Date:
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Author:
Paul Johnson
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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SilverStone Element 700W Power Supply

SilverStone promises higher efficiencies, lower exhaust temperatures, and silent operation in the difficult 700 watt computer power supply market with its Element 700W PSU. SilverStone has awed us in the past, but does the company known for some of the best quiet PSUs pull it off with this Element.

Introduction

SilverStoneTek is a company best known for its high quality cases but its product lines extend into other components such as cooling, power, fans, storage, and so on. As a company Silverstone has built up this impressive product repertoire in a very short time having been founded in 2003. Today, however we are interested in their power supplies which are comprised of the Strider, Decathlon, Element, Nightjar, Zeus, Gemini, and Olympia model lines that range from 350W to 1200W DC output. Today, we are looking at a middle-of-the road in capacity unit from SilverStone's Element series, the Element 700W (SST-ST70EF) which comes from a new OEM for SilverStone, FSP.

FSP Group is one of the few actual power supply manufacturers and can be found providing OEM services for a number of other brands at various times including OCZ, Zalman, AOpen, Antec, SilverStone, Super Talent, Sigma, and many more. This wide distribution of power supplies by FSP is not surprising given that they have been in business since 1993 and are one of the top 10 producers of power supplies in the world. FSP is also regarded as a manufacturer of basic workhorse type power supplies that "just gets the job done," although some of its more recent high powered computer power supplies have been plagued by power quality issues.

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Gold, Silver, or Carbon?

The SilverStone Element 700W is the 6th power supply we have reviewed from SilverStone and is the first unit we have reviewed from SilverStone to enter into the very difficult 700W range. In our testing this particular power output range has been very rough on units, however much of this could be due to the very marginal FSP Epsilon design being the dominant player in this segment. So with this in mind what does SilverStone have to say about this unit in this very difficult market segment?

Equipped with higher level of design and components, SilverStone Element ST70EF continues Element series’ climb toward new efficiency plateau. With higher than 85% efficiency (85%~90%) across normal loading conditions (from 20% to 100%), the ST70EF produces vastly less wasted heat than typical power supplies on the market and allows the included 135mm fan to operate at minimal speeds, ensuring silent operation for all applications. The incredible stable output and efficient characteristics are packed inside an environmentally-friendly casing that is compatible with nearly any ATX enclosures on the market. If efficiency and silence are the first priorities for a high powered system, the Element ST70EF is the only choice for you.

Moving on let’s see what we can expect when a user purchases the SilverStone Element 700W at retail in terms of documentation, accessories, cable count, rail layout, output characteristics, and general build quality.