Seasonic FOCUS PLUS Platinum 550W PSU Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

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Seasonic FOCUS PLUS Platinum 550W PSU Review

Seasonic has turned into the go-to PSU supplier for those enthusiasts looking for the best when it comes to supplying long lasting quality power for their gaming rigs and workstations. We dip down a bit in terms of supplied power, this PSU being a "small" 550 watt unit. Will its high efficiency put us in the cool and quiet category as well?
 
I agree that $100 for a 550 watt power supply is a bit much - even if it is a Seasonic. I did a budget build a couple of months ago and picked up a cheaper 620 watt Seasonic PS for under $50. It is super quiet and has been super stable. Still, it only has a 5 year warranty, is not modular, and is 80+ bronze - so I guess you get what you pay for. Meanwhile, I have an SeaSonic X Series X-850 that I bought in 2013 and it is still going strong.
 
I am guessing the 550W platinum is there only for completeness, because the 650W, 750W and 850W versions are only a little more.
The 750W version seems to be the best value.
 
(Editor's Note: Seasonic is the only PSU retailer in North America that supplies HardOCP's review samples out of actual retail stock. The PSU reviewed here was shipped to us by a retailer out of the same stock that you would purchase from. No PSU manufacturers but Seasonic have stepped up to this challenge.)
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Totally awesome :) .

Nice review
 
[Gasp]
A SeaSonic that didn't get a Gold from HardOCP?

I don't believe it!
 
I wish they would sell a 500-550W with ~95% efficiency in the 50-150W range or the WHOLE range. And use a quiet 120mm fan. I don't use more than 200W, unless I'm running a demanding game or something. That's only a fraction of the time the computer is on. So, it would make more sense to be more efficient at lower power levels, for me. I got the Prime Titanium 650W last time. Overkill for me.
 
Poseur said:
I wish they would sell a 500-550W with ~95% efficiency in the 50-150W range or the WHOLE range. And use a quiet 120mm fan. I don't use more than 200W, unless I'm running a demanding game or something. That's only a fraction of the time the computer is on. So, it would make more sense to be more efficient at lower power levels, for me. I got the Prime Titanium 650W last time. Overkill for me.
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With current tech it would be prohibitively expensive of a project......not going to give a good ROI
 
Paul_Johnson said:
With current tech it would be prohibitively expensive of a project......not going to give a good ROI
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Yep.

This is why I always try to select PSU's as close to the actual max load of my system as possible, rather than select a PSU with "room to grow", as this utilizes th ePSU more efficiently. (The obvious exception is my desktop for which I bought a 1200W behemoth years ago, but it isn't on more than a few hours a day)

I have some systems that run 24/7 or close to it and I like to run efficiently. The good part is that they are generally fairly low power systems without gaming GPU's.

Because of this I've usually blocked off the internal PSU hole with a thick sheet of polyethylene and used a 60W PicoPSU kit with an external power brick, and 12V EPS adapter.

The efficiency distribution is pretty much the same as a bigger PSU, with the best efficiency being near the higher loads it can carry, but since it is so small, even at idle you are closer to that efficiency sweet spot than you are with a larger PSU.

You'd think that a 60W PSU wouldn't be enough, but I have found that a Haswell or better mid range CPU passes Prime95 (or Mprime) just fine at stock speeds with one SSD and two sticks of RAM installed, and even better, we are talking idle wattage in the single digits at the wall, at least under Linux/Unix (Windows seems to use more power at idle for some reason)

I have four of these in my house right now. One on my main Home Theater HTPC (Haswell i5-4570T, Geforce GT 1030), two in my bed room and guest room HTPC's (Haswell Celeron G1840, Geforce GT 720) and one in my pfSense Router (Kaby Lake i3-7100). They have all worked beautifully.

Paul_Johnson Have you guys ever considered reviewing one of these? They obviously wouldn't be well suited for a gaming rig, but they are great for little low power utility PC's.
 
Not a picoPSU per se but I did speak with Streacom a couple years ago about one of these http://www.streacom.com/products/zf240-fanless-240w-zeroflex-psu/ The hangup is that it needs the chassis as the heatsink as part of the design and it won't fit in the incubator (so I would need a much bigger incubator).

A Pico could be done but it would require a longer custom cable set that would affect the results we get. I'd actually need a smaller incubator to do them. When setting up the server rack with all the test equipment I sort of optimized it around ATX/EPS formfactor units. SFX and TFX units require tearing it all down and rearranging everything to get the cables to reach. It adds about two hours to testing....and I always manage to cut my damn hands on big blue.
 
FlawleZ said:
"Turned into" ? I though Seasonic had long been a quality name in PSUs.
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Yeah, Seasonic is one of the few brands I usually trust across the board. Enermax is another.

I generslly don't trust any of the "gaming" brands lile Corsair or Evga, etc. As they are all rebranded products made by someone else.

Sometimes they rebrand good PSU's, sometimes they rebrand garbage. Sometimes the good and the garbage are rebranded with the same final product names.
 
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