Power Supplies have been changing a lot in the past 2 or 3 years. At one time, there was little difference to distinguish one from another, but now we have differing colours, cooling configurations, LED lighting, some with fans and some without, some with modular cabling and some with standard fixed cabling; a very diverse item. Of course one thing that has continued to change is the power output. Gone are the days of the 250w PSU, and even a 500w PSU is a common item these days. When you consider the power draw of a HD 2900 XT, it's easy to see why a 600w, 700w even 800w is needed, especially if you're running crossfire or SLI.

While high power requirements might be more mainstream than they used to be, over 800w units, while more proliferate than many would think, are still quite few, mainly due to demand. 800W should be plenty for a normal high end rig. There are certainly many different units to choose from in this area, and we have yet another in the labs today, the Xilence Power 800w. Somewhat uniquely, this unit features a single 135mm fan in the base for cooling, and promises quiet power, so let's see what it has to offer.

Specifications

The left side that in a traditional ATX case would face you has a badge which gives you the specifications of the unit. Personally, I would have preferred to have this on the top of the unit where for most end users it wouldn't be seen, however cases today often have different mounting areas for PSU's such as on the bottom of the case. This would then keep the top of the unit clean and bare where it would be seen in such an enclosure.

The rear features an all encompassing honeycomb grill which works so well on many PSU's. You can see that the interior is tightly packed. A single standard rocker switch and the power input socket are here.

The bottom of the Xilence 800w has a large 135mm fan in red which contrasts really well with the matt black aluminium of the rest of the case. The fan is kept behind a flush fit grill, also finished in matt black.

Moving onto the cabling, as we have seen in some previous pictures, everything is sleeved nicely in black. Starting with the PCIe cables, we have four cables here to allow for Quad SLI operation. Each connector is coloured red to match the cooling fan, and like the fan contrasts nicely with the sleeving and unit itself.

A P8 Connector or 4+4 12v Motherboard connector is featured on the Xilence, and as is becoming more common, it can be split to provide you with the older 4pin power only.

Likewise, the 24pin main motherboard connector can be split into a 20pin and 4pin plugs. Unlike all other PSU's I have seen, the split doesn't use a slider but instead simply pulls apart. It certainly is easier and prevents the connectors from sliding up inadvertently when trying to plug them in.

SATA is catered for by four standard SATA connectors and like every cable are also sleeved in black; two cables with two connectors on each. Standard 4pin Molex and floppy drive connectors are split across two separate cables, with three 4pin Molex and a FDD connector on each.

The final lead is a fan monitoring cable with the usual yellow and black wire for mounting in a standard fan power port on your motherboard.

To recap, that gives you 1x 20+4 Motherboard connector, 1x 4+4 12v Motherboard connector, 6x 6pin PCIe connectors, 4x SATA connectors, 6x 4pin Molex connectors, 2x FDD connectors and a single fan monitoring cable.

Overall, the unit isn't going to win many awards for it's looks, but the red and matt black theme provides a nice contrast. All the cables are sleeved and the pull apart split connectors are nice.

Testing

For load testing, as many devices as possible were attached to the unit and used all at once. In the case of the Hiper PSU, it is also capable of running 4 Graphics cards as is the Xilence 800w. I'd love to say I have a Quad SLI setup, but I don't so I had to do some creative and unusual testing. To aid in the load numbers, the PSU was also plugged into two other graphic cards running (each was 3dMark benchmarking to load the card) in other machines, hence the list below has 3 graphics cards. Also of note is that a PSU looses efficiency as it gets warmer, so the temperature was artificially raised by shutting down fans where applicable and using the houses central heating system.

Test Setup: AMD X2 3800+ (overclocked to 2380MHz), MSI K8N Diamond Plus, 2x Corsair 512 Pro, 2x 512 Corsair PC4000, HIS X1800GTO, ATI X1800XT AiW, Nvidia 7900GT, asetek Watercooling with 12v waterpump (6x 120mm fans), 2x Optical, 4x HDD's

Additional Devices: USB Mouse, USB Keyboard, USB Webcam (running in Messenger), Nexus Fan and Light controller (2x 120mm Fans, 1x 80mm Fan, 2x Cold Cathodes – all on and highest settings) USB powered Scanner (scanning), 12v Powered LCD, Floppy Drive (formatting), PCI TV Card (WinTV running).

A Multimeter was used to record the voltages.

From a sound and cooling perspective, the unit is pretty quiet, almost silent in operation. The fan is temperature controlled although I never once heard a difference in volume. Temperatures during testing were around what you would expect for a PSU; with a 37C interior case temperature, the Xilence 800w has an internal air temperature of 52C under load.

Final Words

The Xilence Gaming Edition 800w PSU appears to be a good unit, although it is overshadowed slightly by other units on the market. The Xilence is certainly well constructed, and the 135mm cooling fan is not something you see all that often.

The unit itself is matt black aluminium, and the cooling fan and connectors are in contrasting red, so while not the most attractive PSU going, it isn't a Plain Jane item. All the sleeving is black, and all the cables are sleeved, with the one exception being the single fan monitoring cable.

Not much is included with the Xilence Gaming Edition 800w, not even a manual, but you do get black matching mounting screws which if you have a black case will go nicely. You do get plenty of connectors, including four 6pin PCIe for SLI or Crossfire operation. The main board power connectors are split connectors supporting 20+4 and 4+4 respectively.

Voltages were all within and above specification, and no unusual fluctuations were seen during testing, although the variance between idle and load was a little more than I expected from an 800w PSU.

I keep saying nice a lot during this review, and that's because the Xilence Gaming Edition 800w is exactly that; nice. It doesn't however stand out from the crowd, but it does carry a nice (there's that word again) price tag to balance this out. Aria.co.uk carry this PSU in the UK for £88, and I am told you can get the Xilence Gaming Edition 800w for £74.90 which for an 800w unit is not bad at all.

Hit us up in the Forums if you have any questions.

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