Silverstone Hela 1200R Review

Introduction

A while back, we reviewed the Hela 850R, a Highpower based unit similar to the Fractal Design Ion 2 series. Today, we’re covering the 850R’s big brother, the Hela 1200R. Just like the Hela 850R, it features a native 12VHPWR cable, is claimed to meet ATX 3.0 (more about that in the next section) and is rated as ETA platinum by Cybenetics. Let’s get started!

ATX 3.0?

The Hela 1200R has been… Quite the rollercoaster ride for me in this regard. After noticing that it wasn’t certified for ATX 3.0 at either Cybenetics or Intel, Silverstone sent another sample to Cybenetics to show ATX 3.0 compatibility. This makes a total of one unit failing testing, the other succeeding. Considering my part list is 1:1 with the succeeded review unit from Aris, I do expect the unit to meet ATX 3.0, but it’s also hard to say if this was a golden sample or not. There is another variation of CSZ that did fail ATX 3.0 testing at 1200w in the GF3, but this also used a different set of 12V MOSFETs.

General Specifications

Power Specifications

Cables

I see some stuff I like already, as Silverstone once again opted to use HCS terminals. These allow for a higher amount of current (10A vs 7A) compared to regular minifit, making it harder to overload and potentially burn the connector. It also uses 16AWG wires on the 24 pin, EPS, 12VHPWR and 12v pins for the PCIe connector. A welcome addition, though the terminal would be the limiting factor here, not the wire.

Silverstone’s 24 pin is something to appreciate. It’s as close as it gets to 1:1, making it a single connector for everything but the additional four sense wires that have to be plugged in separately. While this has confused me in the past as to how to plug it in, it does have its beauty when you realize it.

It also features the new 12VHPWR connector rated at 600w (though right now basically any 12VHPWR cable you can find is wired for that, even if noting otherwise due to shortages). While I do prefer having regular Molex minifit on the PSU side, there’s no major difference between it and having 12VHPWR on both sides as long as you plug it in fully. This has been quite the drama, in the end turning out to be a small number of cases caused by exactly this.

The two EPS connectors are something expected for a 1200w unit. The average consumer generally doesn’t even saturate a single one, let alone two. But considering 1200w would actually be useful for server or HEDT grade CPUs, I don’t expect less, yet also don’t expect to see 3+ of these.

It also includes a total of six PCIe power connectors across 3 cables to allow you to wire a high end GPU that isn’t using 12VHPWR yet with individual cables. While I’ll have my usual complaints about not having any individual connector cables included, I have no complaints otherwise.

With a total of 12 SATA power connectors, the Hela 1200R would also work perfectly fine for a file server. If you need more than that, you should probably consider a peripheral powered backplane anyways.

Speaking of peripheral connectors, it includes a total of 3 connectors on a single cable. Not a whole not, but it’s a legacy connector after all. Silverstone also includes a peripheral to floppy converter in the box, in case you really feel the urge to connect a floppy drive to a modern 1200W PSU.

External

Coming in at just 150mm, this is only the second 1200W ATX unit to be this small, only matched by… checks notes …Silverstone with the Strider Platinum S together with Enhance Electronics at the time. While it might not sound that impressive considering the 130mm 1000W PSUs out there like the Leadex V and SX1000, most 1200w units are 10-30mm deeper than what Silverstone achieved for the second time here.

While they (sadly) didn’t re-use the Voronoi pattern used in the Hela 850R, it still stands out with its triangle-style top, while keeping the back as open as (realistically) possible with the very much appreciated hexagon exhaust. Speaking of the back, here we find a semi-passive switch, something I can very much appreciate. This allows the unit to run in both a semi-passive and always spinning mode, giving users as much control as it gets with an analog PSU.

Other than that, the Hela 1200R looks quite like a premium PSU visually… Honestly nothing to complain here so far.

Protections

Starting on the primary side of things, the Hela 1200R features everything I expect of a modern unit as protection set, both the OCP and UVP being provided by the APFC controller. There is also an MOV to limit damage caused by surges.

As for the DC side, almost everything I expect is implemented here. There’s a full protection set minus the OTP provided via the supervisor IC, OTP provided via either the LLC controller, DC-DC controller or fan controller and minor rail protection via the DC-DC controller.

I would’ve liked to see a multirail OCP at this wattage, but many skip this due to the slight increase in cost and users not setting up the unit properly, causing it to shut down prematurely.

Parts Breakdown+Internal

After CSB and CST, CWT has come out with a new platform to make me even more confused. From what I’ve been able to find, mostly thanks to Aris’ review of the same unit, there are at least 5 revisions of the CSZ platform. This being the D04 revision used by Silverstone here, the D02 revision used by MSI on A1000G and NZXT C1000, the D01 revision used on Thermaltake GF3 1000w, and two variations of the E02 revision used on Thermaltake GF3 750/850w and 1200w. It’s possible there are another two revisions out there, considering the exact revisions of the Montech Titan Gold and lower wattage NZXT C-series gold 2022 are currently unknown.

