Verdict: An affordable P50 for mid-range PCs.
SilverPower is one of the many brands operated by Nanopoint, which also owns Tagan and Seasonic. SilverPower products are aimed at the value-conscious low- and mid-range end of the PSU market.
Costing just under £60, the SP-600A2C is one of the cheapest branded 600W PSUs currently on sale. To keep down costs, SilverPower has opted not to use modular cables, so all the power leads are hardwired. These include two 6-pin PCI-E plugs, and 4-pin and 8-pin connectors for the CPU, plus the usual motherboard and S-ATA/Molex connectors. Although non-modular PSUs make it harder to build a tidy PC, the cables are braided together, so there are no irritating loose wires. Cooling is provided by a quiet 120mm blue LED fan.
Another reason for the low price is that the SP-600A2C has only two 12V rails. Each of these is rated to provide up to 22A, with 12V1 powering the PCI-E plugs, motherboard and S-ATA/Molex plugs, while 12V2 powers the CPU. This is sensible, as the most power-hungry components (the CPU and graphics cards) receive power from separate rails.
In our tests, the SP-600A2C performed admirably, proving to be 81 per cent efficient at full load, while drawing 739W from the mains. However, the output from the 5VSB rail dropped to 4.66V during the one-hour stress test, a fair way below the 4.75V stipulated by the ATX spec. This is the rail responsible for power when rousing the PC from sleep, so a power-hungry system might behave like a lazy, tax-dodging student with this PSU.
Conclusion
Although the SP-600A2C has a weak 5VSB rail, this shouldn't be a major problem unless your PC has tons of USB devices, or you insist on using sleep or hibernate modes with a dual-processor system. As such, thanks to its low price and quiet operation, the SP-600A2C is worth considering if you're building a PC on a tight budget.
