As others mention, v1 was horrible as whenever the fan was due to speed up it would make a really loud noise whereas at 250W power draw and under my fan is always spinning but is constantly silent and never spins up. My PC doesn't draw more than 250W so can't say what will happen above that.

Very pleased with this PSU!

I got mine not too long ago, here's what I said on [H]:

Sep 11, 2016

https://hardforum.com/threads/silverstone-sx500-lg-500w-gold-sfx-l.1834746/page-27#post-1042530074

So here it is!

(Sorry about the lighting of the first few photos, had the colour balance set up wrong.)

[spoiler]








[/spoiler]

Didn't expect to receive an ATX->SFX bracket so that was a nice addition.

Can confirm the PSU runs silent (fan is spinning permanently though) and is super cool. In my bad airflow case it does not even get hot or spin up on load (i7 4790K and GTX 970). Really happy with it!

My case, CPU and GPU fans are (unsurprisingly I guess) louder.

The bottom line is that being priced now at 66 pounds, this deal is 9 pounds cheaper than scan.co.uk @ 75 bucks. You can't currently buy any cheaper brand new SFX-L in the UK than this deal. But the more important question is this:

Does amazon handle the RTB RMA back to Germany for you after the initial 28 days, or after the first 12 months of a faulty item window?

Perhaps Scan does handle this all for the customer? Inferred by reading what they put in their Warranty Section details. See here:

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/500w-silverstone-sx500-lg-v20-90-eff-80-plus-gold-sli-crossfire-eps-12v-40a-plus12v-120mm-fan-atx

Its an open question that hopefully others here will be able to answer. For either Scan or Amazon.co.uk. I would like to know too.

I've had one of these for years, essentially silent, no coil whine and a very good PSU but this is in fact an SFX-L which are slightly longer.

Be aware that Silverstone don't have a warranty base in the UK. So an RMA / RTB is to germany unless you go back through the retailer for example Scan. Which might / might not be any extra hassle (sorry I don't know as have not RMAd anything myself).

We bought 2 different units here, a v1.1 and a v2.0. In regards to revision differences:

v1.0

"All of the capacitors used in the SX500-LG V1.1 are high quality Japanese made units. The original SX500-LG V1.0 used Japanese made capacitors on the primary but mostly Taiwanese capacitors on the secondary."

Aparrently the v1.0 and v1.1 can have issue whereby there is a fan blade contact resulting in a scraping or clicking noise. Typically when the fan is starting and stopping. As it happens I can hear very quietly indeed on my v1.1. Which have owned for about 1 year now. However that sound is always being drowned out by a nearby laptop's fan. In a silent room it still may be quite difficult for me to hear without putting ear close up to the PSU. So the extent of the issue seems rather varied. As other people get really loud / unnacceptable clicking noise or anywhere in-between those two extremes.

* Not sure about coil whine issues. However the v1.1 and v2.0 have all-Jap caps if that makes any difference sorry I don't know. But they must have needed to rid those remaining cheaper caps for some valid reason.

v1.1

I get the impression for almost everybody v1.0 is really not recommended. However v1.1 might be OK if you don't have any un-wanted noise issues, and don't mind that its semi-passive mode is completely dumb and was never implemented properly. Which may lead to it wearing out the fan. Spinning it up far too often. Which also happens to exaserbate the possible fan click / chirping noise issue. Those are 2 different issues BTW.

Again v1.1 is probably ok if you wish to mod it and replace the fan yourself. BTW that voids the warranty, but might be worth it as solves such issues. Or if you can tolerate the possibility of doing an RMA should your unit develop unacceptable behaviour / noises within the 3 year warranty period.

v2.0

AFAIK moving up to the v2.0 it just removes the semi-passive mode. Am not aware of any other known differences until someone fully tears down a re-reviews v2.0 unit. Which has not happened yet.

So all we can assume ATM is that the v2.0 is more-or-less effectively the same as other the other similar SFX-L 500 watt models now. Meaning those made by the same OEM (excluding the Lian Li PE-500 of another OEM). None of which are available from mainstream suppliers here in UK/EU. They are all sold in other regions. Such as:

* Chieftec Smart Series SFX-500GD-C
* Sharkoon SILENT STORM SFX GOLD 500W

get the corsair equivalent, its silent compared to this thing

Yep had to replace mine with a Corsair SF450 because of the fan issue. The SX500-LG is silent when you start up because the fan doesn't spin. But once you put a bit of load on it, the fan spins up loud and doesn't stop until you restart your PC. Major issue for a well-known company like Silverstone.

I have this not sure if version 1 or 2 (probably 1) and it runs perfect, never had a noise problem or whatsoever. Now is in my build almost 2 years, paid £68 then and normally is pricier so heat added

I have the V1 and the fan was distractingly loud, there are also quite a few forum posts complaining about the same issue. I ended up replacing the fan with a Noiseblocker PCP and it's now much better, although of course this will void your warranty. I don't know if the V2 fan is any better.

If I ever needed another SFX PSU, I'd probably go for the Corsair SF series, budget permitting.

So , version 1 is better ...

good but I think these suffer from coil whine

Wow, huge spec for a sfx