It’s not often you come across a power supply worth getting excited about, but this might
be one.
Howdy howdy guys ponchato here, and today we’ll be taking a look at the new Focus
Plus series of power supplies from Seasonic.
The specific model Seasonic sent me here is the Focus Plus Gold 850FX.
First released just a few months ago in summer of 2017, Seasonic designed the Focus Plus
series to be small, modular, and quiet.
The Focus Plus Gold series all come with an 80+ Gold rating and the Focus Plus Platinum
series, as you can probably guess, comes with an 80+ Platinum rating.
Both series are available in 4 wattages: 550, 650, 750, and the highest, 850.
Also, every Focus Plus power supply comes with a ridiculous 10 year warranty.
That’s a long time.
The box is actually one of the best designed component packages I’ve seen, it’s eye
catching without being gaudy.
Not that that affects performance, but shoutout to their designers on this.
On the back of the box they have all the features and benefits of the Focus Plus series.
They all use modern DC to DC converters for better stability and higher 12V output, promise
tight voltage regulation within 3% of spec, are cooled by a 120mm fan with a fluid dynamic
bearing for lower noise and longer life, and quite a bit more that I’ll cover later in
the video.
More detailed specs, including the connectors, are listed on the side.
This 850FX Gold comes with 2x 8-pin EPS cables for CPU power and 6x 8 or 6 pin PCIe cables;
that’s enough to cover just about any build you could put together today.
Inside the box, you’ll find the multilingual user manual – not much to say, pretty much
“don’t open the power supply and don’t mess with the cables while it’s plugged
in”, a bag with the mounting screws, some zip ties, and I really like this, some Velcro
loops.
These are a much better way of managing cables than zip ties, in my opinion, because you
can adjust them so easily.
There’s the wall cable, and then the bag of modular cables.
I’ll talk about those in a bit.
Behind the foam, we have the power supply.
It actually comes wrapped in a cloth cover – a nice touch to make sure it doesn’t
get dusty or scratched while shipping.
Also there’s a plastic protector on the logo, let’s peel that off.
Perfect.
One of the big draws to the Focus Plus is the super shallow depth, only 140mm end to
end.
That’ll be useful for people working in tighter cases.
The modular jacks are all black and branding, unlike on some power supplies, isn’t over
the top.
In fact, one thing I really like is that the electrical specifications are on top of the
power supply rather than the side; it’s nice not having a big ugly chart facing out
in your case.
Although, this chart does have some nice numbers on it.
Specifically, the 12V rail is rated for 70A or 840W.
That’s almost the full 850W rating Seasonic gives it overall.
On the back vent, other than the 3 prong connector and on/off switch, there’s a button labeled
“Hybrid Mode”.
This is used for switching between fan control schemes – one which keeps the fan at low
RPM under light load, and another which completely stops the fan when the system is at idle.
More on that in a bit.
The modular cables are all completely black.
The motherboard, CPU, and PCIe cables are all sleeved while the Molex and SATA cables
are not.
They seem to be about as stiff as typical cables, and not any thicker or thinner.
The 24 pin motherboard cable is 25.5 inches or 65cm long, the 8-pin EPS cables are 27
inches or 68cm long, and the PCIe cables are 28 inches long with a 5 inch extension to
an extra plug (that’s 71cm and 13cm respectively).
Onto peripheral connectors, the SATA cables are 33.5” or 85cm long and the Molex cables
are 28.5” or 72cm.
These should give enough length for most cases, and we’ll look at installation in a Cooler
Master MasterBox Lite 3.1 microATX case now.
With the shallow depth and fully modular design, it’s easy to drop the Focus Plus into a
new or existing build without having to take anything out.
The cables are easy to snap into the power supply and have plenty of length to be routed
behind a motherboard tray.
Though the first section of cable sleeving is pretty stiff, they’re set far enough
back from the plugs for it to be relatively easy to plug them in.
Cable routing with a modular power supply is so much easier, especially in a case like
this with relatively little space for cable management.
The cable sleeves don’t get hooked on edges and the cables are flexible enough to twist
them into an out-of-the-way position.
That looks good.
All in all it only took about 12 minutes to get this power supply installed and the results
do look quite nice.
