Hardware Review
Silverstone - ZM1200M
Power supplies have been increasing in power outputs as demand for higher wattage increases. Nowadays, SLI and Crossfire configurations are becoming a norm to many gaming rigs. The power supply is one of the key components in ensuring a stable gaming machine. A dual video card setup is somewhat useless if it keeps on crashing on you caused by inadequate power supply. Silverstone has put out many great power supply units over the years, the Zeus line is one of them. Tonight we’ll take a look at Silverstone’s ZM1200M PSU. We would like to thank the Silverstone team for making this review possible.
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One of the features that really caught our attention was the ZM1200M’s rail merging switch. It has the ability to switch from six 12v rails to a single 12v rail rated at 95 amps. The power supply also sports a modular cabling system, perfect for PC enthusiasts. The inside of the ZM1200M is filled with high grade parts including the use of Japanese made capacitors. A switch located on the side of the power supply is used to switch between single and multiple 12v rails. The physical size of the PSU is massive compared to the previous Silverstone power supplies we have reviewed. The ZM1200M also sports all your connection needs for a Tri-SLI setup. Here are a few more detailed specifications for the ZM1200M.
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For testing, we’ll be using our trustee old E6750 Core 2 Duo over clocked at 3.6GHz as well as our two EVGA 8800GT cards on SLI mode. We also used four 500GB hard drives, two of which are on a RAID-0 setup. We used 3DMark06 as our computer load and ran the benchmark test for a continuous twelve hours. We took the voltage readings for the 12v, 3.3 as well as the 5v rails of the PSU over the course of the twelve hours. Below are the results.
As you can see from the chart, the voltage rails were relatively the same over the course of our twelve hour testing. Our testing also did not crash once during the twelve hour period. We will try to do a test update once we get our new hardware for testing. Once we’ve concluded our testing, we were very pleased with the ZM1200M’s raw performance. Its acoustic noise was also very silent during testing.
The chart above speaks for itself. The ZM1200M power supply is a very good and reliable power supply. If you’re looking on a multi video card solution for your gaming rig, you might want to consider this power supply. Its sheer weight alone tells you the quality parts used to make the unit. From its stable performance and quiet acoustics as well as its rail merging capability, we can’t help but give this Silverstone power supply a score of 10 out 10 and our Editor’s Choice.
Pros:
1200 watts of power
Rail merging switch
1 12v rail at 95amps or 6 12v rails 17amps each
Silent acoustics
Stable voltages
Cons:
None we could see
Manufacturer Link:
