PC Power & Cooling is back to join the fray here at FPSLabs and this time their power supplies are under new ownership. Are they still turning out quality PSU’s that put the smack down on the competition? Read on to find out!

Category: Power Supplies
Manufacturer: PC Power & Cooling
Product: Silencer 610 EPS12V
Gallery: Click Here
Price:$109.99

Intro

We last checked out a PCP&C;power supply last year when we reviewed their 750W Silencer model. A few things have changed since then. First and foremost, PC Power & Cooling is no longer a stand alone company; they have since been bought out by OCZ, the company widely known for RAM production. PCP&C;as we mentioned in the previous article has become the standard of excellence in the computing world when it comes to power supply quality. While often priced slightly more than the competition, their performance and stability has been second to none. Hopefully with OCZ running the show we will see the same grade A performance we have come to enjoy and expect from PCP&C;.

This Silencer differs a bit from the last one we looked at. First off, we should note that it is much cheaper and fits more into that average build that most of you look to put together on our forums. Another point we should make note of is the 610 Silencer’s 5 year warranty, unlike the 3-year from the 750. We don’t know whether or not this is a new concept since the acquisition by OCZ, but either way it comes as a welcome addition.

When it comes to power supplies, you really don’t want to error on the weak side. We often recommend you stick to well regarded brands, as often some of these lesser brands that are dirt cheap produce lower quality PSU’s with rails and voltages that vary to levels that are unstable for your system. We aren’t trying to say that every cheap PSU you buy is going to be a piece of shit, but generally you get what you pay for. This is definitely something you have to keep in mind when you are on the prowl for a new PSU for your current or new rigs. At the same time we have to ask if higher end power supplies are worth the cost vs. that of the mid range. So today will be put this Silencer 610 head to head with a Antec NeoHE 550w.

Package

PC Power & Cooling’s Silencer 610 comes packaged in their very plain white box. It’s a good thing that the quality within is never determined by the style of packaging. The box features the PSU’s specs on both sides and also mentions the warranty period of 3 years. As does the product warranty flier inside. The point of interest here however is that as of September 18th of this year all of the Silencer models have been upgraded to a 5 year warranty. Now that may not mean a lot to some of you who upgrade your machines at a rapid rate but many people keep their hardware around for a some time and welcome such an addition to the warranty.

Inside the box we find the Silencer well packed, suspended on cardboard with the cables and accessories divided into their own compartments on the sides. Its a solid packaging job that will surely keep your goodies safe during transport. The PSU comes packed with the warranty card/instructions flier, a AC power cable, and a bag of screws - everything you need to get the Silencer 610 pumping juice through your system like the Mississippi cutting through the heartland.

 

 

 

The old saying goes never judge a book by its cover and the PCP&C;power supplies seem to fall under that category as they may lack flash on the outside but have always performed near the top in any PSU test we perform. Let’s take a closer look at the Silencer 610 itself.

{mospagebreak heading=Introduction&title=Appearance}

Appearance

The last Silencer we reviewed, the 750, had the reddish/bronze copper like finish, which Shoes wasn’t the biggest fan of. At the time, we noted that it also shipped in black - which is what we have here on the 610W. The Silencer is very unassuming, but in a good way. It doesn’t go with a chrome finish, or a gaudy color, it’s just straight to the point; “I am a power supply, use me”. Where as many manufacturers place their label on the side, PC Power & Cooling puts theirs on the top - maybe they are on to something here, but in actuality how often do you really read the label of your PSU? Thought so, not often. Hence to us, it doesn’t really matter one way or another.

All of the cables are sheathed with the ever famous black mesh that we seem to see on nearly every other PSU now days. While this isn’t a bad thing (it looks good), we would just like to see some with a flexible sheathing that isn’t see through sometimes just for overall looks in our cases - but a minor gripe, regardless.

 

As we mentioned in the 750 review, these silencers run a bit longer than your standard ATX form factor, so when considering them you should be sure to account for the added inch to inch and a half that you may need for space when you install it. On most cases it shouldn’t be an issue; it fit in our P182 in the lower chamber, with the fan installed down there too, mainly because we have routed the cables so well straight up to the motherboard. In a P180 for instance it is possible, though harder, to install and to keep the lower fan in use.

 

All in all the Silencer 610 has a solid look to it and black will go with just about any setup or color scheme - unless you are shooting for the Barbie corvette color scheme in your rig. The PSU isn’t overly flashy, with funny colors, or shiny chrome, etc. It follows the trend of everything we have seen from PCP&C;so far, understated, but not to be underestimated.

{mospagebreak title=Features and Specifcations}

Features and Specifications

The first thing after manufacturer that everyone looks at when it comes to a PSU is total watts of output. The 610W continuous, 670W peak should be plenty for almost all of your rigs out there. Those of you SLi or CrossFire high end cards may need more than this, though I have seen SLI systems running on PSU’s right around 600 watts.

