Power Supply SilverStone SX800-LTI - 800W Titanium-rated SFX-L

Rusty McFot

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Jan 4, 2017
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Well that didn't work. Newegg rejected the payment. Doesn't allow payment from Australia on the US site.

Time for Plan B.
 
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Commissariat

Caliper Novice
Jun 20, 2015
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Thinking about removing the fan from one of these PSUs. What do you guys think would be a safe wattage to run it fanless? Or is it just a crazy idea no matter the system's max wattage?

I ask partly because @LukeD has been running his 700W Platinum FSP 1u with SLI'd 1080s and a 6700k on his Orthrus, without its fan ever turning on - so I'm left wondering how much Silverstone is holding out on us with that 20% power draw limit.
 

jeshikat

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Tony said the engineers set it at 20%, instead of the 30% of the 700W, based on their testing. But they're mostly concerned with reliability and longevity.

The heatsinks on this unit aren't all that beefy, so I don't think it'd be a good idea to run it completely passive over 200W.
 
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EdZ

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Amazon UK also have it up for pre-order (no other UK retailer does yet, or any EU retailer for that matter) ...for a whopping £217! And that's direct from Amazon, not just a Marketplace reseller importing at a premium!
 
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Phuncz

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That's $180 + VAT + Brexitax. So it'll probably be around 200-220€ for Europe.
 

Curlyriff

Chassis Packer
Jan 30, 2017
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So just signed up to reply to this thread after reading the review. Does anyone think it's a good principle but the execution of the product overall is a little sloppy. The cutouts for the connectors are awful considering the price. The lack of a decent pouch for cables. The use of blue connectors rather than black or titanium.

And lets be honest. For most people I would have thought the Corsair SF600 would be a much better option for all the above really? I guess I am just struggling to see who this is aimed at and really what the additional £75 is bringing people who want SFF PSU. Even an ATX build these days with SLI/Xfire setups and enthusiast CPU overclocked are sitting under the 600 watt range.

The real big thing that Corsair have also done is give a 7 year warranty which I think speaks volumes about their PSU range.

What are peoples views on what the Silverstone brings to the table. I know the review suggested a few things but I would say most are covered by the Corsair as well as anyone who actually looks at getting an SFX power supply would be more aware of power drawer anyways.
 

jeshikat

Jessica. Wayward SFF.n Founder
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Does anyone think it's a good principle but the execution of the product overall is a little sloppy.

I agree, the product is cool, but the implementation could use some improvement.

The cutouts for the connectors are awful considering the price.

Apparently that's due to Enhance's tooling. They use bigger cutouts for compatibility with a wider range of connectors. SilverStone could ask for custom tooling but since this is such a niche product it probably didn't make financial sense (tooling is really expensive).

The lack of a decent pouch for cables.

Agree

The use of blue connectors rather than black or titanium.

That's to differentiate the PCIe connectors. I guess it's debatable, it doesn't bother me but I could see it being a problem for someone trying to do a color-coordinated build where the PSU is visible.

And lets be honest. For most people I would have thought the Corsair SF600 would be a much better option for all the above really?

Absolutely, the SF600 is a better choice for the vast majority of people. Personally I don't like how loud it gets under heavy load (X99 + SLI GTX 980s), but otherwise it's a fantastic SFX unit.

The real big thing that Corsair have also done is give a 7 year warranty which I think speaks volumes about their PSU range.

I've talked with Tony about this and apparently the issue is that the PSU OEMs (like Enhance) only offer up to a 3-year warranty to the retail brands (like SilverStone), so if the PSU fails past that the brand has to eat the cost.

Other companies are basically banking on the fact that very few people actually make use of the warranty but SilverStone is taking a more cautious approach. They're experimenting with longer warranties on some of their other ATX PSU models though, so hopefully that comes to the SFF line.

What are peoples views on what the Silverstone brings to the table.

Mainly I love it because it pushes the envelope, there aren't very many 800W Titanium-rated ATX units yet here we are with one in the SFX-L form factor. In practical terms there's not many people it makes sense for, but I'd buy it just for the bragging rights.
 

Curlyriff

Chassis Packer
Jan 30, 2017
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Thank you for taking the time out to go through the points.

Build quality
Honestly I feel the principle that the reason for the cutouts and the connection in principle is a poor excuse on a premium system bearing in mind that surely the connectors and thus the cutouts are pretty standard across the board.

I understand the principle in the cost associated, my friend runs a custom motorcycle garage however the punches for tooling for the cutouts to me seems odd. Surely they could be using a CNC router based cutting and use vector based design? I mean even the power supply plug on the back is badly mounted.

It could then even allow for scoring on sheet metal for things like the logos and it would be a rapid process with no further waste, cleaner and the costs for a CNC routing machine with a bed large enough and accuracy of 0.02mm which can cut upto 3000mm/per min to do such elements is around £5k new in the UK. And the travel on that would be 1000x650mm so you could do a ton of sheets quickly.

