Silverstone Nightjar 520W Passive Power Supply Review

Efficiency, PFC and Voltage Regulation

Voltage Regulation

To test voltage regulation we load the power supply to five different load scenarios that give an equal spread of load across every single rail. So that means 20% on all rails, 40% on all rails and so on. We then calculate the average deviance of each rail from its expected voltage.

Voltage regulation is like any other Seasonic Platinum power supply: exceptional. The less than 2% variation is easily met here. Note we spread 80% and 100% load over an additional 12 volt rail on the load tester to account for the fact our power supply could not fit all the 12 volt amps on a single module.

Power Efficiency

Power efficiency is measured by calculating actual supplied wattage divided by the wattage drawn at the wall/plug, multiplied by 100 to give a percentage. We then compare that to the particular 80 Plus certification the company claims to see if it meets that. You can see the 80 Plus certifications below, we always test 230v power supplies.

Efficiency meets 80 Plus Platinum certification and is higher at 20/100% than required: this is a super efficient unit.

Power Factor Correction

Power Factor Correction is the ratio of the real power flowing to the load, to the apparent power in the circuit. The aim of PFC is to make the load circuitry that is power factor corrected appear purely resistive (apparent power equal to real power). In this case, the voltage and current are in phase and the reactive power consumption is zero. The closer the number to one the better as this allows the most efficient delivery of electrical power (Source – Wikipedia).

PFC didn’t meet Silverstone’s specification claim of greater than 0.99 at full load but it is within margin of error, in my opinion. PFC is still strong although a little lower than I would like at 20/40% load scenarios. We did retest to validate if these results were correct and even after extended retesting our Sunmoon returned the same results.