Pros: If you are building a silent computer and want the best, this is it. That is in terms of components, efficiency, voltage regulation, and ripple levels. See “other thoughts” for testing. It has a 5 year warranty printed on the box but newegg lists the warranty as 7 years on the website. Looks nice. Matte finish. Solidly heavy. Well packaged and protected (also, box has a carry handle). Anchors a Rosewill high-end PSU product line. In addition to the 3 permanent nylon-sleeved cables listed in the next section, there are four modular connectors (quite nice for a 500W supply). Modular cables include: a cable with two 6/8 pin video card connectors, a cable with 4x SATA, a cable with 2x SATA plus 2x peripheral power connectors, a cable with 3x peripheral power and 1x floppy power connector. There is only one competing fan-less power supply in this wattage range that I am aware of but it has two fewer video card connectors and is more expensive. (That one also has a 7 year warranty.) With this Rosewill PSU you can potentially hook up two high-end graphics cards and access nearly the full power available from the 12V rail.

Cons: 170 mm deep. A few smaller cases support only 160 mm. Partially modular (the main motherboard cable, one dual ATX, one cable with two 6/8 pin video card connectors – are permanently attached but of good length). These cables are clearly visible in the third product image. I don’t find either to be a problem with a typical build but some folks might. It would be smart to have a little bit of airflow blown into the computer case to keep the rest of your components happy by pushing any heat out of the case through the PSU. I didn’t see over-temp protection listed on the PSU specs.

Overall Review: Don’t skimp on your power supply. The poorly designed ones go down frequently. Often they take other components with them. If you are looking at this price range you already know this. Also, an inefficient PSU can make your room really hot in the summer. EFFICIENCY: I had access to a bit of test equipment so I did a few tests. This PSU is labeled as “80 Plus Platinum” which means 90% efficiency at 20% load, 92% at 50% load, and 89% at 100% load. 50% is considered typical load. The PSU has a single +12 V rail. It is rated for 500W continuous at 50° C. I measured input power while slowly increasing load to very close to 500W output and got about 550W input (90.5% efficiency). Close to 300W load drew around 325W (92%). Power supply was sitting in a fan-less case, load was on for 20 min to allow PSU temp to stabilize. OVERLOAD: It is supposed to have over-voltage, under-voltage, over-current, over-power, and short-circuit protection. I increased the load to above 650W and it nicely shut down. It did not burn out. VOLTAGE: During load increase all the voltages varied less than 2-3%. This is really good, especially as you get close to the max load. RIPPLE: I used 300W load and got under 20 mV ripple on all the output voltages on the oscilloscope. This is good. 120 mV is considered max allowable. DESIGN and COMPONENTS: Took it apart and found quality components in addition to gigantic/heavy heat sinks. The filtering stage has two coils but assumes you will use surge protector between your plug and the computer. I saw one beefy rectifying bridge, an active PFC circuit with NCP1653A controller, Japanese capacitors for the PFC and the secondary, the switching section is controlled by a Super Flower controller which also monitors the outputs, the single +12V rail produces +5V and +3.3V using two DC-DC converters. (Super Flower has long history of good PSU designs & components.) Nice job Newegg/Rosewill.

Pros: Fanless, so completely silent even at full load Looks terrific with matt black finish (resistant to fingerprints) 41.5a on a single 12v rail 80 Plus Platinum rated Semi-Modular Nicely sleeved modular and non-modular cables 4 x pci-e 6+2 pin adapters for CF and SLI Heavy and well built Good selection and length of cables Bag for storing extra un-used cables Able to supply much more than 500W’s (see other thoughts) 5 year warranty on box (Newegg states 7 year warranty under features!)

Cons: Semi-modular Gets warm at full load so good case airflow is required. Ugly red and blue plugs on non-modular cables (no eggs of as this is just my opinion) No over temperature protection Heavy Other Thoughts: Needed more space, so starting here. Power supplies are one of the most important components of any computer build, without a stable and reliable power supply you risk damage to other components. I have always been most particular about the power supplies I choose for my personal computers. My current gaming rig is a water cooled monster with a pair of overclocked GTX 670’s in SLI and a heavily overclocked Intel Core i7 3770K. This pc is currently powered by a CoolerMaster V1000 power supply, however as I recently sold the pair of GTX 670 video cards in favor of a single EVGA GTX 780 Classified, I decided that a smaller power supply made more sense. A pet peeve of mine is noise, this is one of the reasons I water cool all my pc’s, so this power supply was instantly interesting to me, silent, fanless, Platinum Plus rated along with enough pci-e cables for SLI and CF! I had a few reservations regarding its 500w output, but based on its specs of 498W and 41.2a on the 12v rail as well as its platinum rating I realized that it should easily supply more than 500w at full load. This power supply is semi-modular, which does not bother me, assuming that there are no unwanted cables lying around at the bottom of my case. This power supply does a good job with 1 x 20/24 pin, 1 x 4/4 pin and one pci-e cable with 2 x 6+2 plugs. I was a little surprised by the hard wired pci-e cable at first on a power supply that is rated at 500w but realized that this psu is aimed at high end users that are likely to have video cards that require the extra power. If your video card does not require extra power then the cable can be hidden easily enough I suppose. The red and blue plugs on the hard wired cables were a little off-putting but that is just my personal choice, the modular ribbon cables are well made, flexible and a good length, even for my full tower case.

