Silver Power Blue Lightning 600W
by Christoph Katzer on August 27, 2007 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
The Fan
The Silver Power Blue Lightning has a 120mm fan located in the middle of the power supply's bottom. The fan grille is recessed into the casing to help keep it out of the way. The logo does protrude slightly, but this shouldn't present any problems.
In a rather interesting design decision, the backside of the fan has a plastic cover over the top third that blocks airflow. This is apparently done in order to better direct airflow towards the areas of the power supply that require the most cooling. The plastic guard is located nearest the ventilation grille, so in essence more of the airflow will be directed deeper into the power supply.
Given the "Blue Lightning" name, you might imagine that the fan will have blue LEDs installed, and you would be correct. The power supply emits a constant blue light when operating, a feature which became quite popular several years ago, particularly within the budding mod scene. Some people still like such features, but like many fads the popularity has died down with the passage of time. A switch to turn the light off might have been a nice addition, though that would simply be an extra cost. If they had left the lighting off altogether, we certainly wouldn't have complained.
Cables and Connectors
All of the cables are sleeved from the casing through to the final connector. While this is certainly a nice feature that is often missing even on higher-end power supplies, taking such care and using some of the budget on the sleeving means that they could have potentially dropped the price even further without affecting the performance. Sleeving generally makes the most sense on longer cables, where the individual wires might get tangled in other components. Sleeving the small 10cm sections in between connectors isn't as important, but it can make the wiring look more attractive and some people will certainly appreciate it.
The Silver Power Blue Lightning includes six SATA and six Molex connectors, which should be more than sufficient for entry level systems all the way up to upper-midrange systems. It also includes two 6-pin PEG connectors and should be able to power moderate SLI and CrossFire configurations. The main ATX power connector is a 20+4 pin connector, so it can be used with older motherboards as well as the new 24-pin models. We're a little bit baffled as to why an 8-pin EPS connector is included, as we seriously doubt most users would consider using this budget power supply in any high-end system that would require such a connector, but at least the inclusion doesn't hurt.
The Silver Power Blue Lightning has a 120mm fan located in the middle of the power supply's bottom. The fan grille is recessed into the casing to help keep it out of the way. The logo does protrude slightly, but this shouldn't present any problems.
In a rather interesting design decision, the backside of the fan has a plastic cover over the top third that blocks airflow. This is apparently done in order to better direct airflow towards the areas of the power supply that require the most cooling. The plastic guard is located nearest the ventilation grille, so in essence more of the airflow will be directed deeper into the power supply.
Given the "Blue Lightning" name, you might imagine that the fan will have blue LEDs installed, and you would be correct. The power supply emits a constant blue light when operating, a feature which became quite popular several years ago, particularly within the budding mod scene. Some people still like such features, but like many fads the popularity has died down with the passage of time. A switch to turn the light off might have been a nice addition, though that would simply be an extra cost. If they had left the lighting off altogether, we certainly wouldn't have complained.
Cables and Connectors
All of the cables are sleeved from the casing through to the final connector. While this is certainly a nice feature that is often missing even on higher-end power supplies, taking such care and using some of the budget on the sleeving means that they could have potentially dropped the price even further without affecting the performance. Sleeving generally makes the most sense on longer cables, where the individual wires might get tangled in other components. Sleeving the small 10cm sections in between connectors isn't as important, but it can make the wiring look more attractive and some people will certainly appreciate it.
The Silver Power Blue Lightning includes six SATA and six Molex connectors, which should be more than sufficient for entry level systems all the way up to upper-midrange systems. It also includes two 6-pin PEG connectors and should be able to power moderate SLI and CrossFire configurations. The main ATX power connector is a 20+4 pin connector, so it can be used with older motherboards as well as the new 24-pin models. We're a little bit baffled as to why an 8-pin EPS connector is included, as we seriously doubt most users would consider using this budget power supply in any high-end system that would require such a connector, but at least the inclusion doesn't hurt.
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Per Hansson - Monday, August 27, 2007 - link
If you take a DMM and measure the power drop on the actual molex connectors, and not take the results directly from the Chroma how does it look then?I suspect you have an exponential increase in resistance which causes the Chroma to display incorrect voltage values... (Because of the cable length from the PSU's connectors and up to your load, including interface boards)
Sincerely - Per Hansson
MrOblivious - Monday, August 27, 2007 - link
Well that and if this really is a Solytech (Deer) it could just be a flaming hunk of crap.Per Hansson - Monday, August 27, 2007 - link
Yea, but the voltage resistance issue is something that has been the same for all PSU reviews here at AnandWhen you have this problem with all PSU's you need to realize there is something wrong with your testing equipment, sorry for being so blunt... (Especially since none of the other 2 big sites report the same)
And yes, some scope readings for this DEER PSU sure would have been interesting (just to make sure to beat the dead horse a bit more)
Christoph Katzer - Tuesday, August 28, 2007 - link
Strange though that the Zippy G1 has nearly the whole time close to to 12.0v. I have seen reports from the companies and they look similar (also the high efficiency) and thus I don't think the resistance will be a big issue.MrOblivious - Tuesday, August 28, 2007 - link
Are they using a Chroma as well for those test reports? Or are they reading directly at the connector without another interface like the spec calls for?Christoph Katzer - Tuesday, August 28, 2007 - link
"Every" company in Taiwan uses Chroma for their own evaluations.Per Hansson - Tuesday, August 28, 2007 - link
Christoph Katzer; The issue is of course not that you are using the Croma, it's a great unit; however, the way you use it will most likely result in incorrect voltage readingsDue to the fact that the resistance in the cables loading the unit will most likely result in a exponential increase in resistance, therefore the results shown by the Chroma will be incorrect, and more incorrect as the load increases and the resistance exponentially increases...
Just putting a multimeter on an unloaded Molex connector, or, directly on the molex connector you are loading (and not further down where the chroma reads the voltage) would quickly prove or disprove my theory
mindless1 - Thursday, August 30, 2007 - link
You are correct, that a high enough current on too low a wire gauge does cause significant voltage drop, I have observed it many times myself particularly with some of the poorer PSU using 12V connectors with less than 18 ga. wires.However, similarly we can't just take the reading from an unused molex connector instead, as a PSU is spec'd to provide it's voltages at the load through the existing wiring harness. It is not necessary to try to evenly distribute that load across all the wire pairs in that harness as that is a practically impossible scenario for implementation running a system, so a bit of a derating factor is needed to appoximate the typical expected loads. IMO, a good start would be loading each supply wire at about 6A (not counting ground returns) up until the rating per rail is met, leaving some supply wires per rail unused when (sum of rail wires * 6A) > rated current per rail. Obviously some connectors and leads are more robust and necessary than others, for example a floppy connector should just be ignored while the 2 x n 12V CPU connector should always be used.
mindless1 - Thursday, August 30, 2007 - link
I meant, high enough current on too high, too small a wire gauge.JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 28, 2007 - link
But wouldn't regular PC components drawing power from a PSU result in the same sort of increase in resistance? (Note: I'm not at all an electrician, so I could be wrong. Just asking a question.)