Silverstone Zeus 1200W: Designed for the Power Hungry
by Christoph Katzer on July 7, 2008 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Cables and Connectors
All of the cable harnesses are removable, which is a nice feature Silverstone tries to implement in many of their power supplies. The advantage is that the user can buy alternative shorter cable harnesses if the user wants to put the power supply in a smaller chassis. One concern with cable management is the added resistance the connectors create, which is of special concern with 1200W designs. It seems that Silverstone still meets all the official safety requirements though, so we'll leave it at that and let the testing answer any questions about the overall design.
All of the harnesses have sleeves and the four PEG harnesses carry a PCI-Express marking. Silverstone doesn't include too many peripheral connectors, since we have only six each of Molex and SATA. Instead, they put a great focus on the graphics card connectors. There are two 55cm harnesses with a 6/8-pin PEG connector and an additional 6-pin PEG connector 20cm from the first. There are two additional cable harnesses with one 6-pin PEG connector, making it possible to run a decent triple-SLI setup. The two 8-pin EPS12V connectors for the motherboard are another nice feature, and the one can be transformed into a 4-pin ATX12V connector. This makes it easy to use this power supply whether there are two 8-pin jacks on the motherboard or in normal PC systems that only have one 4-pin ATX12V connector.
The Fan
We have seen this 80mm Sanyo Denki fan a few times already. It can spin at up to 4500RPM and is rated as creating 40dB(A) of noise; fortunately, we didn't measure levels that high during our tests, though it's not that far off.
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BustedSony - Monday, July 7, 2008 - link
Electrical work is expressed in terms of POWER. DC power uses Watts as the unit. Watts = Voltage times Amps. Thus with perfect efficiency 120 watts can be obtained EITHER with 12 volts at a 10 amp load, or 120 volts at a 1 amp load.Thus 12 volts running 100 amps = 1200 Watts. 120 volts running just 10 amps also equals 1200 watts. The difference in power available versus power drawn from the wall is loss of efficiency, generated mostly as heat.
According to Ohms law current (amps) = voltage divided by resistance. Thus 10 amps would be drawn by 120 volts across 12 Ohms, or 12 volts across 1.2 Ohms.
mattclary - Monday, July 7, 2008 - link
Ahhhhhh, thank you! At one time I knew Ohm's law, but had forgotten the role voltage played!RamarC - Monday, July 7, 2008 - link
will other manufacturers start using the deity naming scheme? are the Corsair Ra and OCZ Shiva next?yacoub - Monday, July 7, 2008 - link
No dude, Zeus is purposeful: He carries a lightning bolt. See the line Samuel L. Jackson delivers in Die Hard 3.Merman - Monday, July 7, 2008 - link
[quote]The quality of each rail is also surprisingly good. Ripple on the lower voltage rails doesn't reach higher than 4mV, and the 12V rails don't reach more than 12mV even with full load. At lower loads, the 12V rails are also around 4 to 8mV which is a very good result.[/quote]Finally talking about power quality again.
Considering the ATX12V specification is a maximum of 120mV peak to peak is this result not outstanding and probably the best available on the market???
Or is there a discrepancy in measurment with ATX specifications???
It would be nice to compare ripple results from this site with the other top power supply review sites.
If for some reason this is not possible please educate us rather than take the position that most don't understand this subject nor care.
C'DaleRider - Monday, July 7, 2008 - link
I still find those ripple/noise generation findings a bit on the fantastic side. If they are what are represented, this means it blows PCP&C's best out of the water for controlling ripple and noise generation at full output.But, while Impervio is good at power supply manufacture, and this was made by Impervio, not Enhance as stated in the article, I sincerely doubt it actually measured only 12mV at full load and only 4-8mV otherwise on the +12V rails. Those figures are just too damned fantastic to be real. And to call them only "good"? They should have been labeled "The best" or "fantasy".
Christoph Katzer - Monday, July 7, 2008 - link
Impervio doesnt have own production facility and produces at Enhance instead.Christoph Katzer - Tuesday, July 8, 2008 - link
This unit is made by IS Quasar. A factory with several robotic assemblers in Taiwan. Almost all of the Silverstone models we reviewed so far came from there.Adamantine - Monday, July 7, 2008 - link
Or could label them as "godly".coolsam2 - Monday, July 7, 2008 - link
first to post a comment.. sry 4 wasting u precious 2 seconds..