SeaSonic G Series SSR-550RM 550W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply
26 of 30 people found the following review helpful.
By D. Alexander
This is a top-drawer power supply for a system with one powerful graphics card or two mid-range cards. It's efficient, silent at loads under 300W, and delivers clean performance at a reasonable price.
PERFORMANCE:
Fifteen years ago, most power supplies were about 70% efficient. For a 100W load, they would draw about 140W from the wall. Not anymore. We now have five major PSU ratings: 80 Plus and 80 Plus Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. These correspond to half-load efficiencies of 80%, 85%, 88%, 90%, and 92%. Efficiencies at 1/5 and 4/5 load are about 4% less than half-load.
This is an 80-Plus Gold unit capable of 90% efficiency. Relative to a Bronze unit, for a 24/7/365 system draw of 100W, you could expect to save about $6 a year in power costs at $0.12/kWH. Efficiency has other benefits: namely, every watt that isn't going the system is dissipated as heat. Less efficient units require a bigger or faster fan, which makes more noise.
JonnyGuru and XBitLabs have given this model high marks for load regulation and current ripple. It's a solid design that's par for the course for Seasonic.
NOISE:
Most power supplies have two general characteristics: they're most efficient at half-load, and half-load is when their fans start to ramp up. If you want a silent PSU, your maximum load should be no more than 60% of rated capacity.
Here's the load ballpark for each component:
Quad CPU: 10W idle, 100W sustained
Motherboard: 15W-50W
Hard disk: 15W spinup, 2W idle, 7W sustained
SSD: 1W idle, 5W sustained
Optical: 1W idle, 10W sustained
Video card: 15W-25W idle, 70W-250W sustained
RAID card: 25W
NIC/sound/peripheral card: 10W
120mm fan: 3W
You can expect a typical single-drive system with integrated video to idle around 50W and load to 150W. A mid-range ($200) video card will add 15W to idle and 100W to load. Overlocking can bump the load total by 25% or more.
Most systems spend most of their time at idle. Because efficiency trails off rapidly below 20% load, it's best not to buy capacity well in excess of your needs. This conflicts with the silence objective with more power supplies, so it's a bit of a trade-off: do you care more about fan noise at full load or efficiency at idle?
Theory aside, the G550 (and the G360 and G450) is one of the quietest units I've ever encountered. It's inaudible at low loads unless your ear is pressed to the back. The fan doesn't announce itself until 300W in an enclosure with decent cooling. I did detect a hint of coil whine at idle in Windows and a bit more with the system off or in Standby. Not enough to dock a star; neither is apparent once the system is under my desk. If you're over 30, you probably won't hear it ever.
FEATURES:
The cable layout is like so:
1 x 24-pin motherboard (permanent)
1 x 4/8-pin CPU (permanent)
2 x 6/8-pin PCIe
1 x 4 SATA
1 x 2 SATA
1 x 3 molex
1 x 2 molex
This is a modular power supply with flat, unadorned cables. Modularity means that some or all cables are attached separately so you can pick and choose what you need. This feature becomes more important as wattage goes up.
Cable length is somewhat shorter than the norm, though not to great consequence if you're not overly concerned with winding the excess behind the motherboard.
IN SUM:
This is an excellent supply for a system with a serious graphics card, and where noise performance and efficiency are at a premium. At this efficiency level, the only competitor is Rosewill's Capstone 550M, though it won't be as quiet. If you're willing to roll the dice with coil whine, Corsair's HX650 is often discounted to a price below this Seasonic.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
By Sootaek Woo
Super Quiet!! It's little expensive, but it's worth it!
My desktop is super quiet!! If you have stressed out with fan noise, this is the right product for you.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
By Huy N.
Im powering a Radeon 5870 (with 2 monitors), mobo ud3h, 2x 8gb Memory, 3fans, Bluetooth dongle, keyboard/mouse dongle, usb speaker, wifi network card, memory card reader, Wacom tablet and 4x external HDs. Hasn't skipped a beat.
This thing is quiet! you'd only really hear something if you had your ear right next to it.
Ive become a fan of SeaSonic.
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