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Now we're onto more my kind of colour scheme. Seasonic has adorned its S12 II 500W with an all matte-black livery and it looks rather good for it, despite the enormous sticker on the side somewhat interrupting the minimalism. In the box you get a mains power cable, four case screws, and a Molex to twin-floppy drive dongle.

The cables are all braided in black, so as to continue the colour scheme. Again, both a four and eight-pin auxiliary 12V cables have been included, rather than a 4+4 cable, so you'll always have a whole cable going spare. At least both are a decent 50cm in length.

Meanwhile the main motherboard cable is 55cm long and the two PCI-Express cables are 60cm long. One of these latter cables terminates in a six-pin connector while the other uses a 6+2 pin connector. We rather like how Seasonic has used two different lengths for the two Molex cables, with one being just 55cm long while the other is 75cm long. This provides a bit of flexibility and makes it easier to keep your cabling tidy. Both have three Molex connectors along their length.


The SATA cables use a similar trick, though the difference is less significant with just 60cm and 70cm cables on offer. Again, each cable has three connectors. All told this is just the kind of basic good thinking we like to see; a subtle colour scheme, nothing frivolous, and a little nod towards some practical tweaks with the cabling.

Our stress test didn't prove the undoing of this little unit, either, with a clean sweep of green across our tables once again. As with most of the supplies on test the efficiency drops a little when at 50 per cent load, but again we are well above 80 per cent so it's perfectly acceptable.

What does let the package down a little bit is this PSUs noise when under load. At 48dB it is the third noisiest on test. Again, though, this is not too much of a concern as your graphics card will probably be making way more noise under such conditions. Also, the idle level of 37dB is acceptably low.

Verdict

The Seasonic S512 II 500W is a great option for those looking to build a modest gaming rig that uses a single graphics card. The simple black finish means it will suit any case, we like the simple but effective tweaking of cable length, it's quiet when it matters, and is available at a fair price.

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