The Cyonic AU-550x PSU Review
by E. Fylladitakis on August 17, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Seasonic
- PSUs
- 550W
- Cyonic
Introduction
Today we are getting acquainted with a new power supply unit (PSU) manufacturer, Cyonic. It is very likely that most of the people who are reading this review have never heard of the brand before. We should start by mentioning that Cyonic is a brand dealing solely in Seasonic hardware, with Seaonic one of the major PSU manufacturers worldwide. To clarify the arrangement here, Seasonic sells power supplies to companies like Cyonic to sell on and is not an uncommon way of distributing product. Although in some markets Seasonic does sell as their own brand direct to the end user. The Cyonic name and company was founded just two years ago in Asia and is reluctantly making steps into the North American markets. Cyonic's brand profile and mission statement is, in summary, that they are aiming to provide high performance products to advanced PC users. Cyonic currently offers very few products; only three series and nine PSUs total, with three of them exclusively available in Japan.
The other two series that Cyonic currently offers are the AU and AUx. Both of these series consist of three PSUs each, and the units between the two series are essentially identical, with the sole difference being that the AUx models are modular and the AU models are not. Each series has one 450W, one 550W and one 650W model - if you are looking for high power behemoths, Cyonic is the wrong brand name. Furthermore, all three PSUs in each series are based on the same platform. As such, this review of the AU-550x essentially covers the entire lineup of products that Cyonic currently offers.
| Power specifications ( Rated @ 40 °C ) | |||||
| AC INPUT | 100 - 240 VAC, 50 - 60 Hz | ||||
| RAIL | +3.3V | +5V | +12V | +5Vsb | -12V |
| MAX OUTPUT | 20A | 20A | 45A | 2.5A | 0.3A |
| 100W | 540W | 12.5W | 3.6W | ||
| TOTAL | 550W | ||||
Packaging and Bundle
Cyonic is supplying the AU-550x into a medium-sized, sturdy cardboard box with a striking yellow artwork theme. It offers ample protection to the small unit and all the basic specification and features are printed on its sides and rear in multiple languages.
A nice number of extra items are bundled with the AU-550x. Cyonic supplies the basic AC power cable, a multilingual manual, a quick installation guide and four black mounting screws, as well as several black cable ties, three long quality cable straps and two case stickers to choose from. Thumbscrews or a small bag for the cables would be nice, but this bundle is still better than most.
The Cyonic AU-550x is a fully modular PSU and every cable is supplied detached from the unit. With the exception of the sleeved 24-pin cable, all of the cables are "flat", ribbon-like, including the supplied Molex to Floppy connector adapter. All of the cables, including the ATX 24-pin cable, are made using black wires and black connectors.
| Cyonic AU-550x | ||
| Connector type | Hardwired | Modular |
| ATX 24 Pin | - | 1 |
| EPS 4+4 Pin | - | 1 |
| EPS 8 Pin | - | - |
| PCI-E 6+2 Pin | - | 2 |
| PCI-E 8 Pin | - | - |
| SATA | - | 7 |
| Molex | - | 4 |
| Floppy | - | 1 |
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Samus - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
I agree! Some vendors have turned pretty crappy designs from questionable OEMs into decent products. Look at OCZ psu's after they purchased PCP&C. Most of them were then built by FSP and let's face it FSP made some real crap back in the day...a lot of the same designs were used by XFX but the OCZ models were consistently better and the warranty was much more honorable.YoloPascual - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
It still better than buying the brand name. You won't even need to think about the warranty when you have a really good psu. And who wants to deal with warranty claims?Samus - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
True. But support is everything with technology.Years ago, PC Power & Cooling offered a one-time rewiring of the PSU free of charge if the end-user covered shipping and handling. I took them up on this in 2008 with a 750 Quad and it cost $18 total ($8 to ship it to them, $10 for them to process and ship it back.)
In exchange, I was returned a completely remapped cable layout to fit my case exactly. This is before modular PSU's were really common place, but even modular PSU's either have too short or too long of cables.
I don't believe any other OEM's offer this kind of service anymore. Very unfortunate. But there are other perks OEM's offer other than warranty, such as color coding components to other products they make, and a verified hardware (quality assurance) guarantee.
dwatterworth - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
Stating the power output of the unit as 'Mediocre' in conjunction with the maximum fan RPM to define it's potential profile is probably not the best description. Wording does make a difference, pointing in this case that the unit should be supplying much higher levels of power and is sub-par; something not usually associated with any seasonic unit other than their less than average for Seasonic TFX units.yt2005 - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
Good testing as always, but the article reads like it was written by someone who isn't a native-level speaker of English; the writing feels stilted at times, and that made it difficult to read.Peichen - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
Does Emmanouil Fylladitakis sounds American/British to you?DCide - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
Exactly what I was thinking. I'm sure I couldn't even do him the courtesy of pronouncing his name right, so I have to give him a pass on an incomplete sentence here or there.Samus - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
His background is electronics not English. The odds of an English major putting together a ripple chart are pretty weak so I'll take the review how it is :) even johnnyguru has some skitch here and there, and sometimes I think he's been drinking but they're still great reviews!ImSpartacus - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
Good to see a review for a psu that I might buy. Nice job.romrunning - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
Kudos for reviewing a PSU with a lower power output (450-550W) than the higher output ones!This is exactly what I was looking for to run a single-GPU system.