INTRODUCTION

   For the past decade or so the main marketing/sale pitch fully modular power supply units had was the ability to switch cables once a new standard was introduced. Well, years and years went by without anything seriously changing, not until now that is since the recent introduction of the new ATX 3.0 standard (which effectively just adds tighter regulations in regards to electrical spikes) has brought with it a new PCIe 5.0 (Gen5) power cable called 12VHPWR. This power cable can support power outputs of up to 600W and as some of you certainly are aware is also the power cable required by the latest GeForce RTX 4090 24GB graphics card by NVIDIA and probably also their GeForce RTX 4080 model (still, AMD stated that they are not using it with their upcoming RDNA3 Radeon 7900XT/XTX cards). Seasonic’ s third generation flagship line of power supply units may not be ATX v3.0 certified (v2.53) but it was probably the first to be launched with two of these new 12VHPWR cables roughly 4 months ago and today I’ll be testing the PRIME TX-1300W (SSR-1300TR) model.

   Sea Sonic Electronics Co., Ltd was founded more than 40 years ago by engineers. Since its early beginnings the company has rigorously maintained its focus on the research, development and production of technologically advanced, high quality products. In 1981 Sea Sonic expanded into the production of PC power supplies to become one of the first manufacturers in this market. Soon after, the manufacturing of high quality and performance PC power supplies became the core identity of Sea Sonic.

   The PRIME TX line of power supply units by Seasonic currently includes 650/750/850/1000/1300/1600W output models all of which are fully modular and 80 PLUS Titanium Certified (up to 94% efficiency - just the 1300/1600W models however come with 12VHPWR connectors). In terms of available features the PRIME TX-1300 sports a single powerful +12V rail (108.3A - probably the 2nd or 3rd highest single +12V number I’ve seen to date) capable of delivering the units entire rated output (1300W), micro-tolerance load regulator (under 0.5% load regulation), active PFC, DC to DC topology, cable-free connection design (back panel with PCB), individually sleeved power cables (the 12VHPWR of my sample arrived fully sleeved), peak power output of almost 1450W, fluid-dynamic bearing 135mm fan with hybrid mode (fan starts to operate at over 40% load) and high-quality Japanese manufactured capacitors. It goes without saying that the PRIME TX-1300 PSU is fully shielded by an array of electrical protections including over-current (OCP), over-voltage (OVP), under-voltage (UVP), short-circuit (SCP), over-temperature (OTP) and over-power (OPP). As for warranty Seasonic covers the entire PRIME TX line of power supply units with a very generous 12-year limited one.