Lian Li Silent Force 650W PSU Review

Lian-Li are branching out into new territory; PSU’s. Time to put the fruits of their labour to the test…

Product on Review: Lian-Li Silent Force 650W PSU
Manufacturer: Lian-Li
Street Price: Approx £75

Lian Li are a name commonly associated with luxurious, high-end cases, often with excellent watercooling and modding capabilities. Today we’ll be looking at something completely different from the Taiwanese company, in the form of a PSU. This is a new direction for Lian Li – will they be able to carry over their reputation for producing extremely high quality products?

Today I’ll be taking a look at the Silent Force 650W unit, designed to power your PC quietly and efficiently. Here’s a quick intro courtesy of Lian-Li:

The ever increasing demand of power users for high-end products and outstanding performance has initiated Lian Li to announce a new series of Power Supply Units (PSU) called the “SILENT Force”. Building from Lian Li’s reputation as an enthusiast brand catering to the ultimate tastes, the product features a 135mm silent-bearing fan, modular cable management, and Japanese Main Capacitors to ensure that the quality and standards, as well as durability of Lian Li products is as outstanding as our customers expect.

And here’s a quick look at the features list for the Silent Force range of PSU’s:

1. SILENT Force complies with the newest Intel standard ATX 12V V2.3.
2. SILENT Force complies with the newest EPS 12V 2.91.
3. Environment friendly design for energy saving by Active PFC (>.9) / High efficiency (>80%).
4. Power Failure Detector with OVP/OCP/OLP/SCP/UVP/OTP.
5. Support multi-core CPU and Multi GPU/graphics cards system.
6. Support over-clocked CPU ,GPU, and RAM System hardware, best stability power output.
7. PCI-E connector with bead-core protection to minimized EMI for clean output.
8. Modular Cable Management.
9. Deliver FULL rated power output.
10. Universal Input, automatically adjusts for 100V to 240V power grids.
11. 135mm silent-bearing fan and Japan made main capacitors ensure best product reliability.
12. D connector for easy connector-removal.
13. External case coated with unique paint finishing.

The feature list doesn’t give away a lot about the units themselves, but is nevertheless rather impressive, with a whole host of technologies buried away inside the unit.

Today I will be looking at the smallest unit in the range – the 650w (for those who require a bit more juice there is also a 750W and 850W unit available). Here’s what the specification for the unit looks like:

• Model PS-S650GE
• Type ATX PS/2 & EPS
• Input Voltage 100-240Vac
• Input Current 115V /10A – 230V/6A
• Input Frequency Range 115V/50Hz – 230V/60Hz
• PFC (Power Factor Correction) ACTIVE PFC (>.99)
• Power Good Signal 100~500 ms
• Hold Up Time >17ms
• Efficiency >81% (85% max)
• Output Capacity 650W
• Max Output Capacity 700W
• Operation Temperature 0-40℃
• MTBF >100,000 hours
• Protection OVP / UVP/ OTP / OCP/ OLP/ OPP/ SCP
• Safety Nemko / TUV /cUL/ CE / BSMI / FCC
• Fan 130mm silent-bearing Silent Fan (max 2500RPM)

I think it’s about time we had a look at the PSU itself…

Packaging & Appearance

The PSU arrived in a refreshingly simple box, with all the content well laid out and easy to follow. The sides of the box give you various different bits of technical information, with the bottom of the box showing you the various connectors the PSU has on offer.

Included in the box we have the usual bundle: 4 mounting screws, a user guide, modular cable pouch, mains power cable and the PSU itself.

Opening up the cable pouch we can see Lian-Li have included pretty much everything you could possibly need. By utilising all the cables provided, there is the following connections available:

1x 24 pin Motherboard (Hard Wired)
1x 8 pin (P8) 12v CPU (Hard Wired)
1x 4 pin (P4) 12v CPU (Hard Wired)
1x 6 pin PCI-E
1x 8 pin PCI-E
4x 4 pin Molex
2x Floppy
6x SATA

And here’s a shot of all the modular power cables:

Taking a look at the PSU itself, you immediately notice the unique paint job Lian-Li have given it – it looks incredibly rough. Picking up and feeling the unit it doesn’t feel as rough as it looks, but it’s not smooth by any stretch of the imagination.