From what I can see the D01, D02 and D04 revisions are very similar outside of the ATX 3.0 certification and inclusion of a 12VHPWR plug on the modular board for D01 and D04. E02 750/850w looks cheaper, but doesn’t look far off the D01/D02/D04 variations outside of less components, which is to be expected. The 1200w E02 revision however shows a major visual difference over the rest, having room for two bulk capacitors instead of a single one on the others.

Okay… I didn’t lose you yet, did I?

Noticeable to this variation is how compact it is internally. Just like the Superflower Leadex V, it moved a few parts to the top of the unit by utilizing daughterboards. In the case of the Hela 1200R, it moved the 12V FETs (also reduces losses from the transformer to the 12V FETs), fan controller, part of the PFC and the DC-DC FETs+controller. This compact size does however have its downside. Because the parts are closer together, the unit itself tends to get hotter, having to compensate this with a more aggressive fan curve. This does make the unit louder than most… But not to an extreme level.

The fan Silverstone used is a HongHua HA13525H12SF-M, a manufacturer commonly used by both CWT and Seasonic, making them common on units from the likes of Corsair, Adata/XPG, Deepcool, Antec, EVGA, MSI, NZXT, Thermaltake and many, many others. They are made at a high standard given their cost, even if not as high as someone like Sunon, Nidec, Delta and Sanyo Denki, though these are server grade manufacturers at a way higher cost. It’s also the same fan that all other CSZ based units use (from the ones reviewed, anyways).

Controlled by a Microchip MCU, CWT has integrated quite an overkill, but nice fan controller into the Hela 1200R. It could be that this fan controller also handles things like OTP and monitor certain other factors, but as the datasheet is quite generic, this is at best guessing work. It’s definitely not a digital platform, so it wouldn’t have to either way.

The bulk capacitor is a single Nippon Chemicon KHE series. Having the slightly higher 420V rating instead of the usual 400V, it’s definitely a nice thing to see. A higher voltage rating allows for (theoretically speaking) a higher efficiency due to lower losses, but there’s also quite a shortage the higher you go, especially with 450V capacitors. With that said, the 820uf capacity comes slightly short of ATX requirements as shown in the next part, but still more than enough for most UPSs to take over in the meantime.

Moving to the APFC, it features three Infineon MOSFETs, a Sync Power for no-load situations and a boost diode provided by On semi. All of this is controlled by a Champion CM6500UNX, a commonly used controller that also supports burst mode for higher low-load efficiency. CSZ exceeds most other options in low-load efficiency at the pricepoint, mostly thanks to this configuration.

The DC-DC side of things is using a combination of two different UBIQ MOSFETs, a 70A and 61A variation. Why this is done is beyond me, but it should be more than sufficient capacity for the average user. These are all controlled by a UPI Semi UP3861P, quite the nice DC-DC controller.

Overall, Silverstone did a bunch of nice choices here. They went with a solid partner in CWT, overall solid part choice that offers a high lifespan, great efficiency (especially at lower loads) all put into a compact layout.

Electrical Performance

The following results are by third party PSU lab Cybenetics. The results shown are based off the Hela 1200R report published on 13-09-2022.

Test Equipment

Overall (115v)

Overall (230v)

Efficiency (115v)

Efficiency (230v)

Voltage Regulation (115v)

Voltage Regulation (230v)

Ripple (115v)

Ripple (230v)

Fan Speed/Noise (115v)

Fan Speed/Noise (230v)

Hold-up Time (230v)

Conclusion

Silverstone made quite the interesting unit with the Hela 1200R. It’s really compact at 150mm, has a great part choice, amazing low-load efficiency, a proven OEM as partner, can toggle between semi-passive and always spinning, outside of no single connector PCIe cables has exactly what I expect in both quality and number of connectors and features a 12VHPWR cable for RTX 4000 series. There’s a lot to like about it!

But it’s not perfect. Due to its compact size, it’s also quite a bit louder than most of its competition, I’m still not completely certain on the ATX 3.0 compatibility, ripple should’ve been a bit tighter at 115V even if it’s completely within spec and it would’ve been nice to see an option for multirail OCP at this wattage similar to the one put on the Corsair HX(i) series.

Would I recommend picking one up? Yes, absolutely. But it’s in a position that it has quite fierce competition against the likes of Corsair, Thermaltake, MSI, Adata, Cougar, BeQuiet and others if you don’t need the compact formfactor.

Alternatives