Silverstone Zeus 1200W: Designed for the Power Hungry

Conclusion

Talking to Silverstone reps always brings the same message about the company philosophy. They have no need for the mass market; Silverstone tries to make their mark with special products. Given that philosophy, it's no shock that the prices are higher than the competition, but there are clearly users that buy these products since the company continues to exist. Silverstone demonstrates with the Zeus 1200W that they are able to produce products with a few interesting features. The quality is good as always, and we saw a very well built PCB layout that was actually fun to take apart.

The length of 210mm (roughly 8 inches) means the power supply won't fit in many smaller cases, and users will need to pay attention to spacing as many cases have either hard drives or optical drives that can get in the way. Cases with a separate thermal area for the PSU (i.e. the popular Antec P182, some Lian Li offerings, and similar units) will have trouble mounting this unit. It's important to note that besides the casing length, the cable connectors at the front add another inch to the total required length.

From the connector side we have few complaints. There are connectors for all kinds of graphics card arrays and in our opinion plenty of connectors for a large number of peripheral components. Six Molex and SATA connectors are available, so you will have to determine if that's enough for users with large disk arrays like on a server farms; for gamers, though, it should definitely be enough. The length of the cables is also good since we have a distance of 55cm to the power supply from ATX and PEG connectors. A nice feature to fight cable clutter is the two PEG connectors on one cable harness. This allows users with three graphics cards to run three harnesses instead of six through the case. One of the highest power consuming graphics cards, the NVIDIA 8800 Ultra, needs up to 160W, so it will pull a around 3A on each of the pins within the connector (with some power coming from the PEG slot on the motherboard).

Performance-wise, we saw some flaws today that are severe from the view of an enthusiast but not from someone who builds servers or workstations. The DC output is well regulated, with up to 2.5% around the nominal number of each rail. To archive this with a load up to 1320W is something many competitors can only dream of accomplishing. The output quality comes from the well designed PCB and the choice of components. Silverstone unfortunately had to make choices that hurt efficiency somewhat, so the Zeus only manages 84% with 230VAC. Up to 84% efficiency is nothing to be ashamed of, but in comparison to other high output PSUs we have seen better. For users wanting to save a few dollars more on electricity, we would recommend other power supplies. The acoustic noise is also poor in comparison to some other solutions. It is very good for a power supply to stay cool, but it should have been possible to reduce noise somewhat without temperatures getting too high. The fan rotates faster with every small increase in load, and it reaches its top speed of 3200RPM at only a 60% load. The noise certainly won't be a problem in a datacenter, but it does limit the appeal for the product.

Our only serious concerns relate to the acoustics and the length of this power supply; in terms of providing a stable output with huge amounts of power, the Zeus 1200W is top notch. As for the price, the Zeus 1200W is available in for around $350 to $400 in the US. We haven't actually seen availability in the European market yet, and that may not occur unless Silverstone is willing to bring this unit to the masses. The price is quite high, but then we really didn't expect a unit targeting the elite users to rate anywhere near affordable. If you have a need for 1200W of power, the Zeus may fit the bill; the rest of us with mere mortal budgets and PCs will have to be content with something else.