SilverStone Zeus ZM1350W PSU Review

1. Introduction2. SilverStone Zeus ZM1350W (Bundle/Cabling)3. SilverStone Zeus ZM1350W (External)4. SilverStone Zeus ZM1350W (Internal)5. SilverStone Zeus ZM1350W (Super High Res Gallery)6. Testing Methodology & Results7. Closing Thoughts8. View All Pages

The SilverStone Zeus ZM1350W is certainly a very capable power supply, delivering stable watts for the most demanding high end gaming system running 3 or more graphics cards. First impressions are positive, we love the finish on the surface as it seems almost indestructible, even with careless handling.

The cabling quality is excellent and the pure modular design will ensure that the unit will target those people wanting to build an expensive system with side windows and lighting. There are no hardwired cables so you can select perfectly what you want to deal with during the system build. That said, they could have made the main ATX cable a little longer however, especially when compared against competitor products.

Internally the power supply does raise a few concerns. The soldering is not at the same level as we would expect from the likes of Seasonic and we spotted a few naked wires. Not dangerous, but a little disappointing to see in a flagship product such as this.

Technically the unit is very strong, the Seventeam design delivers very strong ripple suppression and efficiency is also very good, peaking over 91 percent at around 50 percent load.

My biggest issue with this power supply is the noise. Including an 80mm fan with such a high output power supply is questionable and it has to spin fast when the unit is loaded above 650W. It is always audible, but it can get rather intrusive in the upper 40% of power output. Due to the shape of the chassis this is almost unavoidable, but it does drive home the point that bigger fans are always better.

This is certainly a power supply designed for a small audience, and on a technical level power regulation, noise suppression and efficiency are all excellent. It even coped extremely well with intensive cross loading test. If the noise levels weren't so high I would be more open to scoring the unit higher, but I did find it slightly difficult to deal with beside me for long periods of time.

I tested the power supply with two AMD HD7990's in Quad Crossfire, paired up with an overclocked, liquid cooled Core i7 3960X @ 4.8ghz and 16GB of 2,400mhz memory. With 5 hard drives and 2 Solid State Drives it was handling 900W of power under load without a hitch. The 12V+ rail is immensely strong and I am positive it will cope with anything you could throw at it. If only I could dial the fan noise down a little!

In the United Kingdom today, you can pick this up from Scan for £256.72 inc vat. It faces stiff competition from the likes of the Seasonic Platinum 1000W Modular (£195) and the Corsair AX1200i (£260), both of which are comparable technically and much quieter. Unless you need a design specifically to fit into a high end server based system chassis, there are a handful of quieter alternatives.

Pros:

• we love the external finish.
• plenty of cables, all of which are high quality.
• great ripple suppression.
• load regulation is tight.

Cons:

• Build quality internally is a little sloppy in places.
• very loud under load.
• some cables are a bit short.

Kitguru says: Technically a very proficient power supply, but be prepared to deal with fan noise.

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