As far as the features of the power supply are concerned, let’s start by taking a look at the unit’s exterior. One of the first things I noticed about the Silencer 750 EPS12V was the positioning of the specifications sticker. This sticker is usually placed on the side of the unit that faces out of the case, a location I assume is meant for quick reference. I don’t really have a preference as far as the location of the sticker, and I can’t imagine anyone having a problem with it being on the top. I also noticed that the input voltage selection switch is missing. Power supplies have been shipping with automatic input voltage detection for quite a while now, but I still have a hard time getting used to the absence of that familiar red switch. Another thing I could see from the outside of the power supply was that it only has the one cooling fan in the rear. Although the premise for this cooling system seems solid on the surface - sucking air through the front, over the parts, and out the back – I have a hard time wrapping my brain around the fact that the intake vents on the front of the power supply are not exactly what I would call optimally designed. The intake vents on power supplies with similar cooling schemes - the Antec Neo HE 550 for instance - are much more open areas that allow for far greater airflow. This is not to say that the cooling system on the Silencer 750 EPS12V is inadequate, but it seems as though it could have been designed better.


The final thing to note about the outside of the Silencer 750 EPS12V is the traditional cabling system (not modular). We have no gripe with the traditional, hard-wired cabling system, but it is hard to discount the benefits of a modular design in regards to cable management. Nevertheless, every cable on the Silencer 750 EPS12V is professionally sleeved to keep the individual cables from getting out of hand and blocking airflow throughout the case. This leads us to our next features category, connectors.

Connectors
The Silencer 750 EPS12V, as the name suggests, is fully compliant with the EPS12V specification. This is a relatively new spec that is becoming more and more common on high-end motherboards. Certain Intel-based motherboards on the market today REQUIRE the use of an EPS12V compliant power supply and will not boot with the standard 4-pin 12V cable OR the 4-to-8-pin adapter cable that is available. As a result, owners of the Silencer 750 EPS12V power supply will not have to worry about being able to run the latest hardware platforms in their system. In addition to the EPS12V 8-pin cable, the Silencer 750 comes with a native 24-pin motherboard connector. Virtually every production motherboard these days incorporates the 24-pin motherboard power connector, with a handful using the antiquated 20-pin connector. Users with older motherboards will have to purchase a 24 to 20-pin adapter separately, as this part is not included with the Silencer 750. For users without the need for EPS12V compliance, the Silencer 750 also includes the traditional 4-pin 12V processor connector that is used on the vast majority of today’s motherboards.


Being SLI ready, the Silencer 750 also obviously has two PCI-e connectors. This is enough for even Quad-SLI setups, where the 7950 GX2 cards have just the one PCI-e power connector. I do, however, forsee a problem with the Silencer 750 in the not-too-distant future. NVIDIA’s next generation graphics card, the G80 (8800 GTX), is a card of monstrous proportions (in every sense of the word, trust me), and requires two, yes two, PCI-e power connectors by itself. Should a performance-hungry gamer wish to run two of these cards in SLI mode they would have to utilize two molex-to-PCI-e adapters. These cables are not only hard to come by, but they greatly reduce the expandability of the system by eliminating 4 whole molex connectors. The Silencer 750 also includes 6 SATA power connectors, which, by my calculations, would allow a nice 4 TB RAID array powered by SATA connectors alone (SATA hard drives can be powered by molex connectors as well). One thing I was surprised to see with this power supply was the inclusion of an auxiliary power connector for a floppy drive. These connectors are rather uncommon today, as floppy drives have only a couple of minor applications that keep them from becoming obsolete.