The specs overall are pretty standard; this is a high efficiency power supply even though it really isn’t featured. But at 83% it is up there with the “green” PSU’s that should help cut down on excessive power use/waste. I know you Californians may really like that. As with the last Silencer we see this PSU only has one rail, which in the era of multiple rails is a bit odd. However, it also pushes 49 amps over that one rail, making the sole +12V rail able to push around 600W of power it self. What does that mean? It means it is a beast that should almost be able to power everything you can throw at a solo 12V rail. It also means when wiring up your system you don’t have to worry about any kind of load balancing among the rails or a waste of power in any particular area - a plus in our book. Where as the NeoHe we will test this against uses three rails at 18A each giving that oh so tricky question if you are balancing your components accordingly.

 

The fan pushes upwards of 55CFM and peaks sound wise at 38dB(A). The speed and sound of course vary depending on the temperature of PSU. So a good cooled rig with adequate air movement and you may not even see, hear, or need these peak values out of the Silencer’s fan. When compared to our NeoHe 550W the fan was just as, if not more quiet than the fan on the Antec. This was tested at full load and idle. So even though the Silencer 610 may be capable of pulling 60 watts more than the Antec, using it on the same system it holds up well audibly and it shouldn’t have a noise factor that you should concern yourself with unless you are trying to build a silent rig.

Connectors

Connection wise PC Power & Coolings offering brings it all to the dinner table. Basically anything your stomach could desire you will find to feed your machine here, including even a 8 pin PCI-E connection which isn’t all that common yet but could become the standard with NVIDIA’s next high end parts as it already is with ATI’s. Now if you wanted to run dual 2900XT’s you would need to get a 6-8 pin PCI-E adapter as only one of the 6 pin connections has a adapter for 8 pins. Not a big issue however.

 

One of the keys to being sold as ” NVIDIA SLI certified” is of course these dual 6 pin connections. This is a welcome improvement for those who like to dual-card-it-up and is slowly becoming a standard in power supplies. This of course prevents a need for a molex to PCI-E adapter to power a second card and frees up a molex connection in doing so.

Other cables to note are a are a 4 pin and a 8 pin 12 Volt. Thus regardless of your motherboard of choice you should have a native connection either way to power the 12V. 8 pin is becoming a slow standard but there are still a abundance of 4 pin 12V motherboard out there. With the Silencer you can be assured to cover all your bases. On top of that we have 6 SATA power cables to feed juice to all those hard drives of yours that store all your “music”. Even the good ole’ floppy connection sticks around though fewer and fewer people use them.

Our main issue with the connectors and cabling is the same one we had with the 750; they aren’t modular. Now by no means is it a must have for everyone, but it’s one of those “it’s possible so we can’t we have this nice feature” things. People who don’t use SLI, or whom may not wish to hide all their extra molex or 12V connectors instead have to find a place in their PC to hide them, or they just take up space and become a eye sore. It’s the main benefit the Antec NeoHe has over this, its modular cables. Some of us here are sticklers for cable management and being able to remove excess cables is a near necessity.

{mospagebreak title=Testbed and Methods}

Testbed and Methods

Test Setup

  • Case: Antec P182
  • Power Supply: Antec NeoHE 550W | PCP&C;Silencer 610 EPS12V
  • Motherboard: eVGA Nvidia 680I
  • Processor: Intel E6700
  • Hard Drive: Western Digital 150GB Raptor, 10,000rpm, 16MB Cache Buffer
  • Video: Diamond Viper Radeon HD 2600XT 256MB GDDR4
  • Memory: 2048MB (2×1024MB) Crucial Ballistix 1066MHz
  • Optical Drives: Nec 3500a / Lite-on SOHR-5238s
  • Cooling: Arctic Freezer 7 Pro
  • Audio: Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic
  • NIC: Killer Network Interface Card

Software Configuration

  • Motherboard BIOS: P28
  • Operating System: Windows Vista Ultimate full updated
  • Video Driver: ATI/AMD Catalyst 7.9 WHQL Certified

We realize this rig isn’t the most demanding; we had hoped to have a 8800GTX on hand in time to help push the system but no dice. Hence the reasoning for really pushing our clocks speeds almost near the max this system has seen. It should help us get a better idea just how stable this system will be across the rails, which is the key aspect to test a power supply on. Speaking of which, ideally you want to test all three rails - the 12V, the 5V, and 3V - at varied instances of system use. There are 4 phases we like to test at: initial start up, system idle, gaming load, and full load. Gaming load here consisted of a fresh start up with average background resources running; Trillian Astra, Outlook, mIRC, and Firefox while playing Team Fortress 2 and pwning n00bs like Shoes with my rocket launcher. Full load consisted of all that while also running utorrent, and Orthos on blend. We do this on both power supplies to test just how reliable these well renowned PCP&C;power supplies are and how it compares to a slightly less expensive competitor.

So while we may not fully be able to stress the two power supplies to their limits with a high end demanding quad core machine with Quad SLI or the like and find the limits of where it may or may not falter, we can give a accurate comparison between two solid brand new power supplies and determine which one comes out on top.

