail that can max out at 54 Amps as stated here, then you do not need the additional rails, but you are going against the ATX standard.
Duraz0rz - Friday, July 13, 2007 - link
Also, I didn't see if there was a reason that it was advertised as a single rail, yet you have 4 12V rails.Nice article...really love the line curves for the load outputs. One thing I noticed missing is ripple testing. Any reason why it's not here?
SilthDraeth - Friday, July 13, 2007 - link
That confused me as well. I think they mentioned that the PSU supposedly includes an ability to turn the other rails off, but it doesn't work, and it always has 4. They did state the PCB was originally designed for 4 rails.Duraz0rz - Friday, July 13, 2007 - link
Nevermind...disregard my statement about the ripple testing. I probably just missed it in the original article after skimming the comments from it :)