PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III 750W PSU - Testing the 750W Mk III

Testing - 5W, 360W & 742W:

We initially plugged the PSU into an EZ PSU Tester 3 in order to power it on for our "idle" measurements.  As noticed below, the voltage rails were fairly stable with no load, but these aren't necessarily indicative of overall load performance.  According to our Kill-a-Watt, the power draw was 5W.  We thought these results would be interesting to include and compare with other power supplies to see how they manage a non-load situation, and how much power the PSU itself will draw.

This is the second PC Power & Cooling PSU that I've looked at and after the first unit, my expectations were pretty high.  This PSU is not really cheap when compared to other 1kW units - so hopefully we are getting a little more quality with this unit.  Based on the price-per-watt, I expect this PSU to be pretty impressive in terms of stability and low electrical noise as it is a premium product.  As you can see by clicking the images above (taken at full load), we captured 12mV ripple & noise measurement on the 3.3v rail, up to 22mV on the 5v rail and 66mv on the +12v line.  This is nice and clean power as ATX specifications state 50mv is allowable on the 3.3v and 5.0v rails while 120mv is acceptable on the 12v rails.  Even with a really heavy load the Silencer Mk III 750W PSU stayed well within specifications on the rails.  In fact, other than the +12v rail - the rest of the system stayed at about half of the maximum allowable ripple.  This is excellent.  The +12v line was the "noisiest" at 66mV noise when under a 742W load.  That being said, we were really pushing this PSU as we've done a little tweaking to PSU Test Platform. 

It's interesting to see that the ripple and noise measurement peaks at the mid-range 360W load here.  Still it's within specifications on all of these rails and there is no issues at all.  The Silencer Mk III 750W PSU was rock solid through testing.

Conclusion:

PC Power & Cooling has been around for quite a while and they certainly are no stranger to the Power Supply arena.  They have proved this by their longevity and by continuing to put out products that are affordable, high quality and built to last.  The 750W Silencer Mk III is one of their products that shows they can perform well and do it in silence.  I love the dual-mode operation and I think that most users will use the silent mode as it still provides excellent performance, automatic cooling and does this seamlessly and effectively.  The PSU remained literally silent throughout most of the testing as the fan remained off for all but the heaviest loads.  During this process, the main voltage lines were very stable, emitted very low electrical noise and showed that the Silencer Mk III is a high-quality unit.  With our original Silencer review, the -12v line dropped a lot under load, but the Mk III has addressed this issue.

Overall, I'm very impressed with the PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III 750W PSU.  It does exactly what they claim and it does it quietly and is stable.  The modular connectors are nifty and while they don't offer a lot of value, they do offer a good amount of curb appeal.  I'm a fan.  If you need a new PSU and have $130 (at time of publication), the Mk III series from PC Power & Cooling is a great choice.  Even if you have multiple video cards on a fast Core i7 system, this PSU has enough power to deliver in most situations.

Pros:

• Low electrical noise at full load
• Rated conservatively when analyzing specifications
• Lots of SATA connectors and supports dual-GPUs
• Remains silent at 50% load (or more)
• Great performance

Cons:

• A bit pricey for a 750W unit
• Only four standard Molex connectors

I'd like to thank OCZ Technology for sending over this power supply for us to review.  It's nice to see that they addressed some of the weaknesses of the original silencer series.  If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post them at the link below.