SilverStone Decathlon 800W

Conclusion:

Yet again, SilverStone has delivered another exceptional product. The SilverStone Decathlon DA600 may look like a modest power supply with its drab black finish, but its cables are 100% modular, features Active PFC and a single high-Amperage +12V rail, and is built quite well. This 800W power supply is currently retailing for about $210 USD, which may be viewed as expensive to some enthusiasts, but power supplies are often the most under-looked component of the system and there are a number of other high-performance power supplies in the $200+ range. When it came to the performance, we were very pleased with the DA800 and its clean voltages and quiet operation. The voltage rails were in the area we very close where we like to see them and they hadn't fluctuated much between idle and load.

The Decathlon DA800 provides enough modular cables that it should satisfy customers now and into the future. There are four 6-pin PCI Express power connectors and that's in addition to two of the newer 8-pin PCI Express power connectors. In addition to being sleeved, they are also of sufficient length even for extended ATX cases (including our favorite, the SilverStone Temjin TJ10). The only slight complaint about this unit we have is with the modular connectors. Some of the modular cables hadn't connected to the power supply too easily and required more force than other modular PSUs we have dealt with, but ultimately everything came together and the system was running great.

Topping off the review, this 800W power supply had no problems powering an ATI FireGL V8600 1GB graphics card along with dual AMD Quad-Core Opteron processors each running at 2.3GHz and there being 4GB of system memory. With everything said, we feel this power supply is worthy of our Phoronix Editor's Choice Award.