![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Friday , September 25, 2009
- Author:
- Paul Johnson
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Seasonic X Series: X-750 Power Supply Review
Fully modular, 750 watts of computing power, high efficiency, and a great build quality has been done before in the world of PSUs, but never quite like this. Seasonic's X Series is an evolution in the world of power supplies.
Overview
The first thing we are going to look at with the Seasonic X-750 is the packaging, accessories, and documentation. While normally none of these items is a make or break item for a power supply the packaging quite often contains a lot of information about the product we are purchasing. The inclusion of an owner’s manual that provides actual information about our product is also of great help. Accessories are almost unnecessary with a power supply as the unit is self contained, unless it is modular, but there cases where a manufacturer can include useful accessories to make installation, routing and use more efficient.
The Seasonic X-750 packaging comes trimmed out in black and gold, with the accent color of gold tying into this unit’s claimed 80Plus Gold efficiency rating. In addition to that, we find the sides and particularly the back littered with a litany of various features, specifications, and marketing points. A large percentage of those features are things we have seen at one time or another among high end power supplies; however the X-750 represents one of the first times we have seen them all in one package and the emphasis here is clearly on efficiency and sound. We also see copious amounts of text for how the housing of the DC-DC VRM's on the modular PCB aides in efficiency along with the silence instilled by Seasonic's patent pending cooling setup. These are all well and good but it is certainly a real possibility that Seasonic could be over-promising and under-delivering with this much marketing. The early indicators on this front however point to at least some truthfulness as 80Plus does list this unit as being Gold Certified. Moving on we find the power label is also printed on the box (and shown below) as well as a blurb about the 5 year warranty that the unit comes backed by.
The power information for the Seasonic X-750 is similar to what we saw from the M12D-850 in that the unit has available ~99% of its capacity on the 12v rail (62A) if needed. It differs from the M12D-850 however, in that this unit is a single 12v rail unit not a dual 12v rail unit. Coupled with this impressively sized single 12v rail we find that the unit has 4 PCI-Express connectors and a total of 16 peripheral connectors (8 Molex and 8 SATA). This complement should be adequate for any setup that a user would try to power with a 750W unit even though the minor rails have a low-ish cap of 125W. Overall, this is a superb set of paper specifications as the unit even advertises better than specification complaint voltage regulation.
Once we open the X-750 we find the usual assortment of items that come with a Seasonic power supply including the power supply in a bag, mounting screws with Seasonic case badge, modular cables in a bag, the power cord, and the user manual. The user manual that comes with the X-750 is 37 pages along in six languages. Included in the manual is the power table, the connector count, installation instructions, some troubleshooting instructions, warranty information, and a lot of advertising. Thankfully no power de-rating curve information this time as the rated power is stated as being at 50C. Previous Seasonic branded units have been rated at 40C. While it has provided units to other brands rated at 50c this is the first 50C rated Seasonic branded unit we have seen. One useful note I found while flipping through the manual is that Seasonic actually explains that the power supply is a "pull" technology so it only delivers the amount of power demanded from it at any given time and not its full rated output all the time. That was an interesting (but true) addition that I have never seen before (and should answer that question for a lot of people unfamiliar with how a SMPS works). Overall, the manual is serviceable but could use a bit more information and a bit less marketing (since we already bought the unit) to be as thorough as the best we have seen.