Seasonic S12-D 850 Watt Power Supply

Seasonic has been offering power supplies for a very long time now and are considered one of the industry's best in producing top performing and reliable power supplies.  They have been manufacturing power supplies for other companies and are now beginning to sell power supplies under their own brand name.  We have reviewed a few of their power supplies, including the M12, M12-D and S12-II.  Now, Seasonic is focusing on a new market with their S12-D series of power supplies, which has been designed for gamers and PC enthusiasts.  This is one of Seasonic's most efficient power supplies, with an 80Plus Silver rating.   It is also nVIDIA SLi Ready.  Note that the S12-D should be treated like a non-modular version of the M12-D

The 80Plus Silver logo found on the box.

Upon opening the box, you will find the users manual, a warranty card, power cable, a molex to floppy power adapter, screws, and a "Powered by: Seasonic" case badge.

Here are some of the main features and specifications from Seasonic's Website:

The Power Supply:

The power supply features a matte black housing and fan grill, which is pretty much standard these days and still looks great.

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Looking at the side of the power supply, there is a label with Seasonic's logo on it, the model number and a condensed specification list.  Note that there are two +12v rails, each supplying up to 40 Amps for a total of 80 Amps, which is great. The 3.3v supplies up to 24 Amps and the +5v supplies up to 30 Amps. The efficiency is 80 percent or greater at 20%, 50% and 100% loads.  According to the 80Plus website, this power supply has an average efficiency of 88.10% at typical loads (50% load) and an overall average efficiency of almost 87%.  This is excellent!

There is an large honeycomb style grill on the back which allows the 120 mm fan to exhaust hot air, an on/off switch and AC Power Input.  This power supply does feature Active PFC, so there is no need for a  switch to select the input voltage.

This power supply features the following cables:

-A 24-pin ATX power connector

-A 4+4-pin +12v CPU Power Connector

-An 8-pin +12v CPU/EPS Power Connector

-2x  6+2-Pin PCI-Express Power Connectors and 2x 6-Pin PCI-e connectors.

-6x Molex Power Connectors, with a grip for easy removal.

-9x Serial ATA Power Connectors

-2x (via Y-Cable) Floppy Power Connectors

Cooling:

There is a 120mm fan on the bottom of this power supply.  During testing, at idle loads, this fan is quiet, making a only a slight whirr when the computer first boots up.  With loads, the fan sped up a bit, making a whirring sound, but the noise was still acceptable.

Inside the Power Supply:

* Taking this power supply apart will void the warranty. 

Inside the power supply,  there are three large silver heat sinks, used to cool down the voltage rectifiers.  The main transformer is in the middle of the image, while the smaller transformer is to the right of it.  The primary capacitors are Nippon Chemicon branded and rated at 105c, while the secondary capacitors are also Nippon Chemicon branded. The PCB layout and board quality is great.

The two Nippon Chemicon branded primary capacitors.

The secondary capacitors are also Nippon Chemicon branded.

The fan inside is a SanyoDenki San Ace 120 branded fan, which is very rare to find in a power supply.  This is a very high quality fan.   It has the model number 9S1212H403 with a maximum draw of 0.39 Amps.  It is made in the Philippines.

Testing:

For this power supply, the test system consists of the following:

-Antec Nine Hundred Two Case

-Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Quad Core Processor @ 3.4 GHz (1.40v)

-Xigmatek Dark Knight Heatsink w/120mm Thermaltake ISGC Fan

-eVGA nForce 780i SLi FTW Motherboard

-4GB (2GB x 2) of OCZ Platinum DDRII-1066 Memory

-640GB x 4 Western Digital 7200RPM 32MB Cache Hard Drives

-2x nVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 (55nm) Video Cards @ 667MHz Core / 1053 MHz Memory

-Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Sound Card

-Lite-On 6x BD-ROM / 18x Asus DVD-RAM Drives

-4x 120MM fans, 1x 200mm fan

-2x CCFL Lights

(Multimeter Results)

*For additional / larger pictures of the Seasonic S12-D 850 Watt , Click Here

*Voltages are at a 'Max Load' for a typical gaming computer, running Orthos, Sisoft Sandra Hard Drive benchmark and 3DMark06 CPU Test 1 and 2 / Deep Freeze HDR test, and read with a Multi-Meter.

Capacitor Brands (subjective rating):

Primary: Excellent

Secondary: Excellent

Primary: Nippon-Chemicon

Secondary: Nippon-Chemicon

Voltage Results:

+The results were excellent for this power supply, the results being well within range.  All rails remained quite strong and there was little fluctuation. 

Stability Results:

+Everything ran fine during testing, the system was stable and performed the tests as expected. 

Fan Speed Impressions:

+During the tests, the fan was quiet with idle loads and only produced a slight whirr with loads.

Installation:

+Installation of this power supply went well.  There were no issues fitting it inside the test system's case.  Since this power supply is not modular, the cables were a little bit more difficult to manage, but the mesh sleeves help.  A few cable ties or Velcro straps could be helpful, but were not included.

Conclusion:

This power supply would be ideal for anyone looking to build multi CPU core gaming / workstation system with two or more high powered video cards.  This power supply is nVIDIA SLi Ready and is certified to be able to run up to two GeForce 8800 GTX's in SLi.  I'm sure it can handle most of nVIDIA's GPU's in SLi. There is an ample amount of power connectors, as well, for its wattage rating.  It is also 80Plus Silver certified.  At around $180 without rebates and around $160 with rebates, this power supply is priced adequately for its wattage rating.  Overall, this is an excellent 850 watt class power supply and should be purchased by anyone looking for impressive efficiency, great output performance, and great build quality.

Pros +

-Excellent power output, with very strong voltage rails

-Very high quality components

-Five Year Warranty

-Quiet fan

-80Plus Silver certified

Cons -

-Not modular

Techaddicts.net would like to give this power supply an Excellent rating and the Editors' Choice Award!

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