You can also see the 3 hard wired power cables; the 24 pin ATX connector and the 8 and 4 pin 12V CPU connectors. Although they are all sleeved, the sleeving is rather thin, which means the cables inside are easily visible. Considering Lian-Li’s reputation for building extremely high quality products this is a bit of a shame, and I would have preferred to have seen something a little more substantial.

A Closer Look

Apart from the minor niggle with the cable braid I was very impressed with the build quality of the PSU. Looking through the fan grill and into the PSU you can see a mass of copper heatsinks – no doubt helping to reduce the amount of airflow required to keep the PSU cool.

Even the fan grill is of extremely high quality:

The modular connections are nothing new, using a similar connector to the 6 pin PCI-E used for graphics cards. Each connector has a little clip on top that holds it in place. Pressing down on the rear of this clip frees up the connector for removal.

And finally, a shot of how the power is separated between the different rails.

With 25A on the 4 main rails (and a combined 50A of 12V juice through the two rails), the Lian-Li should have more than enough juice for any modest PC build. The PSU has a peak output of 700W, giving you an extra 50W of momentary juice should you need it.

Testing & Results

Although a PSU can’t drastically affect the performance of your pc, it’s still important to test them to ensure they reach a certain standard – known as the ATX spec. The ATX spec states that the PSU’s 3 rails must stay within 5% of their desired values. For instance, the 12V rail must be within 11.4V and 12.6V. The 12V rail is responsible for providing power to most of the devices in your pc, but its biggest drain is through PCI-E graphics cards and power hungry CPUs (through the 8 pin P8 connector). The 5V and 3.3V rails are becoming more old school, and have less uses within a pc – they mainly deal with hard disks and PCI add in cards.

Test System
Core 2 Duo E6600,
Nvidia 9600GT 1GB,
2GB Corsair DDR2 Ram,
6 hard disks.

During testing I also took the temperature of the air coming out the exhaust vents of the PSU, to see how well it dealt with the heat. Voltages were recorded using an external multimeter.

Unfortunately my test rig could only provide 200 Watts of strain to the PSU, but considering how effortlessly it dealt with this I’m confident it could easily cope with anything up to its 650W limit. The relatively small difference in idle and load voltages is especially encouraging.

My only minor niggle is that the 3V and 12V rails could be a little closer to their desired values, but it’s well within the ATX spec and nothing to really worry about. I would also like to add that throughout testing the PSU was extremely quiet, with only a low whoosh as air was sucked into the PSU.

Conclusion

When I first heard I would be reviewing a Lian-Li PSU I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Would Lian-Li be able to transfer their ability to produce extremely high quality products, or would it struggle to perform, being the company\’s first attempt in this new market?

Aesthetically the PSU itself is very pleasing, with a gorgeous and extremely unique paint job. The only let down in the aesthetic department was the braiding, which for a ‘normal’ PSU wouldn’t have been a problem, but from Lian-Li I was hoping for just a little more. Performance wise it was very solid, with all the voltages safely in check but nothing outstanding.
Available for around £75 online, the Lian-Li is pretty competitive on price, and one of the cheapest 650W PSU’s being produced by a reputable manufacturer.

Whilst I don’t feel the Lian-Li has any particularly outstanding aspects, it doesn’t have any negative ones either. Taking this into consideration, and looking at the price I think this PSU is a great buy and I’m happy to award it the Vortez Hardware Silver Award.

Pros
+ Unique external paint
+ Good range of connections
+ Quiet when in operation
+ All rails were well within the ATX spec
+ Superb value for money

Cons
– Cable braiding could be thicker
– 12V rail could\’ve been a little closer to its desired value