I'm very sure many of you already know the Silverstone brand. I'll just get right down to reviewing the monstrous Silverstone Olympia OP1000 1000watt PSU I received for review recently.










What you see here is the retail package. It comes in a humongous box, about the same size as a shoebox in fact. Very well packed and protected. There are some really thick foam blocks that keep the PSU sitting snugly in the box to prevent damage during transportation. I've also included a standard size 300W ATX PSU in the picture so you can see just how big the OP1000 is. The OP1000 is about 23cm long and the 300W Acbel is only 14cm long. The OP1000 is not just big, it's also very heavy. It's listed as 3.6kg! Make sure your case can fit this behemoth before buying it. Small cases will have issues with the top blowhole and also the top optical drive. There's some good news here for friends of the planet. The black paint used on the PSU case is lead free paint and the PSU itself also RoHS compliant.























The power cord on top is the OP1000 cord. The thinner cord is a normal PSU cord.



Here is the rear of the OP1000. It uses a single 80mm thermally controlled fan. Silverstone rates the fan noise as follows: 25dBA @ 300W or below, 30dBA @ 550W and 42dBA @ 1000W. From my trials, the fan can't be heard over the rig's system fans so it's nice n quiet. This is in stark contrast to some other 1000W PSUs which sound like a tornado. I think the OP1000 is quiet mainly because of the length and size of the PSU case. This reduces the cavitation caused by shorter cases hence the tornado levels of noise. I've heard about PC Power n Cooling lengthening the case on their 1000W PSU to overcome the noise issue as well. So the humongous size of the OP1000 is a plus point in terms of fan noise.

Take note of the weird design of the power connector. All 3 pins are horizontal. Normal PSU power connectors have vertical pins. It is most likely designed like that so we don't mistakenly plug in a normal PSU power cord. The OP1000 comes with a 15A plug n a much thicker power cord to handle all that power n current.























The OP1000 comes with a whole bunch of wires and they're not modular as can be seen in the picture above. Some of you may be disappointed about not getting modular plugs at this price point. I am not a fan of modular plugs though. I never liked the idea of more points for potential failures. The more plugs you have, the more chances of things going wrong. Most people who buy this level of PSU are buying purely for performance rather than looks anyway.

The OP1000 comes with the following plugs: 1x 4pin n 2x 8pin CPU plugs, 4x 6pin PCIe plugs(for 8800GTX SLi), 2x 8pin PCIe 2.0 (for the upcoming graphics cards), 20+4 pin ATX plug, 6x SATA plugs, 6x molex plugs and 2x floppy plugs. Take note that the OP1000 is only semi sleeved. The sleeves only go up to the 1st plug of the SATA and molex plugs. I would have preferred it if Silverstone sleeved it all the way. I sleeved the remainder of the SATA n molex wires on my own to make it nicer. Those of us who are not modders wouldn't dare to open up the SATA n molex plugs for sleeving so that's a minus point there.





















For those who are still concerned about how all those wires will look in the rig, have a look at my rig with the OP1000 in it. Not bad eh? With a bit of proper wire management, you can always achieve a nice clean look. Having a huge bunch of wires doesn't have to mean a messy looking rig. It just needs a little bit of effort.

This post has been edited by ianho: Apr 5 2007, 07:08 PM

Chart taken from Silverstone's website.






Pictures of my desktop running all the programs for torture test.









Specifications of test rig.

Coolermaster GeminII HSF
AMD X2 4200+. OC to 2.7Ghz @ 1.6V
Asus A8N32SLi Deluxe Motherboard
2x 8800GTX in SLI config. OC to 650/2100
2x1gb Team Xtreem Cronus OC to 490mhz @ 2.9V
150Gb Western Digital Raptor
250Gb Western Digital Caviar
Panasonic SATA DVD drive
6x 120mm Vizo 1800rpm fans
2x 90mm Silverstone fans
4 tubes of CCFL lights




Real world performance

Let's move on to the real world performance now. The above spec sheet is the system I used to test the OP1000. I ran dual instances of Prime 95, Bit Torrent, MSN, 6 pages of Internet Explorer and Disk Defragmenter while playing Counter Strike Source at 2560x1600 and maximum graphics options on. Just take a look at the screenshot of my desktop in the picture above, look at the sheer amount of programs running!

