Seasonic X-650 650 Watt Modular 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 already, including the M12, M12-D, S12-D and S12-II.  Seasonic is now focusing some of their power supplies towards gamers and PC enthusiasts.  Today, we will be looking at the X Series, which features Seasonic's top of the line power supplies.  These power supplies feature only the best internal / external components and there are no compromises taken.  The X Series also features 80Plus Gold certification and SLi Ready certification.

The 80Plus Gold logo found on the box.

Everything is well padded and secure upon opening the box.

Upon opening the box, you will find the users manual, a warranty card, power cable, a pouch that contains all of the modular cables, 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 rough textured matte black housing and fan grill, which is pretty much standard these days and still looks great.

Looking at the side of the power supply, there is a gold label with Seasonic's logo on it, the model number and a condensed specification list.  Note that there are only one+12v rail, supplying up to 54 Amps, which is great. The 3.3v supplies up to 25 Amps and the +5v supplies up to 25 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 90.32% at typical loads (50% load) and an overall average efficiency of almost 89%.  This is excellent and the X-650 is the most efficient power supply that I have tested to date!

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.

The Seasonic X-650 is fully modular, meaning that all of the power connector cables can be removed, including the motherboard's 24pin power connector.  All of the connections are clearly labeled.

This power supply features the following cables:

The Seasonic X-650 with a few of the modular cables attached.

-A 24-pin ATX power connector

-A 4pin +12v CPU Power Connector

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

-4x  6+2-Pin PCI-Express Power Connectors

-8x Molex Power Connectors, with a grip for easy removal.

-8x 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 silent, because the fan only turns on when it reaches a certain temperature.  With loads, the fan didn't start spinning until it was about 10 minutes into the load testing, which is impressive.  Even when it was spinning, the noise wasn't noticeable at all.

Inside the Power Supply:

* Taking this power supply apart will void the warranty. 

Inside the power supply,  there two small silver heatsinks, used to cool down the voltage rectifiers.  The X-650 is so efficient that it doesn't need the larger heatsinks that other power supplies have.  It's PCB layout and design is also quite unique. The main transformer is in the middle of the image, while the smaller transformers are to the left and 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, rated for 105c.

The secondary capacitors are also Nippon Chemicon branded and are mostly solid capacitor types.

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 9S1212P4M61 with a maximum draw of 0.13 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 X-650 650 Watt PSU , 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 (Rated at 105c)

Secondary: Nippon-Chemicon (Solid Capacitors)

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 silent with idle loads and only spun silently every few minutes with loads.  This is impressive.

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 fully modular, only the needed cables were used, making the inside of the case nice and neat.

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 7900 GTX's in SLi.  I'm sure it can handle most of nVIDIA's newer GPU's in SLi. There is an ample amount of power connectors, as well, for its wattage rating.  This is the first 80Plus Gold certified power supply that we have reviewed and it's efficiency is definitely impressive.  The power supply's cooling fan never turned on while doing everyday tasks on the test computer, making it great for a quiet HTPC as well.   At around $160, this power supply is priced adequately for its wattage rating and excellent features.  Overall, this is an awesome 650 watt class power supply and should be purchased by anyone looking for a top of the line PSU with 80Plus Gold efficiency, great output performance, and great build quality.

Pros +

-Excellent power output

-Very high quality components

-Five Year Warranty

-Silent / Quiet fan

-80Plus Gold certified

Cons -

-None!

Techaddicts.net would like to give the Seasonic X-650 650 Watt Power Supply an Excellent rating and the Editors' Choice Award!

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