The PC enthusiast market has always been an exciting market to observe. It may not be as intriguing as the ongoing war between processor makers or the VGA market but the race to create the most efficient PSU is an ongoing arms race any and all PC owner will benefit from.
When the 80Plus standard was proposed, it ushered in an era of advancements in power supply efficiency for desktops. The very first manufacturer to develop a market-ready 80Plus-certified power supply was Seasonic. That was back in 2005, fast-forward years into the future and the company has established itself as one of the most dominant brands in PSUs, retailing self-branded products as well as providing platforms for other companies. In 2011, Seasonic released its first 80Plus Platinum-rated PSU and today we will be seeing for ourselves what all the fanfare was about when the highly-acclaimed Seasonic Platinum-1000 80Plus Platinum PSU was released.
The 80 PLUSÂ Certification
80 PLUS is a certification program intended to promote energy efficiency in computer power supplies. The certification requires a product to have more than 80% efficiency in 20%, 50%, and 100% of the rated load. This guarantees that any certified product will only expend 20% of power consumed as heat at the specified load levels which leads to reduced electrical consumption and thus result in savings compared to less-efficient PSUs.
Note: The 80 PLUS certification is voluntary and a company MAY CHOOSE NOT TO undergo certification even if their product meets 80% +/- efficiency.
Seasonic (Sea Sonic Electronics Co., Ltd.)
Seasonic started out as an OEM PSU, creating platforms strictly for other companies. Earlier in the 21st century, Seasonic opened itself to retail and created self-branded PSUs for the consumer market. All of Seasonic’s PSUs are 80PLUS certified.
The Seasonic Platinum Series
Seasonic segments its product line via efficiency designation with the high-end of their portfolio highlighted by the Seasonic P and Seasonic X series of PSUs, rated for 80 PLUS Platinum and Gold, respectively. As the name implies, products under the Platinum series bear efficiency ratings that meet the said standard which is 90%, 92%, 89% at 20%, 50%, 100% loading.
Our subject for review today was the first ever Platinum-rated PSU from Seasonic and is the second highest-rated Platinum model in their catalog with the newly released P1200 taking over the top end as the flagship model.
14 Comments
Nice Seasonic!
Nice Seasonic!
wooooooo *drool*
epic yan. i was suppose to get that but out of stock sa distro. ended up with a RM1000 lol
oh, di mo na inantay? taas ng demand dito lalo na nung bitcoin craze
di ko na nahintay. excited na ako dun sa r9-280x ko na tatlong beses ko pina RMA lol
3 times? anong brand yan sir?
sapphire r9-280x toxic
What’s wrong sa kanya?
high failure rate sa early batches ng card. problem is not limited to sapphire but is also prevalent in other brands as well. the defective cards are producing artifacts/glitches/or whatever you like to call them right out of the box at stock settings. the exact reason is unknown but a lot of people are blaming the hynix memory used for the cards. earlier batches of the sapphire 280x toxic used hynix, succeeding batches used elpida. the problem wasnt completely fixed but the fail rate for the succeeding batches was significantly reduced. no amount of troubleshooting of any kind will fix it except for RMA. my first 2 cards were hynix, my card now is elpida.
ofcourse the newer elpida cards are slower in mining than hynix, but since i dont mine, that thing doesnt matter to me .. haha
pchub has an ongoing sale right now on the sapphire 280x toxic priced at 15k. i kept asking them what version is the vbios of these cards for sale and the memory used.. they couldnt answer me. its tempting to crossfire but without the proper info on which version they are selling, i’d rather not risk getting a defective card.
that news flew by me even though i had like 3-4 R9 280X for review. thanks for the info. I see some 280X right now going for as low as 10K on sale. They say its new but can’t say for sure. Yes, very tempted also but I’d wait out for a proper maxwell. Heck even a 750ti with SLI support would be on my target list if ever it comes out.
im not surprised it did not show during your review. i have the impression that engineering / review samples are usually stress tested first before they are sent out.
yann!!!