SilverStone SX600-G SFX Power Supply Review

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Cross-Load Tests And Infrared Images

To generate the following charts, we set our loaders to auto mode through our custom-made software before trying over a thousand possible load combinations with the +12V, 5V and 3.3V rails. The load regulation deviations in each of the charts below were calculated by taking the nominal values of the rails (12V, 5V and 3.3V) as point zero.

Load Regulation Charts

Efficiency Chart

The SX600-G's overall efficiency is good; the best region is between 150 and 450W.

Ripple Charts

At normal operating temperatures, ripple suppression is good up to around 400W load. After that, it's just satisfactory. That's not the case at higher ambient temperatures though, as we're about to see. We record good ripple suppression throughout the load range at 5V. The performance here is even better than our 12V results. We see almost the same scenario as the 5V test. In general, ripple suppression is handled well as long as the operating temperature stays under 40 °C, which is SilverStone's upper limit for continuous operation under full load.

Infrared Images

During the end of the cross-load tests, we took some photos of the PSU as it was being tested with our modified FLIR E4 IR camera that delivers 320x240 IR resolution (76,800 pixels).

After many hours of testing, and even at normal ambient, we found some internal areas that hit close to 50 °C, even though they were directly exposed to the fan's airflow. Unfortunately, the casing didn't allow us to check the secondary side, though we suspect that the temperatures are significantly higher due to the restricted airflow.

Aris Mpitziopoulos
Contributing Editor

Aris Mpitziopoulos is a contributing editor at Tom's Hardware, covering PSUs.

  • Dark Lord of Tech
    Price is a little high.
    Reply
  • Onus
    The price is a little high.
    I'm not sure I agree with such high ratings of some of the Corsair units, with as many failures as they apparently experience within the first year. It also doesn't bode well for the poor capacitors in this Silverstone either. So far though, at this level, there is no other choice.
    Reply
  • damric
    The review was perfect this time, Aris. My only nitpick is the graphs are hard to read.

    Well done.

    As far as the PSU itself, I was turned off by the 40C max operating temp fan kicks up at 45... bah... If they would have used better caps then temp could easily been rated for 50C.
    Reply
  • David Dewis
    I wanna use this to run a GTX 980 in the Silverstone RVZ02 with a i5-4670 (non K) That is all.
    Reply
  • g-unit1111
    Nice to see that manufacturers are starting to take small form factor builds seriously. I especially like the direction that Silverstone is going in. First the RVZ02B now high quality SFF power supplies. Wave of the future?
    Reply
  • DarkSable
    This is a wonderful power supply, if you aren't pushing it altogether too hard.

    @David Dewis, go look at the Sandia Cooler. When you're done lusting after that, look at the Id-cooling Is-vc45 Vapor Chamber CPU Cooler... which you can buy right now and use to overclock an i5 in the new Raven just fine. I've got my media PC in an RVZ01 with a Pentium anniversary edition overclocked to heck, and it does just fine. (I can't wait for the RVZ02 to put my gaming rig in and run watercooling out the back.)
    Reply
  • DarkSable
    That being said. Tom's. What are you doing.

    Silverstone just released the SX500-LG, which is a very slightly longer (130mm) SFX-profile power supply that fits a 120mm fan on top, instead of a dinky, noisy 80mm fan. That's the power supply that I want to see a review of!
    Reply
  • g-unit1111
    15283400 said:
    (I can't wait for the RVZ02 to put my gaming rig in and run watercooling out the back.)

    I very badly want a RVZ02, it will make a nice home for my old i5-3570K. :lol:
    Reply
  • Grognak
    52dB and more than 25 idle... "Tiny box that makes a lot of noise" isn't my definition of SFF.
    Reply
  • Aris_Mp
    I will ask for the SX-500LG, however I have many samples to process till its turn comes to hit the test bench. Unfortunately a full PSU review needs lots of time and I won't do rushed reviews.
    Reply