Cables
Moving on from that though, when you are looking to do a SFF build with water cooling then black on black is easier for the most case and then if anyone wants to go to the next stage I would of thought it would be custom sleeve time.

Noise
Interesting you bring up the noise of the SF600, the test we (me and friend doing an SFF build) did on the SF600 the fan at full load was only 37dBA making it rather in-audible in the case (was tested on desk with decibel meter sat 1m from the unit) from when we ran one. Out of interest shutdown with the fan at 100% and it peaking 60 degree was drawing true 640 watt of power. So I would suggest where a normal gaming load is even with sli drawing closer to 350 watt then it would not be an issue. It also meant that for light loads up to about 300 watt it was silent as the fan never kicked in so basic gaming, internet surfing, movie watching etc were all good to be silent.

Warranty
interesting to hear that and honestly believe overall that is a pretty big negative compared to pretty much all the competition that have moved onto at least 5 years and of course some as high as 10 years.

What it brings
Interesting view and certainly something to note. Just feel maybe going for a 600w Titanium in SFX with the extra quality in the build process would have been a better avenue. I also feel like case companies making smaller ITX/MATX cases need to try and start using SFX bracket sizes and even bundle the PSU with it.

That way we can really start to see some improvements overall to the scene.
 

jeshikat

Jessica. Wayward SFF.n Founder
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Feb 22, 2015
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Surely they could be using a CNC router based cutting and use vector based design?

It's die stamped, hence the crazy tooling cost.

the SF600 the fan at full load was only 37dBA making it rather in-audible in the case

Your definition of inaudible is different than mine then :p

But noise is very subjective, personally I find my Noctua P12's annoying above 1100 RPM.
 
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Curlyriff

Chassis Packer
Jan 30, 2017
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Thanks again for the reply to notes/comments and questions :)

Production
Seems very antiquated to be using die stamped for these types of products. I think maybe they should look into investing into a lovely CNC router. The cost and accuracy and ability to adjust on the fly with almost zero cost overhead (someone to adjust the drawing it outputs from) would be excellent.

They can also have multiple design super quick for different connections etc.

And even then really a full waterjet cutting would be the most advance/high end option but of course costs for those machines are more with a setup you are looking closer to £15k but of course again is very flexible and due to the nature of the cut would actually be a finished cut thus no secondary process. Can just go straight to colour finish.

Noise (in regards to the Corsair)
Noise you are correct in that is subjective. However what is interesting is having looked at a few reviews online it appears that around 60% have shown the fan 46dBA which of course is significantly different to our levels of 37dBA which may explain some of it. They also have the PSU peaking at 50 degree so to me it would state that we had a different fan profile for some reason.

The PSU we had raised temps to 60 degree but remained quieter would suggest that our fan didn't ramp past 2800RPM, and on others tests it got all the way to 3800RPM.

Our test was done a few weeks ago now so wondering if since the test you guys and others have done is because they revised it? Or they had a batch when tests were done where the fan control circuit was an issue as the ones reporting higher noise are suggesting even at the same load as on the 450watt version that the fan was ramping higher and thus a problem.

I can see the literature states up to 50 degree but as stated ours hit 60 degree with no notice of it shutting down or adverse affects. Maybe ours was defective and would have failed at a later date with the control chip not working right and thus not spinning the fan up to max to keep temps down?

Other notes

Power Cable

Something that all of them need to consider is an inline PSU power switch that sits 12" down the cable rather than on the PSU for the simple reason as stated in your review is they are often internally mounted out the way where you can't get access too. At least the ability to have the switch just outside the case would be beneficial in my view.

Rubber Covers to Plugs
If they are going to provide the rubber covers then it would be easier for them to be molded with the plug shaped to suit. Kind of pointless as they are unless it is purely to reduce change of damage during transport?

Cables & Connections
SFX PSU's often end up having huge over length cables. I would honestly prefer shorter cables based on ITX/MATX.

With M.2 and higher capacity SSD's being more popular and available as well then the number of outputs for such devices where needed seems extravagant on the Silverstone. I know a few sites have suggested the connection count on the Corsair being low (which only support for 1 GPU is really) but the sata power etc all seem fine. It would be good to really have a roundup of people who are building SFF systems how many hard drives they actually use. I mean personally I use a single M.2 with 2 SSD's for mass storage. I would assume as prices fall most will go this way and even end up with using 2-3 M.2 drives such as on the latest Asrock Mobo where they are located to the rear of board.

Power Plug
Direct for features of the SFX PSU's. would it be that hard to make a power plug connector that can rotate 90 degree to suit case requirements rather than having forced vertical or horizontal depending on the PSU in question.


