Introduction

We would like to thank Seasonic for supplying the review sample.



Seasonic recently released a Snow Silent version of their Platinum PSU offering with 1050 W capacity. It not only looks nice, but promises to be significantly quieter at high loads because of the new FDB fan. So far, all Seasonic PSUs we have tested did extremely well in terms of performance; however, they were pretty noisy, especially under tough conditions. The main culprits here are Seasonic's aggressive fan profile for all their high capacity units and the 120 mm fan as opposed to the larger 140 mm fan the competition uses. Seasonic's argument is that a 120 mm fan focuses air in one particular direction more effectively than a larger diameter fan, but we know for a fact that the latter can provide more airflow at lower speeds, which results in less noise output. Such highly efficient PSUs also don't need airflow to be as tightly focused for their secondary side where most hot parts are located, so Seasonic should also try using a 140 mm fan instead. While it might increase cost, it would definitely make their units more attractive to those looking for a quiet PSU.



The snow white, as we like to call it, version of Seasonic's XP3 platform will match a white case beautifully. Even nowadays, white-coloured PSU are very few, so Seasonic did well, and the color also sets this low-noise version apart from the plain one. However, we will be in a position to say whether snow white is silent enough for those of us who are picky about how much noise a unit produces once we have the noise test results. The question at hand is whether it is only a quieter version of the rather noisy Seasonic 1050 W Platinum unit. We can be sure that it'll perform beautifully, though, because it uses the same platform as the Platinum unit with a few minor component changes.