I was planning to get a new PSU for my SG13 build to lower the weight, increase the breathing room for components and improve the airflow by reducing the cable clutter. I was trapped between two PSUs, the SX500-LG and the SX600-G, both from Silverstone. The former is a SFX-L unit and the latter is a SFX unit.
SFX or SFX-L?
Between the two, I chose the SFX-L unit because of its 120mm fan and the slightly cheaper price tag. The SX600-G comes with a 80mm fan and should be noisier and wouldn't be adequate for exhausting warm air inside the case. I'm not convinced the SX500-LG is either but it should be better in that regard.
New options unearthed
However, there was another brand as I found out, which was cheaper and probably better for airflow. It's the Scythe SPKRG-S500P. It appears to have the same OEM as the Silverstone SFX-L unit although there aren't any reviews of it. It would be about JPY4,000 cheaper which is significant and comes with meshed modular cables. Those cables aren't as pretty as the flat cables offered by Silverstone, however when it comes to the 24pin cable, meshed cable overs less of the airflow and that could be noticeable inside the SG13.
The Scythe SPKRG-S500P is not suitable after all
Unfortunately there was one problem with the meshed cables of the Scythe unit: they don't bend easily. The PCI-E cables are required to be bent right next to their connector which plugs into the video card if I want to install the hard drive bay in the front. This is because the MSI GTX 970 is a tall card. Even with the flat cables of my current 750W PSU, it is a tight fit. So I know the cables of the Scythe unit weren't up to the task. It's sad though.
There's another player in the Japanese local market?
Dirac, a Japanese company also makes SFX-L units whose OEM is the same as Silverstone's. But they come equipped with a 92mm fan and an end-user had written it as a loud unit in a review on Amazon, so I skipped it without much consideration. Besides, it wasn't much cheaper than the Silverstone unit.
So the SX500-LG it is.
When is the right time to buy it?
I wanted to wait for the prices to fall, but it could happen tomorrow or it could happen next year. It can actually go up instead, like most things in the last few months due to government policies. So it was better to buy it now.
Which shop then?
I had some Rakuten points that were going to expire at the end of the month so I decided to buy from a store in Rakuten.
COVER SPOT, the shop that I bought it, wasn't selling it at a cheap price, however for the first time I saw a store that were giving back 20% worth points. I had about the same amount of points, so basically I could buy it at 80% the displayed price which turned out to be JPY13,500. Mind you, it still was a hefty sum to pay for a PSU which could only help increase the air flow inside the case and lower the weight of the PC. I hope to recover most of it by selling the existing PSU.
There was a catch with this particular shop though. It is going to take up to 2 weeks for them to deliver the PSU. This is because they did not have stock of the PSU with them. Hopefully it will not take longer than that. I would be grateful if they deliver it by the next week because next week is summer vacation. I prefer to stay inside the apartment for the most part of it because of the heat outside.
The wait begins…
No comments:
Post a Comment