Features and Specifications
The first thing after manufacturer that everyone looks at when it comes to a PSU is total watts of output. The 610W continuous, 670W peak should be plenty for almost all of your rigs out there. Those of you SLi or CrossFire high end cards may need more than this, though I have seen SLI systems running on PSU's right around 600 watts.


The specs overall are pretty standard; this is a high efficiency power supply even though it really isn't featured. But at 83% it is up there with the "green" PSU's that should help cut down on excessive power use/waste. I know you Californians may really like that. As with the last Silencer we see this PSU only has one rail, which in the era of multiple rails is a bit odd. However, it also pushes 49 amps over that one rail, making the sole +12V rail able to push around 600W of power it self. What does that mean? It means it is a beast that should almost be able to power everything you can throw at a solo 12V rail. It also means when wiring up your system you don't have to worry about any kind of load balancing among the rails or a waste of power in any particular area - a plus in our book. Where as the NeoHe we will test this against uses three rails at 18A each giving that oh so tricky question if you are balancing your components accordingly.


The fan pushes upwards of 55CFM and peaks sound wise at 38dB(A). The speed and sound of course vary depending on the temperature of PSU. So a good cooled rig with adequate air movement and you may not even see, hear, or need these peak values out of the Silencer's fan. When compared to our NeoHe 550W the fan was just as, if not more quiet than the fan on the Antec. This was tested at full load and idle. So even though the Silencer 610 may be capable of pulling 60 watts more than the Antec, using it on the same system it holds up well audibly and it shouldn't have a noise factor that you should concern yourself with unless you are trying to build a silent rig.

Connectors
Connection wise PC Power & Coolings offering brings it all to the dinner table. Basically anything your stomach could desire you will find to feed your machine here, including even a 8 pin PCI-E connection which isn't all that common yet but could become the standard with NVIDIA's next high end parts as it already is with ATI's. Now if you wanted to run dual 2900XT's you would need to get a 6-8 pin PCI-E adapter as only one of the 6 pin connections has a adapter for 8 pins. Not a big issue however.


One of the keys to being sold as " NVIDIA SLI certified" is of course these dual 6 pin connections. This is a welcome improvement for those who like to dual-card-it-up and is slowly becoming a standard in power supplies. This of course prevents a need for a molex to PCI-E adapter to power a second card and frees up a molex connection in doing so.

Other cables to note are a are a 4 pin and a 8 pin 12 Volt. Thus regardless of your motherboard of choice you should have a native connection either way to power the 12V. 8 pin is becoming a slow standard but there are still a abundance of 4 pin 12V motherboard out there. With the Silencer you can be assured to cover all your bases. On top of that we have 6 SATA power cables to feed juice to all those hard drives of yours that store all your "music". Even the good ole' floppy connection sticks around though fewer and fewer people use them.

Our main issue with the connectors and cabling is the same one we had with the 750; they aren't modular. Now by no means is it a must have for everyone, but it's one of those "it's possible so we can't we have this nice feature" things. People who don't use SLI, or whom may not wish to hide all their extra molex or 12V connectors instead have to find a place in their PC to hide them, or they just take up space and become a eye sore. It's the main benefit the Antec NeoHe has over this, its modular cables. Some of us here are sticklers for cable management and being able to remove excess cables is a near necessity.