Seasonic X-Series 560W
by Martin Kaffei on March 22, 2011 4:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Seasonic
- PSUs
- 80Plus Gold
- 560W
- X-Series
Conclusion
Open your dictionary under the letter "Q", search for the word "quality", and you could just as easily put a picture of a Seasonic power supply. Seasonic offers a full set of modular cables, passive cooling below 20% load, and they do this while delivering very low ripple and noise results. With the X-560, Seasonic has created another market leader.
Starting with the connectors, Seasonic shows an instinctive feeling for different PC configurations we don't often find. The shorter peripheral cables with up to 50cm are perfect for HTPCs while the CPU and PCIe cables are long enough for larger cases. The FDD adapter is there if you need it. Even so, two 6/8-pin PCIe connectors are only average for a 560W power supply. Other manufacturers (e.g. Arctic Cooling with their Fusion 550) provide up to four PEG connectors. However, it's unlikely most users would need (or want) to power two high-end GPUs using all four connectors with only a 560W PSU, so this is only a small point of criticism. The X-560 has good-looking cable sleeving, a very long CPU cable (65cm), and moreover eight SATA connectors.
The most important advantages are the high-quality components. The SiC diode for PFC, MOSFETs with good characteristics, and a great line filtering stage are just a short part of what Seasonic provides. Since our sample came from a retailer, we're also happy to see that Seasonic is using quality Japanese capacitors in all of their "X-Series" products. In addition, the soldering quality is a feast for the eyes. Seasonic offers all important safety functions as well as an expensive flame-retardant PCB material.
With ripple and noise results below 30 mV, every enthusiast should be satisfied. +3.3V and +5V show less than 10mV while the load is below 20%. The voltage regulation is great as well. +5V has nearly no visible drop while +12V is always clearly above 12.00V. The fan might rotate quickly above 80% loads and generate some noise, but most GPUs (typically required to get a system to draw upwards of 300W) will end up louder than this PSU. More important is the ability for this PSU to run silent during low loads; if you write an email or use excel there will be no noise from the PSU fan, but you'll want to carefully select other components if silence is your goal.
Looking at online prices, $120 USD is a lot for a 560W PSU, but there's nothing that says lower wattage PSUs should be cheap, especially if they're 80 Plus Gold certified and deliver the quality of the X-560. We can see a clear difference between the previously tested Antec 550W ($90 USD) and the OCZ 550W ($70 USD) and the Seasonic X-Series 560W. The latest Seasonic is more efficient, has high output reserves, and comes with a long-life (and quiet) Sanyo Denki fan. Customers will have to decide if they need/want these features, or if they'd rather save a few bucks and snatch up an Antec or OCZ instead.
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jed22281 - Wednesday, March 23, 2011 - link
^this!JohnnyGuru is where it's at for PSU reviews.
Badcapt.net is alos a pretty handy resource.
Anand for SSD's FTW! :-)
jed22281 - Wednesday, March 23, 2011 - link
badcaps.netpiroroadkill - Wednesday, March 23, 2011 - link
Yesss, I do love JonnyGuru for OklahomaWolf's style.jabber - Wednesday, March 23, 2011 - link
Wouldnt it be better and more reliable to have the main power input lead actually hardwired into the PSU rather than through a connector?After all thats the one lead you are going to use.
7Enigma - Wednesday, March 23, 2011 - link
I was thinking the same thing. Other than the coolness factor of being able to transport just the power brick I don't see a purpose and there is sure to be a minute penalty to efficiency by having those modular.strikeback03 - Wednesday, March 23, 2011 - link
If they sell different length cables it is nice, for example with the provided 24-pin cable the length is great if you have a bottom-mounted PSU, but it is a lot of extra to hide if you have top-mounted. If they made a shorter cable for top-mounted cases it would be a benefit.somedude1234 - Wednesday, March 23, 2011 - link
I've done a build with this PSU, and I appreciated the fact that all of the cables were modular during the build process. Not having the bulky main power cables getting in the way until I was ready to route them properly was nice.Also, based on the results it doesn't look like the performance is suffering.
djc208 - Wednesday, March 23, 2011 - link
Think I found the PSU for my next upgrade! This or the passive version might be a good idea for my WHS too.Ptaltaica - Wednesday, March 23, 2011 - link
Great review Martin, but there's one thing I wish you had emphasized a bit more-the significance of that Sanyo Denki fan.We all know that most power supplies use cheap, crappy fans; even the ball bearing ones in most units are Chinese-made garbage of questionable quality, and in my experience fan failure is the cause of an awful lot of power supply failures.
The Sanyo Denki fans Seasonic is using in these units, by contrast, are some of the most reliable, longest-lived and highest quality fans on the market. The impellers are balanced with little blobs of epoxy to minimize wobbling and subsequent wear on the bearings, and they have some of the tightest and lowest-drag bearing assemblies I've ever seen; the only other companies that are in the same quality ballpark are Nidec and EBM-Papst, in my opinion. Delta, Adda and NMB-MAT (aka Panaflo) are decent, but even they're not as good as Sanyo Denki, Nidec or Papst. And everything else is pretty much garbage.
As far as I can tell, the 9S1212F404 in this PS is a tachless variation of the F401 (datasheet here: http://db.sanyodenki.co.jp/product_db/cooling/dcfa... ). The F401 has a MTBF of 40,000 hours... And that doesn't sound like a lot compared to what some companies advertise. Except that that rating is with a 90% survival rate, and rated at 60*C. Rate it at 25*C or whatever like a lot of companies do and it's probably closer to 160-200,000 hours, if not more.
Given that it only runs intermittently in the X series power supplies, I can easily see one of these power supplies lasting 10-20 years or longer. There are very, very, very few consumer goods of any kind these days that can legitimately make a claim like that, and-thanks in large part to the SD fans-the X-Series power supplies are the only PSUs I've seen that can.
i think the relatively small price premium for these units relative to other similarly-sized PSUs is worth it on that fact alone; I've used the X-Series power supplies in every computer I've built at work since they came out, including any of our servers that do not require redundant power supplies, and I'll continue to use them for as long as they'll make them.
iamkyle - Wednesday, March 23, 2011 - link
Once again, no bar charts means no direct comparisons to other PSU's.