Seasonic S12G 650W Power Supply Review
by E. Fylladitakis on February 28, 2014 2:20 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Seasonic
- 80 Plus Gold
Final Words and Conclusion
Today we witnessed the reason why Seasonic is so popular amongst enthusiasts and advanced users. The 650W version of the S12G is not the cheapest of its range and class, it has no extravagant features, and it is not even modular. When you look at it, it is yet another all-black ATX PSU; not even the ribbon-like black cables are in any way special nowadays. You can easily find an 80 Plus Gold certified and modular 650W PSU for around the same price.
On the other hand, when it comes to build and power quality, the Seasonic S12G can easily make most of its competition shudder. Seasonic usually picks very high quality components for their units and the S12G is no exception, with most of the primary components and all of the capacitors coming from Japanese brands -- and the S12G is their mainstream series, not their high-end brand! That alone says a lot about Seasonic's commitment to quality and why they so easily cover a mainstream unit with a five-year warranty.
Looking at the performance charts and tables, the Seasonic S12G could probably be offering the best all-around performance within its price range. The DC output power quality is excellent and the voltage ripple suppression is remarkable. Since voltage ripple is directly correlated with the longevity of electronic equipment, especially capacitors (it causes self-heating), very low ripple readings benefit the durability of your system's components. The energy conversion efficiency is very high and it maintains its high efficiency and quiet operation even inside a very warm environment.
Its Achilles' heel is that the S12G tends to run a little hot if heavily loaded for prolonged periods of time while inside a very warm environment; however, the only real-world scenario that we can imagine that would replicate such conditions is that of a powerful cryptocoin mining system built inside a poorly designed chassis. If you are planning to use the Seasonic S12G for powering such a system in a $20 case, that probably is a bad idea. However, if you are looking to buy a PSU for its high quality and performance and consider aesthetics and modularity to be secondary or unnecessary features, the Seasonic S12G is definitely worthy of strong consideration.
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E.Fyll - Sunday, March 2, 2014 - link
Because an audio recording will be:a) distorted by the sound recording device,
b) distorted by the sound playing device and,
c) entirely unrelated to the original volume.
Even if you consider that a) the recording device is perfect and b) the playback device is perfect, plus d) that the sound file is uncompressed and of very high quality, the end result will be affected simply by how high is the volume knob of each user.
That's misleading, so I'm not going to do it. It has no practical meaning over me simply stating how the unit "sounds like" in the text.
pintos - Sunday, March 2, 2014 - link
How are you measuring the sound level? Wouldn't that have the same problems?pintos - Sunday, March 2, 2014 - link
Also, same question for the rest of your equipment. Don't they also have measuring issues yet they're fine to publish?emn13 - Saturday, March 1, 2014 - link
You're wrong.frequency spectrums aren't hard to read: flat or smooth are plain noise (white or otherwise), and bumpy is tonal. If you include a time component it gets a little messier, but then, we're not talking high-precision sound here, just a general feel of the music; even that may be acceptable.
Furthermore, it certainly doesn't take any high-cost equipment: any bog-standard computer mic will do a surprisingly good job, and if you spend a *little* effort getting a decent (not necessarily best-of-the best) mic and verify the system's quality using a a simple frequency response plot, you can get more than adequate quality for this purpose for at most a few hundred dollars - likely less, but it's not worth your time at that point.
E.Fyll - Sunday, March 2, 2014 - link
Well, frequency spectrums are very hard to read, they do are entirely useless to the standard consumer (the same "type" of noise can actually sound a lot different) and if you think that you can do it with just a "computer mic", well, I have nothing more to say...If I attempt to do anything like that, I would have wasted time and resources on something entirely useless and ridiculously inaccurate. Sorry, that I cannot do. Call me an arrogant perfectionist but I would rather not do something at all if I cannot do it correctly.
quest for silence - Monday, March 3, 2014 - link
"A" in dB(A) stands for "A-weighted"; the further explanation as "the part of dB range that your ears can perceive" is just meaningless.quest for silence - Tuesday, March 4, 2014 - link
"A" in "dB(A)" stands for "A-weighted", so that the subsequent state: «i.e. it is within the part of the dB range that your ears can perceive» is meaningless.g.davis - Saturday, March 1, 2014 - link
Ya, it'd be nice if AT can get numbers for reliability of PSUs somehow. Well, actually, for any electronic device they cover (ie. HDD, SSD, RAM, notebooks, GPU, motherboard, complete systems, etc.). However, I doubt that's possible aside from an occasional external report.Archipelago - Saturday, March 1, 2014 - link
I have had a Seasonic 400W fanless and it's totally quiet. The only time I heard it is the faint click when I shut down.mark28 - Saturday, March 1, 2014 - link
Thanks for the info. This makes me wonder if Seasonic has quality control issues which is far worse than my noise issue. Maybe they just don't test for noise output during quality checks but that kind of ignores a large part of the people who buy fanless parts specifically to reduce noise regardless of efficiency.The noise from the fanless Seasonic PSU I had was so annoying that I replaced it with an actively cooled Corsair one. The difference was like listening to a crying baby and the static noise you hear in between radio stations. Even if it's quieter in volume level (ie. several rooms away), the crying of a baby is way more annoying than static noise.