900W to 1100W PSU Group Test

Seasonic X-900 SS-900HP Active PFC T3

Manufacturer: Seasonic
Price as reviewed (UK): £152.73 (inc. VAT - RRP)
Availability: Next few weeks

Seasonic is a hugely popular brand in the online community, renowned for their very quiet, yet very capable PSUs and at least one member of our own staff swears by them exclusively. It's X-900 is the most powerful PSU Seasonic make, despite being the lowest wattage of this group test.

The box is just like many others we've also tested in that it's a plain cardboard box with flip top. The packaging is very minimal, with simply the name and picture of the PSU on the front and a couple of details about it's performance on the side and in four languages on the back. There's no instruction on the cables included, their lengths or any other specific details other than the rail power ratings.

Internally there's more cardboard separation and protection, as well as bubble wrap for the PSU itself. It makes it harder to get everything back in the box again, but also means that it's likely to arrive on your doorstep in one piece having not been bounced around inside.

Accessories

• Black power lead;
  
• Four reusable black cable ties;
  
• Case screws;
  
• Manual'
  
• "Powered by Seasonic" Case badge;
  
• Molex to two floppy plug adapter cable;
  
• Molex to three, 3pin fan plug adapter cable;

Some people prefer the reusable Velcro cable ties, some prefer the plastic type like those included here, but either way they're certainly useful and come in a discrete black colour. The power cable is your standard kettle lead with no cool braiding or extra EMI shielding. We like the separate included floppy adapter. Since very few products actually use that adapter any more it's better to include it as an optional extra rather than waste space on the PSU cabling itself or worry about not including it at all. The black and white multi language manual comes with information on the connectors and what rails supply each of them, as well as installation and troubleshooting guidelines and a reminder of the special features inside the Seasonic X-900 PSU.

Rarely do fans all sit around the same place in a case, and even rarer do you want them all at full speed all the time so even though we like idea of the Molex to three fan adapter provided, we don't actually find it that useful. It needs rheostats and separate adapters, but then again, separate adapters take up more Molex plugs so what do you do? A low profile pass through akin to the size of the SATA to Molex adapters in the BFG and Tagan? Nice idea, but one that still needs some work.