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Sea Sonic S12-430


Date
: 06/16/05 – 02:51:56 AM

Author
:

Category
: Power Supplies

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer
: Sea Sonic USA

Price
: MSRP $89.00

Overclockers Online has looked at a number of power supplies and from time to time we'll see some really good stuff, but at the same time we see stuff that we hope you readers will never buy. Today, we're going to bring you our first Sea Sonic review and see where it lands in pack.

I haven't heard of Sea Sonic until this past year, however, they have been in existence in 1975! When a company has been around for more than a quarter of a century, they must be doing something right. To Sea Sonic, it only takes 4G's to accomplish what they've done…and its not 4G's of gravity, I'm talking about Great Technology, Great Quality, Great Service and Great Price.

In the recent years, Sea Sonic has been focusing on providing high efficiency power supplies to end users. The idea between high efficiency is to reduce the wasted energy, often energy lost in the form of heat.

In today's review, we'll be looking at the
S12-430
. Our emphasis will be on what it has, how well it performs and what this 80% efficiency means for you.

Page 2 : Package

The S12-430 arrived carefully packaged with no damage to the retail box.

The box is very simple with only a few details listed.

The back of the box is a completely different story. It has two columns that lists most of the features the Sea Sonic S12-430 has to offer.

We'll be covering these specifications over the next two pages.

The top of the box has a very convenient handle to carry the unit; as well, it shows some of the physical features.

The sides of the box are not wasted with pretty pictures; Sea Sonic lists some of the features and physically shows some of the accessories in use.

Overall, Sea Sonic does a wonderful job on effectively utilizing the space of a box. It's an aesthetically pleasing box that conveys the information of a product and shows you what it looks like. Two very key points in attracting buyers.

So now that you've bought the unit, what exactly do you get? Find out on the next page!

Page 3 : Specifications

Here's a quote from Sea Sonic on the specifications of the S12-430:

Page 4 : Features

There are a number of key selling features that I feel are important to our readers. So I've dedicated a page to cover some of these topics.

The biggest and most important feature is the 80% "Super High Efficiency".
Efficiency has always been defined as output divided by input. A theoretical power supply with 100% efficiency would have an input, for the S12-430, of 430 Watts AC and convert all of that into DC power, 430 Watts, without any electrical or heat loss. Since we don't live in an ideal world, we know this is physically not possible.
A typical generic power supply, as Sea Sonic says, has a 68% efficiency. The required AC input would then be 430 Watt (DC Output) divided by 0.68 (efficiency), or 632 Watts. If you think about it, that's a phenomenal amount of power to be using in a society that's concerned about fossil fuels and green house gases, all of which required to generate the 632 Watts. When we consider the Sea Sonic 80% efficiency power supply, it only requires 537 Watts of AC power….significantly less than the "other brands". Factor in running this power supply all day for the entire year and saving 95 Watts is going to be a good couple of bucks! The savings could be enough to buy a new processor! :)

The second form of efficiency that Sea Sonic markets is the 99% PF (Active Power Factor Correction). Power Factor is defined as Working Power divided by Apparent Power, apparent power is the power your utility company bills you. Maximizing the power factor, again the theoretical 100% is unattainable, you minimize the cost of electricity. This little picture Sea Sonic provides should make things a little easier for the visual learners.

The last concept would be the "Forward Converter Circuit Design". This feature is what converts your AC power to DC. A more elaborate look can be found on this page.

The remaining features are primarily for minimizing noise and heat and making your case more aesthetically pleasing.
The Sea Sonic S12-430 utilizes what they call the S²FC: Smart & Silent Fan Control. This feature controls the operating speed of the 120mm fan. Depending on the ambient temperature and system load, various voltages are applied to the fan.
This 120mm was selected over standard 80mm fans as we all know the bigger blades push just as much air as the smaller 80mm counterparts but at a much lower RPM and thus produce less noise.
Included in the S12 package is a single 4-pin molex connector that branches out to three fan outputs for your convenience.
A nifty little feature, one I've seen but not explicitly advertised, is the "Ultra Ventilation". Sea Sonic uses a honey comb structure that maximizes the area for air to travel through.
The S12-430 and above series supports a number of platforms: PC, IPC, server, and dual CPU systems. This is done through the addition of more connectors. Some people may object to this as it's merely more cables to hide. However, if you intend to move up to server or dual CPU configurations, you'll like this feature. It's an added bonus to the dual +12V rails and for the S12-500 and S12-600 models, the dual PCI-E power connectors.
The last three features are for your convenience. Sea Sonic provides a simple cable management system. They provide two split tubes, cable ties and a cable mount to hide the massive mess. In addition, a majority of the cables are twisted and zip tied to minimize clutter and improve airflow and EMI protection. The last little feature is the Easy Swap connectors for quick removal of the molex connectors.