Fanless Designs
Out of interest how warm do you think these PSU's woudl get in a fanless design considering we have standard sized PSU's that are fanless up to 520 Watt. Would a 450 watt fanless SFX PSU be possible with platinum rating. Silverstone already produce the NightJar as a basis for fanless.

And with Superflower having the 500 Watt with 5 year warranty & Seasonic the 520 Watt with 7 year warranty they obliviously believe longevity isn't an issue as long as the power draw is reasonable. Of course they are open cages compared to a closed case but is that really an issue? Bearing in mind the Seasonic with the 7 year warranty hit 62 degree in testing and actually managed to drawer 645 watt power peak before shutting down which is mightily impressive for such a design it would be hard to suggest that loosing the fan to provide a heatsink for static cooling should be possible.
 
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EdZ

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Seems very antiquated to be using die stamped for these types of products. I think maybe they should look into investing into a lovely CNC router. The cost and accuracy and ability to adjust on the fly with almost zero cost overhead (someone to adjust the drawing it outputs from) would be excellent.
Think of it this way: a CNC router operates at minutes-per-case, a CNC stamper operates at cases per minute (or per second, for custom tooling). Time is money, and if you can spend a week producing several thousand cases then stop operating machinery, that will cost less than running a CNC router for several months. What works out cheaper in total depends on your production run size: if you only want 10-100 cases, then any production method will be expensive per-case: CNC routers (and laser.plasma) are slow and expensive to operate, stamping is fast and cheap to operate but can have a very high tooling setup cost. If you're building a lot of cases, stamping is dramatically cheaper.
Direct for features of the SFX PSU's. would it be that hard to make a power plug connector that can rotate 90 degree to suit case requirements rather than having forced vertical or horizontal depending on the PSU in question.
Yes, that would be surprisingly hard. Anything that handles AC line voltage has to meet specifications to ensure safety and pass stringent testing. It is notoriously difficult to get approval for plug designs with moving parts, as those moving parts inevitable fail testing in ways that expose live conductors to the outside.
 
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Curlyriff

Chassis Packer
Jan 30, 2017
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CNC Routing vs Punching

In regards to the first. The reason for the high cost in the first place was the lack of numbers though. We are talking about the low thousands from my understanding in terms of production. The cost and time that it would take to CNC these would be relatively low as they are not complex shapes.

We cut 3000mm in 1 min to give an idea at the 0.02mm tolerance. The total cut length of those cutouts are around 300mm total (depending on connection count) so I would say you are looking to pump out around 10 in 1 min cutting time + re-positioning so we are looking at probably closer to 5 in 1 min. So in an hour you are looking at around 300 produced or 2400 in a standard 8 hour working shift.

I don't know the throughput of punching because they vary dramatically however the cost of machine to quantity for the CNC routing from our figures do not appear to equate to a huge increase in cost. Maybe a few pence per piece.

Power Connector

Thanks for the input here. Am really just spit-balling some thoughts as we don't have IEC 60320 connectors on motorcycles to contend with although we do have large number of connectors that move with the suspension of the motorcycle with bare wires exposed as needed.

What I was more thinking is the plug in itself would not be different but the connector on the rear could use a 90 degree swivel plate. This means that nothing changes internally to the point that they failure by rotation would change nothing.

However with that, one thing that could help would be to have the plug inset to the rear of the power supply. Doing this would mean that the cable that comes from the rear of the unit could be positioned in any direction without having to worry about the plug fouling issues.
 
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jeshikat

Jessica. Wayward SFF.n Founder
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It's not just the cutting though, stamping also does the bends and other features.

So you're talking going from a single automated production line using existing tooling, to a semi-manual process for the 2D cutting that still requires transferring the parts to a stamping cell for forming.

I guess it could be done, and I'd like to see the connector cutouts slimmed down in the future, but it just makes much more sense for SilverStone to use Enhance's existing tooling and processes. Especially since this unit is a bit of an experiment, if it sells well and proves there's a market for high-wattage, high-efficiency SFX-L units then maybe they'll be willing to take more risks with packaging and design.

For now I'm just glad it exists at all, because all the mainstream news sites and forums seem to think a 800W SFX-L unit is a completely stupid idea :(
 

Curlyriff

Chassis Packer
Jan 30, 2017
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Oh completely. Understand that, I just think the cost of labour to transfer the sheets from the cutter to the bending process would not add significant costs if you work out the extra overhead on a per unit price.

I did do some calculations on the costings of production for the fabrication side of things based on my friends motorcycle shop tooling etc (the water jet cutter & stamp bender (assuming we had the correct bending dies to hand as they obviously exist for them).

In total for us to produce a PSU on a per unit bases to be around £100 including labour.

