Seasonic X-Series 400W Fanless Passive Power Supply Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,369 words · ~6 min read
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this is a very cool product this is uh I believe the second fanless power supply
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that I have unboxed but what's really special about this one is the fact that
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it achieves its fanless design not by
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the use of extremely heavy heat sinks but rather through incredible efficiency
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so this is a 400 wat unit from seic and it is 80 plus gold certified we're
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starting to see more and more 80 plus gold certified power supplies but this
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is the first one that uses that incredible efficiency now remember
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efficiency means how much power it can produce versus how much excess random
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heat that it outputs so it uses that efficiency to Output so little heat that
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it can just run without a fan at all so
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you can see here we have a summary of the connectors oh this is also really
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cool single 12vt 33 amp rail so this is
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a single rail design 80 plus gold
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fanless power supply let's have a look at the back here so seic has a uh a
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slightly different design for the output
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uh okay you know what I'll just let you look at the diagram because I haven't
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really studied it ahead ahead of time but uh basically what they're able to do
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is by keeping the amperages lower within the power supply overall they're able to
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lose less efficiency that way so they have high current goldplated terminals I
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guess we can start the unboxing Now High reliability 105 degree grade A
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capacitors conductive okay so solid
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solid capacitors and a fiveyear warranty
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on this unit it is fanless 0
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DB so this would be great for a media PC
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for uh you know what this would be great for almost any PC because the reality of
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it is if you're running uh a single graphics card like single PCI E six pin
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or8 pin connector and you're running like almost any almost any CPU on market
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like if you just need a computer with like good CPU lots of RAM you throw an
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SSD in there a hard drive in there and you don't need like uh a high-end video
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card or anything like that this is like perfect because you can just have
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perfect silence for your power supply and 400 watts really is enough for
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almost any PC unless you start throwing like overclocking and high-end graphics
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cards into the mix so for okay and only
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should operate in a well-designed system chassis that provides good ventilation
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for modern computer components so you don't want to throw this in a sealed box
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is basically what they're saying you need to use a proper case that has uh
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probably at least one fan in it to provide some incidental air flow to your
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power supply so here's a summary of some of the extra features wow special
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features gets all of two pages in this in this manual out of eight in English
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so go ahead and pause the video and read through that if you so desire uh here we
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are a little bit more about it their whole X Series so it goes all the way
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from 400 watt for fanless units all the
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way up to 12200 WTS just
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incredible okay let me see warranty and disclaimer some safety notes very nice
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is this a modular power supply too oh look at that it's modular Okay cool so
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why don't we have a quick look here at what we get in terms of
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accessories some seasonic cable ties very nice we get some uh some zip ties
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and then we get a nice little uh seic sticker powered by
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seic all right let's have a look at the power supply first for a change I
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normally look at the cables first but we're going to do it the other way around o nice sticker it's a very nice
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sticker feels like quality okay so I actually don't have my tripod propped
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against me today so um maybe I'll just pause the video for a sec all right as
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soon as we take the power supply out of the satiny sleeve that it comes packed
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in we see a sticker on top that says install with the ventilation top cover
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facing up and please remove this label before use so let's go around to the
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side where we also have some more ventilation here at the front we have
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the modular interface we're going to go ahead and remove that label on the other
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side we have some more ventilation holes so I guess presumably the way this works
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is simply via convection so as components in here heat up the heat gets
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uh exhausted out here just because of the simple fact that heat does rise and
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then seic has strategically plac placed the intake holes which are presumably at
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the back and here along the sides so and
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the front so that the air comes in cools the most critical components first and
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then once it's heated Rises out the top of the power supply so it's very cool
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looking you know it's not nearly as heavy as uh as the other fanless power
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supply that I had a look at which is kind of uh kind of refreshing in some
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ways because it means that your system doesn't already weigh as much as a like
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wheelbarrow full of brick before you even start putting other components in
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it so there's the full specs there I think we already showed this on the side
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and you can see even at the bottom of the unit there are a few ventilation holes so these are likely strategically
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placed so they can get a little bit of air flow to some critical component that
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needs to get a little bit of cooling done so let's have a look at the modular
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cables that are included with the uh X
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Series 400 W fanless power
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supply okay I might have to pause CL again here
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actually here I'll just get someone else to hold the camera uh Rumble can you hold the camera for me thanks
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bu all right so inside here we will
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find uh okay one modular to two four to
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four plus 4 pin power connector so that's either a four pin or an eight pin
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depending on what your motherboard requires then we have a PCI Express 6
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plus2 pin as well as a 24 pin power for
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your mother motherboard in the next bag
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in the handy dandy cable holding bag we
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have oh okay we've also got a power cord for the back of the
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unit and then in here we will find SATA and Molex
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cables okay so we got one single Molex Conn no two Molex
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connectors and then we have uh you know what let's just here let's
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just crack this open here so I can
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clearly see what I'm
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doing all right what do we have so this one has two
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SATA this one has this is a Molex to two
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floppy adapter so you can use that if you still require one of those
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connectors we have a a triple SATA connector and then we have a three Mox
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and a two MOX so that's all the modular cables now I'm just going to check
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really quickly if you can actually plug in all modular cables at the same time
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time and it looks like you cannot so you're going to have to decide uh which
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which three of these four connectors you
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are going to want to plug in so you can either have uh five SATA and three Molex
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or five Molex and three SATA so thank you for checking out my unboxing of the
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cic X Series 400 wat 80 plus gold power
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supply and I love those gold heat sinks in there just a nice little accent