Silverstone Zeus 1200W: Designed for the Power Hungry
by Christoph Katzer on July 7, 2008 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
The Inside
The housing is easy to open and with the top plate removed we can see the back of a PCB. Now it's clear why Silverstone needed to stick to an 80mm fan because the sandwiched PCB design doesn't allow the use of a larger fan. Sandwiched PCBs (i.e. two PCBs with all the components on the inside) are becoming a more and more common design these days; the Antec Signature Series we just tested also used this approach. In general, one can say that the designers leave the filtering stage and the primary stage with mostly AC-voltage on one PCB and the second one carries the secondary stage with DC voltage only. Due to a lack of space, the standby rail also usually resides on the first PCB.
Let's return to a problem we mentioned earlier regarding multiple vs. single 12V rails. After a user has scratched away the white sticker on the side of the power supply he will recognize that his warranty is gone and it didn't even help further since the manufacturer placed a plastic sheet behind the sticker, making it impossible to reach the little switch. You need to open the power supply to use this switch, which is quite unfortunate. During testing we had several problems with the 17A on the 12V rails, which led us to the point that we combined all of the 12V rails into one and our load problem was gone. The problem is that Silverstone doesn't mark the 12V wires on each harness to differentiate the 12V rails, so the user/reviewer is unable to see immediately which 12V rail is being connected to the what components (or in our case, the programmable load). Most end-users will not need to worry about this problem, as 17A per 12V rail should be sufficient. You may need to juggle a few connections if you somehow manage to create a 1000W or higher load, but the multiple PEG connections already address that to a large degree.
First PCB
The first PCB in this PSU carries the filtering stage, the primary stage, and the standby circuit. The filtering stage is easy recognizable through its fuse on the top, several caps, and coils. The rectifier bridge is hiding under the heatsink on the right side. There are two large coils and two main-caps, as the designers couldn't place one single large cap due to the reduced possible height. The two caps are identical and come from Hitachi, both rated at 390µF and 450V, which is well within feasibility. The upper left side features the standby circuit with its own small transformer. Besides the circuitry we see the name Impervio printed on the PCB, which is a familiar name with Silverstone power supplies. Even though this power supply still seems to be produced by IS Quasar; the designer is Impervio in cooperation with Silverstone.
Secondary PCB
The second PCB is much more packed than the first one, carrying more components. First, we have the transformer that is responsible for the 12V rail. Then we see a couple of heatsinks, smaller transformers, coils, and Nippon Chemi-Con caps in the top. We also see another feature not many power supplies have used until now. The 3.3 and 5V rail are generated by VRMs, which can be found on the middle right side of the PCB. This may cause you to think the time has come where we won't need any of the additional rails anymore. Since modern motherboards also use VRMs to convert the voltage into whatever is needed by the components, it seems like a good time to switch to 12VDC only. A few problems remain with peripheral components like SATA drives or optical drives that still sometimes use a voltage other than 12V, but these don't need much of the other voltages.
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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..