Overclocked system settings consist of the following:

  • Processor Clock Speed: 3.60 GHz (roughly 26% overclock)
  • Processor Voltage: 1.50 (1.35 stock)
  • MCH Voltage: 1.65 (1.50 stock)

{mospagebreak title=Tests}

Tests

This machine normally runs with a Antec NeoHe 550W so it was the logical choice to get baseline numbers for vs. the Silencer 610. Its a few (60W) less than the Silencer, and a bit cheaper so we have to take that into account when we make the comparison overall. The main point of running these tests its to compare fluctuation between each power supply on each rail, and of course accurate rail wattage between the two. On to the tests.

Stock system performance sees the Antec performing very well giving us reasonably solid numbers. They aren’t quite on the dot and there is slight fluctuation but it’s not quite perfect. Either way a system should hold up well running with these numbers. We see a fluctuation of .04V on the 12V rail, .01V on the 3.3V rail, and a change of .03 on the 5 volt.

As we OC our testbed we find that the numbers dip slightly and the fluctuation increase a bit more also. It’s not at disaster-for-your-PC level yet but its something to keep in mind. When OC’d we see a .05V fluctuation which is a bit higher then at stock, and oddly enough, the change in fluctuation increases by .01 in each rail when overclocked. When this exact power supply was reviewed last year it was on a totally different system so we want to remind you that comparing its numbers now to then aren’t really valid. The NeoHe performs admirably and is well within spec for performance.

Silencer 610 EPS12V

On to the Silencer. If price and quality of components has anything to say about our tests should show the PC Power unit on top when it comes to performance. But we know that cost and word of mouth tales don’t always live up to the hype, and that folks is why we do the tests. The load placed on the Silencer is a lower percentage of the total output than it is on the NeoHe. But with neither PSU being stressed to its max we shouldn’t be hitting any performance limits on either unit.

A mere .02V differentiate the Silencer 610 between idle and full load. To quote my favorite movie, “impressive, most impressive”. The numbers continue to hold up on the other rails and we begin to see why PCP&C;is regarded so highly, these readings are more stable then a burger flipping job at McDonald’s. On top of that the rail’s actual voltage is closer to specification then the Antec 550W.

We move on to OC’ing the rig with the Silencer 610. Pushing our CPU to 3.6GHz to try to get some sort of variance on this power supply. However yet again the Silencer comes through like Jordan in the post season and again puts up rock stable numbers and a “game winning” performance. The rail voltages show no more than a .02 difference again and all three rails show nearly the same stability they did when running at stock. It seems PC Power & Cooling has another winner on their hands here.

The main point we need to make again after doing these tests is the fact that we are not fully stressing either power supply. As we saw with Thomas’ review of the 750W when pushed with more demanding components the discrepancy between a Silencer and our other NeoHe was even further. Thus either way you cut it it seems the Silencer series comes out on top of Antec’s NeoHe and at the same times gives stability that we have seen in hardly any power supplies.

{mospagebreak title=Conclusion}
Conclusion
It is good to see that OCZ’s purchase of this brand of PSU’s has maintained its exceptional quality. OCZ knew what they were doing when they purchased PC Power & Cooling; getting one of, if not the premier maker of power supplies in the PC industry. Tests like we have performed today go a long way in showing just that. Antec is no slouch themselves and that is now two reviews in which head to head it has been soundly out performed. This by no means makes the Antec a bad unit - quite the contrary, we have bought them ourselves for our own machines. But at the same time, PCP&C;stands out with better overall performance, less variance in its rails, less variance when overclocked, and closer to advertised rail voltages; pretty much a winner all around. Except of course with our one gripe with its physical appearance, the lack of modular cables.

A quick glance at Newegg and I see the oft popular Corsair 620W retailing at $160. It’s a reliable PSU that many of our readers love that we have even used our Price Guides. However I think at this time we have a new replacement and that’s the Silencer 610. At $110 dollars and performance rivaling any midranged PSU we have tested it is an exceptional value. It seems since our last review the Silencer series has become even more affordable and no longer resides at that high end exclusive club when it comes to price. It certainly resides in that club when it comes to performance and that is why we have no qualms when it comes giving it our recommendation as one of the best values in power supplies.

Pros
+ Great price vs. that of competitors
+ Voltages with next to no variance
+ A single rail with amps high enough for the whole system
+ High efficiency
+ Quiet is this units middle name
+ PCP&C;extended warranty

Cons
- Still not modular…

Rating
9.8 out of 10

We were going to drop this to a 9.6 based on our rating scale and when compared to the 750W we reviewed last year, mainly because this Silencer series still isn’t modular. However noting how great of a value these units from PC Power & Cooling have become now that their prices have become more mainstream we had to give the PSU an added boost for that reason. So in the end it all balanced out. If this unit were modular it would probably be the perfect standard for mid to high end machines, but being nearly perfect isn’t all that bad.

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