Now that we've finally gone through all the features, let's move onto the actual power supply!

Page 5 : Package Contents

Once we open up the box, we immediately see the large 120mm fan grill, a thick bundle of cables and a plastic bag with tubing in it.

The content is quite simple.

You get your power supply, an installation guide, four screws, a 1" sticker, 18 AWG power cord, three external fan connectors and accessories for cable management.

The cable management set is composed of two split tubes of different thickness, a bundle of zip ties and a clip to hold the tubes inside your case.

The power supply itself is protected in bubble wrap; nothing fancy, just something to prevent any scratches during transport.

The black 120mm fan takes up most of the surface area on the bottom of the shell…fairly standard for 120mm power supplies.

The back end of the power supply shows the universal AC input with no switch to go between 115V and 230V.

We can see that the 120mm fan takes up about a third of the space inside the power supply!

A close up of the mesh shows the honeycomb design used by Sea Sonic.

A quick shot of the cables show that a majority of them are twisted, but not all of them.

Using a Philips screw driver, we're able to remove four screws that hold the chassis together and take a look at the interior of the power supply.

The aluminum heatsinks used by Sea Sonic aren't all that big, but what they lack in size they surely make up in surface area.

While some fins are only single layered, there is one row that has a double layer fin system.

Also gone are the large capacitors typically found in a power supply. Sea Sonic uses mutliple 2200 microfarad capacitors to filter the power to the rails.

The last thing to look at before closing up the power supply is to get the specifications of the fan. Here we have an ADDA AD1212LB-A73GL.

A quick search leads us to these results:

A fair bit of air for a very minimal amount of noise. It'll be interesting to see how this puppy performs as we put her into my machine.

Page 6 : Setup & Installation

There are a number of ways one could proceed with the S12-430 setup and installation. You could install the power supply into your system before using the cabling solution or you can wrap everything before installing the power supply. I went with the second option….

Using the two cables, I quickly wrapped up the power supply like the side of the box.

With the exception of the 4-pin auxiliary power connector, I left myself a fair bit of slack between the cables. Excess tubing can be easily cut off with a pair of scissors.

During my installation, I unwound the 4-pin auxiliary cable from the bundle until I had enough slack for it to reach the motherboard header.

With the cables all setup, all that's left is to remove your old power supply and install the new one. With the cable solution, the wires are all clumped together which minimize airflow restriction.

The EZ-connectors make installing and removing the 4-pin power connectors a breeze.

With everything in place, it's time to see how well the power supply holds up.

Page 7 : Performance

We'll start by listing system specifications:

The S12-430 is not rated for SLI machines. For SLI, a minimum of 500 Watts is required. As we have seen with the specifications, Sea Sonic does not consider this a SLI designed power supply as no SLI connectors are provided.
The system above should do a decent job at stressing the voltages. According to SiSoft, over 100 watts is pulled in by my overclocked Venice. While I've already had this power supply for a few weeks, the system has shown no signs of instability. The only way to confirm this is by getting some numbers. A digital multimeter with two digit precision will be utilized for our tests. The system will be placed under 100% load using folding @ home and RC5-72 for a period of six hours. Voltages will be read three times and averaged. The system will then shut down RC5-72 and F@H and left to idle for a period of six hours. Voltages will then be read three times and averaged.

Pretty sturdy voltages. No more than three percent variation in any of the rails.

Do to the layout of my system, the 120mm fan showed no thermal advantages over my Antec TrueBlue 2.0. However, the fan was very quiet and nearly impossible to hear over any other noise made by my system. I had to place my ear two inches above the grill before I could hear the fan, and only then was it a very shallow hum.

Page 8 : Conclusion

A power supply can't be judged in a review where it has to be published a few weeks after receiving the unit. The number of hours we run a power supply during the month is limited, and only makes up a small fraction of the life of the unit. A sturdy power supply is one where the voltages remain at the ideal values a year or two after making the initial purchase.

From our initial testing, we can see that the Sea Sonic S12-430 makes for a decent power supply. There's little change in voltages and the multimeter displayed little variation between the readings. Coupled with a number of unique features and cost saving high efficiency operation, this power supply will help you save money in the long run. The 3.3V rail runs slightly below specification when there's no load or when the power supply is being stressed. However, there were no signs of instability.

To many, the 430 Watts and non-SLI compatibility of this unit may not be enough. But for an added price, you can pick up higher end models. Sea Sonic has made a number of these power supplies, so it's just a matter of choosing one that fits your needs. While in existence for more than a quarter of a century, Sea Sonic has made quite the bang with this latest line. It'll be interesting to see how Sea Sonic tops themselves in the future.

Advantage

High efficiency (pays for itself through savings)
Quiet unit
Cable management system

Disadvantage

High initial cost
Hard to find

Overclockers Online would like to thank Sea Sonic for providing this sample for evaluation.