SilverStone SX550 SFX PSU Review

I have the corsaif sf450 and can confirm it blows the silverstone out of the water (silverstone never fixed their fan problems with their sfx psus)

18459920 said:

The thing that hurts this unit is that there is no common hardware configuration that will fit into an SFX case and require more than a 400W power supply like the Corsair SF which is much better. Most high-end AMD GPUs like the R9 390 are just way too large to even fit into an SFX case. If you think of cards that can actually fit into an SFX case, they are going to be small form factor cards, which are almost always under 200W, or these days even quite less. CPU overclocking to extremes can't be done in SFX cases with limited cooler sizes and due to airflow restrictions, so, really, I don't see a position in the market where this unit can be competitive over the Corsair SF400. And since this unit does not come with an SFX to ATX bracket, it is implied that nobody will probably install it into a case that takes an ATX PS2 power supply.

how about Titan X Pascal cards / 1080 ti? They consume 435Watt total System power.

Not quite samer and not cards that would fit in an SFX case.

Also, my bad guys, I meant SF450 not 400.

18460559 said:

Not quite samer and not cards that would fit in an SFX case.

Also, my bad guys, I meant SF450 not 400.

maybe you should check the following cases :

http://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/cases/node-series/node-202

http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=533

http://www.silverstonetek.com/raven/products/index.php?model=RVZ02

https://www.ncases.com/

https://www.dan-cases.com/

If you own a 1080Ti why would you get a mediocre PSU like this anyway? Once again, it doesn't seem to have a purpose at all. Once power requirements get anywhere past 300W you probably have high-end hardware in which case a unit like this is a poor choice over the SF600.

Budget power supplies over 500W really have no place in this world. People purchase budget power supplies over 500W for three reasons:

1) They have high end hardware and underestimate the need for a quality PSU
2) They are uninformed and think "more watts" is better.
3) They overestimate their power requirements.

I suppose you could argue if they have 225W of hardware a 550W unit like this is perfect in terms of efficiency. Okay, maybe so. But that depends on how much you value efficiency, I suppose.

The unit still performs poorly compared to Corsair. It's true, Corsair SF dominate the SFX market with the best units.

18460649 said:

If you own a 1080Ti why would you get a mediocre PSU like this anyway? Once again, it doesn't seem to have a purpose at all. Once power requirements get anywhere past 300W you probably have high-end hardware in which case a unit like this is a poor choice over the SF600.

Budget power supplies over 500W really have no place in this world. People purchase budget power supplies over 500W for three reasons:

1) They have high end hardware and underestimate the need for a quality PSU
2) They are uninformed and think "more watts" is better.
3) They overestimate their power requirements.

I suppose you could argue if they have 225W of hardware a 550W unit like this is perfect in terms of efficiency. Okay, maybe so. But that depends on how much you value efficiency, I suppose.

The unit still performs poorly compared to Corsair. It's true, Corsair SF dominate the SFX market with the best units.

Does not need to be 1080 ti , any 250 watt GPU card ... from 390 , 390x to others .. there are people on budget and use such cards in compact systems .

I just mentioned gtx 1080 ti as a modern example ..