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- Date:
- Friday , August 03, 2007
- Author:
- Paul Johnson
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad CrossFire Edition
PC Power & Cooling is back with a product that has just been introduced to the market. This Silencer unit is rated at 750w for powering the neediest CrossFire video card configurations and has the PCIe video card 8-pin power connector for the 2900 XT overclockers.
Build Quality
The PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool Silencer 750 Quad CrossFire features a single 80mm fan design that is, according to PC Power & Cooling, the correct cooling solution. The truthfulness of this assertion is certainly open to interpretation as a number of high-end and extremely well performing power supplies utilize different fan form factors and PC Power & Cooling is trying to sell a product that only fits this category. The major downside to this fan design is that to move a sufficient volume of air to cool a high output power supply, such as the OCZ ProXStream and PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR, it must spin very fast resulting in elevated noise levels. While these 80mm designs are not great for quiet computing environments the key criteria in our evaluation is whether or not the cooling solution is sufficient, not necessary its sound level or form factor and our comments on such later are not absolute decibel values.
External Build Quality
In a rather striking departure for PC Power & Cooling the Silencer 750’s are available in black, copper, and Red Baron. While cosmetically different all of these units are the same. The color on the Silencer 750 Quad CrossFire is naturally red as it is the CrossFire certified product and producing one in green may have been in bad taste. The red used is very striking and is subjectively probably one of my favorite non matte-black finishes to date. Like the Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR the unit is rather basic with a single 80mm fan in the rear and fixed cables. Also like the Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR the power label is “on top” of the unit and as such won’t be seen when installed. However, if a user has a windowed case a big power label covering ~80% of the visible red paint job would be a waste.
All of the cables on the PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad CrossFire are fixed and provide a serviceable length of ~20 inches to the first connector. This unit should be able to reach any component in most cases no matter the placement of the power supply within the case. Alternatively, PC Power & Cooling can tack down a custom wiring harness with customer specified lengths for all leads if the product is ordered directly from them or sent back to them. As such the lengths indicated today are the ones found on the standard retail unit and do not represent the entirety of possible configurations of this unit.
Internal Build Quality
Once we remove the screws securing the cover of the unit we find what looks like a much more standard power supply design than we saw in the Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR review. Instead of having what looked like a number of smaller power supplies in one housing the Seasonic-built Silencer is a single transformer design cooled by an 80mm fan and a pair of massive heatsinks. While this configuration is not the typical design we have seen from Seasonic the Antec Earthwatts (which Seasonic also builds) employs a single 80mm, as does the x900 and 750JS. Typically single 80mm fans are not used in quiet cooling environments as they must spin faster than a larger diameter fan in order to move the same volume of air but Seasonic typically makes very quiet units so hopefully the ADDA fan rated at 0.45A at 12v will be paired with a good fan controller to keep this unit quiet.
On the primary side we see a single large transformer and a single large Nippon Chemi-Con capacitor rated at 400v 400uF sandwiched between the massive heatsinks. The inclusion of a high quality Japanese capacitor such as the Nippon Chemi-Con is certainly a good start to this unit.
On the secondary side we find it too is populated by Nippon Chemi-Con capacitors making this unit an all high quality Japanese affair. The wiring harness can also be seen here and is bundled and sheathed all the way back into the unit. Rounding out the wiring is the inclusion of the often neglected wire guard. The wire guard is great to see included!
Over all the build quality of this unit is fantastic for a non-server based platform. The unit is stocked with all Nippon Chemi-Con capacitors, massive heatsinks, and a really striking exterior. The unit even bests the Turbo-Cool on a few of these fronts by the inclusion of the wire guard and the use of all Japanese capacitors as a user would expect to see from a premier brand like PC Power & Cooling. However, will the wheels come off once the performance is analyzed? Let move on and see.