Introduction

We would like to thank Super Flower for supplying the review sample.

It seems Super Flower is waging war against their competitors, since they simply don't stop releasing Platinum units which cover all market segments, from mainstream to high-end. In difficult times like these it's nice to see companies releasing affordable products which address budget oriented users who however still want top efficiency and good performance along with reliability of course. Only some months ago Platinum efficiency units, of any capacity, were priced too high going over budget for most. Thankfully, this trend is starting to fade away and in the last reviews we have seen highly affordable Platinum PSUs with great performance (e.g. the Kingwin Absolute Platinum 550W we tested last month).

Today we will review the smallest member of Super Flower's Golden King series. As a side note, most likely you will agree with us that this series doesn't have the optimum name since all of its seven members are 80 Plus Platinum certified. Back to our subject, the model number of the small King with 500W capacity is SF-500P14PE. Like all of its bigger brothers besides high efficiency this unit promises ultra-quiet operation, since at lower internal temperatures it goes fanless. If you still want to see the fan spinning at all temperatures you can toggle the thermal control switch. Unfortunately to cut the production cost, thus lower its price, Super Flower didn't use a modular cabling system for the SF-500P14PE. We know that most of you will be disappointed since modular cables are very practical but unfortunately add significant cost, so they are the the first to go when a manufacturer wants to reduce production cost.

Specifications

Efficiency is Platinum of course, the cooling fan is equipped with ball bearings for extended lifetime and the dimensions of the unit are quite large for its mere 500W. The available protections are restricted to only three since even OCP (Over Current Protection) is missing. Finally the warranty period is restricted to three years (the minimum allowed for products sold in the EU is two years), but the price looks good for what this PSU has to offer. After all, Platinum efficiency doesn't come cheap, even for non modular units.


The total power output is restricted to 500W but the single +12V rail can deliver almost the full unit's power, something that greatly enhances usability especially in today's systems which heavily utilize this rail. The minor rails can deliver only up to 100W combined, but this won't pose any problems since these rails are lightly used and mostly from peripheral devices with low power needs.

Cables & Connectors, Power Distribution

Despite the small capacity, the SF-500P14PE is equipped with a significant number of connectors including four PCIe ones so it can feed up to two VGAs, something rare for its power rating. The length of all cables is adequate and the distance among all connectors is optimal, at 150mm. Finally all connectors use 18AWG wires, the recommended gauge size by ATX spec.

Since this PSU features a single +12V rail we do not have anything to comment about its power distribution.

Packaging

The small box utilizes a nice, vivid colored, design with the typical butterfly figure on the front left side. In the front bottom side we find a row of badges describing Platinum efficiency, Active PFC, the patent plug design (not applicable to this unit since it has only fixed cables), the two ball-bearing fan, the ErP Lot 6 compliance and finally the exclusive use of Japan made caps. On the rear, as usual, more details are given including the unit's specifications, a reference to the 80 Plus organization and a description of the Eco Intelligent Thermal Control System. The latter is a system which allows the PSU to go fanless until the internal temperature reaches a specific threshold. Also there is the option for normal operation (the fan working constantly at temperature controlled speed). Finally on the top side of the box a description of the unit's features is given along with an interesting reference to the electronic components used.