The last Power Supply I reviewed from Seasonic was a S12 600Watt model.

At first I was at a slight loss to understand why Seasonic sent me a lower powered unit when they have a X900 Watt unit but then I realized that most computers are supplied with a 350 – 450 watt power supplies and simply don't need the massive X900 model. When I looked at their web page they call it "the New Standard for Mid-Range Modular Power Supplies'

This unit has the same large cooling fan (120 mm) as the previous unit but it has modular cables. This means that you only need to plug in the cables that you require allowing for less cable clutter in your case and better air flow – cooling. It came with modular cables for any configuration that I could think of and then some.

There are plugs for present and future needs – There were numerous plugs for SATA drives, standard Molex plugs, an 8 pin plug that will be required for dual layered chips and 2- 6pin plugs for PCI-E video cards.  They even included a floppy adaptor – plugs into one of the Molex connectors – for those users that still have a floppy (I do) and may want to plug in another device that uses the floppy connector – eg.  a memory card reader. And lastly the power plug can be used on a 20 or 24 pin motherboard – allowing you change out your old power supply now but still be able to use it when you upgrade your motherboard. I tried it on an older 20 pin MB with a newer HD 2600 Pro AGP video card.

The other new feature of this unit was that it was rated at 80 PLUS, a new rating for efficiency, a requirement of new computers for large government installations. It also came with a 5 year warrantee instead of the older 3 year one.

When I last evaluated the 600 Watt unit  which I am now using – it replaced my 450 watt Enermax unit which wouldn't power up my computer then. Since I have gone up to 2-500gig hard drives, 4 cd-DVD reader-writers and an ATI HD2600 Pro which requires extra power due to the older AGP slot.

I thought I would revert back to the new 500 watt unit and see if it would power up. It did and didn't show any sign of "weakness". I even played 1 hour of Call of Duty 4 without a crash or lock-up.

Asus's probe program showed that the voltages were good and consistent.

I would highly recommend this power supply for an upgrade or if you are building your own computer.

In the spring I am looking forward to building a new computer for myself. It will have the new Quad core chip (130 watts), 2 ATI video cards, 2-750 gig hard drives, 7 fans, 2 DVD reader and writers – unless I get a Blu-Ray unit along with 4 gig of ram and other accessories. I would assume that I will need the 900 Watt power supply for that.  Just a hint – Seasonic.