Before I installed the power supply, however, I wanted to run some tests.
Specifically, I looked at efficiency, sound level, and what kind of noise profile the
Focus Plus has.
One of the big features that I was really looking forward to is Seasonic’s Hybrid
Silent fan control.
That’s a mouthful of marketing speak that basically means you can tell the Focus Plus
to completely stop the fan under low load, when the power supply can stay cool just with
passive airflow.
Here’s their chart that gives the estimated fan curve – up to about 30% load, the fan
doesn’t need to run at all.
Up to 50% load, the fan can run at a nearly-silent fixed RPM.
Above that, as the load starts getting bigger, the fan ramps up to maintain cooling.
If you press the Hybrid Mode button in, this keeps the fan spinning even under low load.
By pressing the button again so it’s in the “out” position, fanless mode is enabled.
To give a reference for efficiency and noise level, I’ll be comparing the Focus Plus
to a Thermaltake Smart 500W, the original power supply I used in my Ryzen 3 build.
The test setup today is my Little Red build with a Ryzen 3 1200 overclocked to 4.0GHz
at 1.34V and an RX 480 4GB at stock speeds.
Idle conditions were measured after the PC had been sitting at the desktop with no programs
running for 15 minutes.
Load conditions were measured with Prime95 stressing the CPU and Unigine’s Valley running
on the RX 480.
At idle, the Smart 500 drew 57.5W from the wall and the Seasonic Focus Plus drew 53.7W.
That’s about 6% less power wasted.
Ambient noise was measured at 48dB, though this is near the lower limit of my reference
mic.
At idle, the Thermaltake power supply clocked in at 50dB while the Focus Plus was…
Well, it was silent.
The fan didn’t need to spin.
By pressing the button and forcing the fan to maintain that minimum RPM, however, it
came in at 49dB.
Under load with Prime95 and Unigine’s Valley running, the Smart 500 drew 255W from the
wall.
The Focus Plus cut that by a pretty significant margin: only 237W at the wall.
That’s almost 20W or 7% better efficiency.
As for noise, the Smart 500 came in at 57dB while the Focus Plus was still able to stay
in fanless mode; 48dB, same as ambient.
Clicking the button to disable fanless mode, it stayed at the minimum RPM and clocked in
at 49dB.
Next we’ll listen to the actual recordings so you can hear the difference.
The only modification I made to these recordings is a 6dB boost on both so the sound is easier
to hear, other than that they were recorded identically; same volume and same distance
from the mic.
First, here’s the Smart 500 at idle.
Now here’s the Focus Plus at idle in fanless mode, and the Focus Plus in normal mode.
Now at load, here’s the Smart 500.
Next the Focus Plus at load in fanless mode.
And finally, the Focus Plus at load in normal mode.
As you can tell, the Focus Plus is ridiculously quiet, even before turning on the fanless
mode.
Now for the pros and cons of the Seasonic Focus Plus.
First, it’s extremely efficient; about 7% more efficient than a standard 80 Plus power
supply.
Second, I love the fanless mode.
Quiet components are awesome.
Third, every Focus Plus power supply is fully modular which makes cable management a vastly
easier task.
Finally, the Focus Plus series comes with a 10 year warranty which is well above standard
for the power supply industry.
As for the cons, the ends of the cable sleeves are pretty inflexible so they’re hard to
twist around tight corners.
Fortunately Seasonic sets them far enough back from the plugs that you have a bit of
bare cable to work with.
Second, all these premium features come at a premium price; the Focus Plus Gold series
starts at about $80 USD and the Focus Plus Platinums start at around $100.
If you’re thinking about building a mid to high end PC, Seasonic’s Focus Plus series
is definitely worth a look.
Or if you’re interested in silent computing , the fanless mode is amazing.
In fact, I didn’t have enough power hungry hardware to get the 850FX’s fan to spin
up at all in fanless mode.
The only way I could get it to spin was by turning off fanless mode altogether.
Seasonic did a great job managing the thermals on these power supplies, while the low noise
and high efficiency speak for themselves.
Click the links in the description to pick up a Focus Plus Gold or Platinum.
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and if you have any questions about the Focus Plus, leave them in the comments below.
Thanks for watching, I hope I helped, and I’ll see you in the next video.