Bench Testing

To test the Seasonic S12 - 430 we put the power supply on the bench and used the 150 watt power supply load that Seasonic supplies to some of its reviewers along with it the very handy Power Angel.  These two unit work together to give you a very good overview of what's going on inside the power supply as far as has efficient it is, how much current it draws under load and so on.

We also used our Fluke Digital Volt Meter to measure the various voltages under load rather than depending on the inaccuracy of Motherboard Monitor or SpeedFan. It's really not so much that those two programs are not accurate, it's just that those programs don't work on this motherboard.

Here is what we found on the bench with the S12 - 430 hooked to the 150 watt load. The Seasonic makes use of Dual +12 Volt lines hence the reason you see two measurement for the 12 volt rail.  Overall I was very pleased with the numbers it turned in since I would prefer them slightly higher than normal since once the power supply becomes incorporated into your system the quality of the connections will begin to diminish the how well the voltages stand up under a high load.

System Testing

To test the S12 - 430 I first started SuperPi, SuperPi is a nifty little program that allows you that chance to find Pi to maximum of 32,000,000 digits if you so choose to do so.  I didn't go quite that far, I only went to 8,000,000 digits.

Next up Sisoft Sandra Burn-in Wizard, this program allows you to stress-test most major components on your systems as well as various other things such as memory, Multimedia, Network, and the likes.  We ran Burn-in Wizard for a total of 20 minutes and then took a screen shot to grab the temperatures since none of the current monitoring software seems to work properly with this board.

Let start on the second row and work our way to the right. The CPU core voltage is set in the BIOS at 1.40 volts so you can see that according to ABIT EQ 1.1.1.2 the voltage is right on the mark. Next up is the DDR voltage, I normally run my DDR2 voltage at 1.90 volts so it is just a speck shy of where it should be but nothing to even worry about.

Moving over to the 12 volt line we can see that it like the DDR voltage is well within spec and should not even be looked at.  North Bridge 2.5V, I screwed up on this one, I forgot to back this one down after overclocking the board earlier and and it is setting exactly at 2.60 Volts where I had sit it.  Now the 5V and 5V South Bridge are slightly high but neither one of them is anything to get to concerned about as a matter of fact I prefer them this way as opposed to seeing them that much on the other side of 5.  The same thing can be said for the 3.3 volt line, at 3.44 volts it's well within spec and is not a danger to anything and will offer you a little cushion should you add more fans our load the system down with further devices.

Conclusion

What's not to like about the Seasonic S12 - 430 power supply, it's efficient, has excellent voltage on all rails, is extremely quite and has a 3-year warranty.  I have so much faith in Seasonic power supplies that I make no bones about it when I say that of the 7 computers I have and use five of them have Seasonic power supplies in them.

I was always taught to buy things you believe in and can trust, I believe in Seasonic products because of the countless hours my computers have operated without one power supply failure and the fact that the voltages are just as good today as they were the day they were installed in each computer.  So if you want a power supply for your next system that you don't have to worry about or keep watching to see if the voltages are going up and down like the stock market, then just pick up a Seasonic S12 - 430 or any of the other great power supplies they offer, you won't regret your decision.

I want to thank Seasonic for providing us with this product to review.