We calculated we could produce about 80 an hour or around 640 a day then based on a working 8 hour day. I don't know how that equates to what they are producing at but it was broken down in;

- sheet aluminium costs
- CNC template design and programming
- labour for transfer through processes (CNC to Bending to Case finishing),
- batch finish in groups of 40 at different colours with an anodising finish (number we calculated could fit in the anodising vat) whilst keeping multiples of the cut sheets so easier to keep track of stock numbers
- laser etch logo
- installation of internals (assumed pre packaged and soldering required, fixing of connectors
- cost of connectors per unit
- cost of braided cables per unit (we use custom braided cables for motorcycle builds so have a bulk supplier and tools to hand)
- cost of 90mm fan (additional £20 for a custom aluminium anodised fan with LED RGB light for unit)
- Custom wiring loom/internal circuitry from two electrical engineers working to produce the boards
- labour for installing internals
- labour to test equipment (we would personally need the test equipment so haven't factored that in because of course it is something they have for more than this single product but the test equipment is around £8k for what would be needed to really make sure we are good and with that we would also take a hit for 1 in every 240 we decided for random testing during batch production).

So yeah I can see why the cost is there as such to make the numbers work and get a profit by time you then add shipping, marketing, paying for reps, warranty cover etc but I also at that point considering we calculated the numbers we could produce in a day in regards to the materials we can source etc so I am still under the impression that the industry as a whole may need to move forward with the way these products are produced.

I have noted that a lot of the cases here are produced with laser CNC so if it is viable for a home batch of cases from a start up then it only adds weight that it is possible for a larger company to tool up properly when we are purchasing a premium product.

TBF I do struggle with the idea of the need for an 800watt option. I feel that 600watt is the sweet spot for mainstream CPU with overclock and base SLI which would provide about a 80% load on the PSU and thus should be at it's optimum efficiency at that level.

Our rig that we mess about with has an i7-5960x overclocked to 4.6GHz with SLI TXP under water and pushing 2200Mhz cores with 2 separate loops for GPU's and CPU so two pumps. 2 SSD's from Sata and 1 M.2. We are drawing around 650 Watt power (during gaming) and close to 750 Watt stress testing the system so yeah the 800 Watt makes sense then mind but considering the system that seems pretty incredible as we can't really drawer more without going 3-way/4-way SLI.

And trying to fit all those componants within an MATX build that is actually SFF and thus requires an SFX PSU is pretty difficult right now although the Cerberus case seems like an option overall from what I read if you went for slim rads/fans, SFX and MATX board I think?
 

Curlyriff

Chassis Packer
Jan 30, 2017
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Oh and of course if they have the CNC tooling it isn't like it can't be used on other products making the tooling itself handy. Fast fabing concepts on it even has merit rather than hand stamping or similar.
 

EdZ

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May 11, 2015
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so I am still under the impression that the industry as a whole may need to move forward with the way these products are produced.
I think you have hugely overestimated the rate at which you could produce completed devices, and hugely underestimated labour costs for labour-intensive production processes. 80 per hour is 45 seconds to assemble a completed unit, and that's barely enough time for even one or two cycles of quill spin-down, toolchange, and spin-up, let alone enough time to mill a complete part (or assemble that part into a final assembly).

For comparison, here is a semi-automated case production house (Lian Li), a a semiautomated PSUI production line, and a fully automated PSU production demo line (Silverstone), and a mostly automated case production line (In-Win).

The universal use of stamping and turret-punches is because they are dramatically faster than any other machining process, and time is money. Even Lian Li, who specialise in boutique cases with short production runs, limit themselves to performing as few operations as possible with laser/plasma/water cutters and doing as much as possible though stamping.
 
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Curlyriff

Chassis Packer
Jan 30, 2017
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Sorry was not clear. the cutout for the unit is 80 an hour. Not fully assembled. The time to do the cut out of the batch in the first day would then take the 4 days for them to then be built and tested.

The tooling for the PSU to cut what is needed shouldn't need a tool change, we are on about laser cutting the sheet metal to suit.

The cost and time per unit is correct on the basis that we could with 5 people produce 640 units total in a week. This would be one fab, one finish, two assembly and one test. To complete 680 units would be costing us £68k a week. Now I don't know how much your labour rates are but our rates for wages here for a CNC controller is around £10 an hour, the person doing the anodising is about £10 an hour, the electrical engineer (most skilled job in this production) is £14 an hour and then the tester is again around £10 an hour.

So wages wise we are talking about £1760 a week based on an 8 hour week.

materials required was based on a monthly bulk buy to cover output.

If you went with a more traditional CNC router rather than laser router then yes as you say tooling will be needed to be changed but again you are likely to get through a half day without switching which is a 2 min job (assuming you are organised and have stuff to hand).

With that noted it would make the total turn over time per unit around 3.5 minutes. This is possible depending on how your system is setup. The above of course are only approx because we only spent 30 mins talking through it as friend was busy fabricating stuff the motorcycle he was working on.