Take a look at the Everest console and you can see the voltages were rock solid while doing all that. The voltages didn't drop at all. The 12V rail stayed at 12.35V, the 3.3V rail stayed at 3.39V n the 5V rail stayed at 5.13. Even when they fluctuated, the fluctuations were extremely small. The fluctuations I noticed were only 0.01-0.03V for all 3 rails.



Conclusion

This is a very powerful and stable PSU. I don't think we can ask for anything more from it. It's nice and quiet, rock solid stable and it doesn't get hot at the maximum load I could throw at it. I can safely say this PSU will last a pretty long time as it even includes plugs for future standards. Also bear in mind I fully loaded up a highly overvolted n overclocked high spec system with a whole bunch of fans and lights. The OP1000 handled the abuse I gave it and yet it wasn't anywhere near it's limits yet. The Silverstone Olympia OP1000W PSU get's a big thumbs up from me.



Edit: I forgot to mention about the Nvidia SLI certification issue regarding the OP1000. Some of you may be wondering how come a PSU at this price point n level is not SLI certified. Well, PSUs can only be certified for either ATi Crossfire or Nvidia SLI. ATI is Silverstone's partner and that's why it's certified by ATI for Crossfire.

This post has been edited by ianho: Apr 6 2007, 10:23 PM

finally..., i can't wait for this OP1000 powering up my system soon...

anyway...
if you guys wanna grab Silverstone 1000W PSU with modular design, you can check Decathlon series, the spec almost same as Olympia 1000, it's just modular and non-modular...

in terms of +12V current, this is the strongest current on single rail i ever seen, >80A; 88A (peak) .

This post has been edited by sniper69: Apr 5 2007, 07:31 PM

Can send to me for megatesting with ultraloads and signal analysis kah Very curious about this PSU!

its a great PSU eventhough silverstone is new to this scene (high performance, high wattage PSU)

silent as hell, too, was running it on a nekkid system and the only thing that was drowned the whole system with noise was the raptor X i was using.

too bad some cases have difficulty housing this beast, and you'll really need to hide the ample length cables.

i have to agree with you, the silent of this PSU, not this PSU actually, even Zeus series (mine ST56ZF), compared to Enermax's FMA 80mm fan and this Silverstone ZF 80mm fan, Silverstone more silent

i wonder whether the 8pin pcie connector is correct? if i'm not mistaken, if it's rev 1.0 then the 8pin pcie for R600 is incorrect while OP/DA psu rev 1.1 has the correct one. it's not mentioned in you review though. i would really like to know whether the rev for this psu in m'sia is 1.0 or 1.1, thanks.

It's 8pin PCIe 2.0. That shud be right for the R600.

Nice PSU you have,it only fluctuates so little.Really a powerful PSU.But i think even an 8800GTX SLI + your system will only consume about 700w max ?

for those who want to know, it powered an E6600 @ 3.4GHz, 8800GTX SLI, 2GB DDR2 800 and a raptor + dvd rom @ full load. come to think about it, the power calculator said the rig needed 1.2Kw

is this the one?

http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showpost.p...192&postcount=1

Ya I think a 700Watter shud be enuf but not for a highly overclocked system with everything overvolted n overclocked. I wudn even dare to try OCing my rig if I had to use anything less than this OP1000.



@ Sanko. According to the jonnyguru pics, I have the wrong plugs. No big deal. I'm sure they'll send me the correct plugs soon.

, just take note guys, v1.1 is the correct 8-pin PCI-e, thus no need to get an adapter

the picture from JonnyGuru


the right one is the correct 8-pin PCI-e connector (D-Shape), look at the bottom red-rounded, D-Shape and non-D-Shape

80A on 12V is just insane!

Updated 1st post on why the OP1000 is not Nvidia SLI certified.

...and this is mean, it's ATi Certified? nice

anyway...i thought at 1st, its 2nd post

Ya, it's ATi Crossfire certified.

wow , got a nice PSU there~

been eyeing this PSU for a while now. almost saved enough money to get one

WOW! It RM 1200 @ HERE