PSU maker Seasonic has just achieved a world first by releasing an ATX power supply with an 80 Plus Ruby rating. The Seasonic Prime Enterprise RX-1600 proudly sports the new red badge, which means it must achieves 95% efficiency at 50% load, and remain 91% efficient at just 10% load.
The latter is a big deal here, as PC systems aren’t always running at full load, or even half load, a lot of the time. Accordingly, an 80 Plus Ruby PSU can also only drop to 85% efficiency at a small 5% load, assuming a 115V input voltage.
Seasonic’s RX-1600, actually goes beyond these requirements if you look at the full report. At 5% load, the RX-1600 achieves 88.88% efficiency, for example, and 93.35% at 10% load. Even at 100% load, the RX-1600’s result of 92.81% goes beyond the Ruby certification’s 91% requirement.
Make no mistake, this is a very efficient PSU, meaning you’ll only be wasting the absolute bare minimum of power coming into the unit. That in turn will result in lower power draw for your system.
Seasonic first hit the Ruby milestone with its 5,200W SIC-NRX522 earlier this year, and showed us this drive at Computex. However, the RX-1600 represents the first time a standard-sized ATX PSU has made the grade.
Otherwise, the Prime Enterprise RX-1600 looks very similar to the TX-1600 model (pictured in the main image above), which has 80 Plus Titanium certification, meaning it hits 94% efficiency at 50% load. The latter also formed the basis of the Seasonic Prime TX-1600 Noctua Edition, which really impressed us in our review.
Hopefully we’ll get a chance to put this new 80 Plus Ruby PSU through its paces in the Club386 labs soon. In the meantime, check out our guide to buying the best PSU for all our top power supply recommendations.
