Silverstone SFX Series ST45SF-G 450 W Review

Name: Silverstone SFX Series ST45SF-G 450 W
Brand: SilverStone

crmaris

on Oct 29th, 2012,

in Power Supplies.

Manufacturer: SilverStone

Performance Rating & Performance per Dollar »

Ripple Measurements

You will see the ripple levels that we measured on the main rails of the ST45SF-G in the following table. The limits are, according to the ATX specification, 120 mV (+12V) and 50 mV (5V, 3.3V, and 5VSB).

Ripple Measurements Silverstone ST45SF-G
Test	12 V	5 V	3.3 V	5VSB	Pass/Fail
20% Load	36.3 mV	20.6 mV	14.2 mV	10.3 mV	Pass
40% Load	20.8 mV	23.6 mV	18.1 mV	12.3 mV	Pass
50% Load	21.7 mV	25.1 mV	19.9 mV	14.4 mV	Pass
60% Load	23.3 mV	30.2 mV	31.4 mV	16.1 mV	Pass
80% Load	34.0 mV	36.0 mV	31.2 mV	20.2 mV	Pass
100% Load	43.9 mV	42.7 mV	34.6 mV	24.9 mV	Pass
110% Load	49.2 mV	46.3 mV	38.1 mV	27.4 mV	Pass
Crossload 1	27.3 mV	35.6 mV	21.0 mV	14.1 mV	Pass
Crossload 2	39.0 mV	30.7 mV	30.4 mV	21.3 mV	Pass

Ripple suppression on the +12V rail is fairly good, but we expected better results on the minor rails. The 5V rail exceeds 40 mV at full load, which is dangerously close to the limit. We were hoping to see far better ripple suppression on the minor rails from such a modern platform. Space restrictions apparently didn't allow for more filtering capacitors, and the increase in heat under which we conducted our tests surely played its part. Nevertheless, Silverstone and Enhance should improve on this platform a little bit to lower the ripple on the secondary rails a notch.

Ripple at Full Load

In the following oscilloscope screenshots, you can see the AC ripple and noise that the main rails registered (+12V, 5V, 3.3V, and 5VSB). The bigger the fluctuations on the oscilloscope's screen, the bigger the ripple/noise. For all measurements, we set 0.01 V/Div (each vertical division/box equals to 0.01 V) as standard.