A Closer Look:

    The 500W comes packaged in the typical Seasonic box that is blue and orange. The front of the box has a stock picture of a power supply. The bottom corner has a sticker with the wattage of the power supply on the inside, in this case a 500W. The rear of the box is loaded with features of the power supply. The S12 Series conforms fully to Intel's ATX12V, Revision 2.0 PSU Design Guideline. The S12 supports the latest P4 Prescott and Athlon 64/64 FX processors, as well as PCI Express, Serial ATA and SLI, as well as Crossfire. Included with the power supply is a pigtail with 2 floppy drive connectors. This pigtail plugs into a free molex connection. Also included is the manual, power cord and 4 case mounting screws. One nice touch is the included case badge.

Retail front	Retail back
Open box	Included items

    Nothing too fancy with the outside of this power supply, but that is fine by me. I'm more concerned with what's going on inside and the performance. The Seasonic SS-500HT comes in an all black enclosure. On the backside is a full panel of vent holes with a honeycomb shape. This is becoming what seems to be the standard on newer power supplies. On the under side of the power supply is a 120mm intake fan and chrome grill for knuckle protection.

3/4 shot

Honeycomb vent holes

120mm fan

    To the inside, and one of the first things I noticed is the heat sink for the mosfets. The design of this heat sink is eye-catching. Also, the way the fins have been cut and spread apart lead to a great deal of surface area. The larger the surface area the greater the cooling capacity, and with the 120mm fan blowing over the heat sink, overheating will not be a problem. Now about the cooling with the fan. There is a built in circuit created by Seasonic back in 2000 named the Smart & Silent Fan Control. Basically what that means is as the ambient temperatures rise, the speed of the fan increases, thus cooling the power supply more efficiently and adding life to the power supply fan.

Nice heat sink design	Top view
cable attachment	Grounded chassis

    The cabling on the Seasonic is plentiful with lengthy wires for the molex and SATA connections. All the cables are sleeved in a nylon wire mesh that is black in color. The dual PCIe connections have their own wires, so no messy pigtail from one connector to another. There is a plethora of molex connections: NINE total! Now that is a lot of connections. Even six SATA connections is a lot. This power supply is ready for raid setups. Also included is one pigtail with dual floppy drive connections on one end and a molex connection on the other end.

20/24 mobo connection	8 pin EPS connection	6 SATA connection
2 PCIe connections each on their own cable	9 Molex connections	4pin 12v power connection

Testing:

    For testing, I'm going to be using the Seasonic Power Angel to check the wattage used, and my digital volt meter (DVM) to measure the 12 volt rails at idle and under load. For software testing I'm going to use Prime95, CPU Burn in Test, 3D Mark 2007.

• P4 D930

• ECS RC410L0

• 1GB DDR2 Ram

• 3 IDE HDDs

• 1 SATA HDD

• 1 Optical Drive

• Several Fans

Conclusion:

    More and more power supplies are looking more alike each and every day. It's really getting hard to tell the difference between them, not with just the looks but even with performance.

   New energy standards require power supplies to perform with certain efficiencies. The Seasonic S12 500W falls within this category by offering power supplies with 80% efficiency. Now keep in mind this 80% hold true when the power supply is delivering a certain amount of wattage.

   Below that wattage, some power supplies are not so efficient. The Seasonic SS-500HT stays really close to its described rating, which is what we all hope for.

  If you are in the market for an efficient and quiet power supply, pick up the Seasonic S12 500w. I would like to thank Seasonic for sending out this unit for review.