The first thing that's immediately obvious upon opening Seasonic's 80 Plus Gold rated X-750 power supply is the almost total lack of internal wiring. This puppy is just cleanly laid out, with plenty of space between components for good airflow. The circuit boards are all dual layer PCB and Seasonic are using solid state conductive polymer aluminum capacitors (silver with blue marking) and Japanese made 105C rated electrolytic caps for the power filter (larger, brown wrapping).

In the motherboard world, capacitor reliability has become a worrisome issue for many users. A couple years back the whole leaking and exploding electrolytic capacitor issue wreaked havoc, and continues to this day to show its bulging, bursting, electrolyte leaking face on older motherboards. If you've ever had weird computer instability problems all of sudden, odds are good it's a burst capacitor. It's nice to see these types of capacitors making their way into power supplies.

Another interesting innovation with the X-750 is this little circuit board pictured above. It's the DC-to-DC converter - basically the circuit that takes the main DC supply and breaks it off to the different voltage levels required by the various power cables that hook up to the motherboard (if I've got it right). The black components you see here are MOSFETs, and they form part of the power supply voltage regulator.

In previous modular power supplies PCSTATS has tested, the only function of this board was to break out the cable bundle from the main power supply circuit into the modular cable connectors. Seasonic have clearly engineered this PSU from the ground up; for rather than an after-thought add-on, the modular cable connector daughtercard (pictured above) is fully integrated into the whole power supply design.

A good rule of thumb for spotting a well made power supply? An RF shielded main 120V power socket (pictured at upper left) and RF chokes (round things with copper wire wrapped around them). Power load tests are up next.