Overall Review: With my single EVGA GTX 780, (according to Kill-a-Watt), my pc is pulling 536W out of the wall socket when under full load (BF3), I still decided to swap out my CM V1000 for this Rosewill unit. The CM unit is Gold Plus rated and I wanted a quieter power supply that was more efficient. EVGA suggest a 600W power supply with 42a on the 12v rail for their Classified but I was still curious to see if this power supply would be enough. I did not see any over temperature protection and that worried me as this power supply does not have a fan in it, however it is a very efficient power supply and even at full load it never went over 41C according to my digital IR thermometer. I have a NZXT Switch 810 case so good airflow is not a problem for me, I would be less likely to recommend this psu if it is to be used in small cases with poor airflow. The power supply is fully ventilated and has a huge heatsink on one side and it needs to be mounted with this HS facing up in order to disperse heat properly. The power supply is extremely heavy so I suggest that it is installed in the bottom of the case and not the top. Installing it in the top of the case may make the case top heavy and unstable. I have a multi-meter and always test my power supplies as routine. This power supply was rock solid and performed flawlessly providing well over 500w of power to my computer. I had no crashes, glitches or issues that I could associate with the power supply being under powered. The 12v rail fluctuated between 12.10v and 12.25v, the 5v rail between 5.10v and 5.18v and the 3.3v rail between 3.30v and 3.35v (load and idle). I was not able to measure efficiency, but noticed that Newegg lists Platinum Efficiency as 91%, 92% and 90% at 20, 50 and 100% load, this is not correct it should read 90%, 92% and 89%. I would not necessarily buy a power supply based on efficiency as the difference in yearly savings between a bronze rated unit and a platinum rated unit is likely to be less than $20, however the platinum power supplies are likely built with better quality materials and components. Rosewill would not have been my first choice for a power supply previously, however this power supply really surprised me in a good way. It is actually one of the best power supplies I have ever owned. It is totally silent, efficient, able to supply over 500w of power, stable, great looking, solidly built and runs cooler that I imagined. It is SLI/CF ready but I am unsure if this makes sense on a 500w power supply. I do not imagine that this power supply will be able to supply enough juice for more than a pair of GTX 650 Ti’s or HD 7850’s, however the option is there if required. I am running a single GTX 780 without issue currently, even though EVGA suggest a 600W PSU with 42a on the 12v rail. I love this power supply and have no reservations recommending it completely. The 5 year warranty is icing on the cake. Well done Rosewill. Perfect.

Pros: Power supply temperature is lukewarm running OCCT (a load testing application) and Assassin's Creed IV on an overclocked i7, an overclocked nVidia 780 GTX, 4 blu-ray drives, 2 hard drives, and two SSDs. I've used fanless PSUs for years and wrote some of the first articles on how to build a "real" PC without moving parts. I've built high-end custom workstations since the mid-90's. So when I say this is the best power supply I have ever used by any metric (except max power output and price), you've got to appreciate how good a job the designers did.

Cons: As with any fanless and/or Platinum-rated power supply, the cost per watt is higher than lesser quality power supplies.

Overall Review: This is the KINGWIN STR-500, manufactured by SuperFlower. Reading the reviews, this power supply is one of the two or three best ever manufactured for quality voltage regulation, ripple, load response, and can actually output 600W (not just 500). Some reviewers measured results which were merely excellent rather than top-3-ever, though that may be due to test equipment variation. This is a highest-end power supply, to join the ranks of Seasonic and PCPower&Cooling's top-of-the-line. If you want the absolute best, and don't use more than two video cards in SLI, this is it.

Pros: Quick update from my review almost 3 months ago. I recently transferred from a Corsair 550D case to BitFenix Phenom mini-ITX case. All I had to do was buy the case and a new motherboard. I kept all the other components including the SilentNight. The SilentNight was perfect for this mini-ITX case. It just fits and seeing as the Phenom case was going on my desk next to me I'm glad I had it. Using another power supply I had on hand at first just created too much noise. The SilentNight is perfect for smaller cases that will take an ATX power supply.

Cons: None

Overall Review: 3 months of use and the power supply is still like brand new. Good unit.

Pros: Fanless BIOS reports stable output Modular

Cons: none

Overall Review: I love this power supply. Once your computer is truly quiet, you'll never go back to a noisy one again. Rosewill included a few helpful extras, like a set of black screws as well as the normal shiny silver colored mounting screws, zip-ties, and clear labeling on the outputs. I have only had this for a week, but I would buy it again.

Pros: Totally silent. Very efficient. Solid build. This is a good power supply for a totally silent medium-high power system. Installed fine in Cooler Master Elite 130 case.

Cons: At this price point, Rosewill should include a better selection of good quality modular cables, in various lengths and with various numbers of connectors. It's annoying to spend extra for a "modular" power supply, but end up with 7 extra connectors and a meter of unused cable coiled up in a very small case. Also dual ATX12v and dual PCI express connectors are not removable, even though I didn't need the 2nd ATX12v or either of the PCI-e.

Overall Review: Good power supply, but "modular" feature is not very well done.

Pros: Silent, plenty of power, dependable.

Cons: No cons, unless you count being discontinued.

Overall Review: Bought this in March of 2015, almost 2 years ago. I upgrade/replace my components regularly, MB, CPU, video cards, SSD, but this PSU has been in my case since the day I installed it. Came to buy another one and sad to see it's no longer available. I'll take a look if the Kingwin 500 is still available, otherwise I'll have to look at other options.

Pros: No moving parts.

Cons: none

Overall Review: I wish I had purchased ten of them before they stopped making them to use and sell.