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Alright, who is Solytech? Solytech is quite likely not the first company name that springs to mind when youre thinking about purchasing a new PSU. Fact is though that Solytech have been creating a name for themselves in North America and Europe by launching a few products for online retailers.
The review today will focus on their SL-8600EPS 600W power supply which promises solid performance and looks; all that at a great price.

 ... well let's copy and paste a little something from their website:

The hedquarter of Solytech is located in Taipei. Sales dept . R&D dept and Financial dept. are main shafts of Soly-Tech.
Sales dept. will follow up all customers requirements to China for manufacturing and production.
Our partner extend production lines continuously for reaching the market demands. Solytech stride forward to become a best manufacturer of the world.

Yeah I didn't write that, they misspelled headquarters. And considering they've been around since 1982 .. they really need someone have their website checked. Not only that; their product box is loaded with gramatical errors, "Cnnectors", "Complianced" and the classis (seriously, this is written on the box) "Blue lay LED fan". Seriously, grammar ... so important. Here at Guru3D there are 3 guys and one girl checking my articles, not that I ever make any mistakes though *coughs, coughs* (ed: maaan, you're putting additional pressure on us now!)

Anyway, putting the fun factor aside; the SolyTech SL-8600EPS 600W PSU from Antler Group arrived a while ago. It's an lovely to look at black aluminum (aluminium) cased PSU with a blue 140mm Fan. The SolyTech SL-8600EPS 600W PSU is very likely being used by "Tagan" as well; but that's just our little secret.

Some notable Features:

• Intel ATX 12V version 2.2 compliant
• Supports Intel P4 Prescott, Core 2 Duo/Quad and ATHLON 64/FX processors based systems
• Connect your system to the faster S-ATA & PCI-E interface for better performance
• 140mm x 140mm x 20mm Blue LED cooling fan design
• High efficiency at 80% (full load) and high MTBF (long life)
• Low noise and ripple
• Dual thermal fans provide effective and efficient cooling to the PSU
• Hi-reliability: OCP, UVP, OVP, OLP, OTP, SCP circuits ensure system well protected from any dangers

SolyTech released this power supply with the statement that it will not only have a huge amount of power across all rails, but does so with very little noise. The PSU, under the SKU name 'SL-8600EPS', as explained has pretty okay aesthetics which we'll show you later on in our photo-shoot. It's a 600 Watts ready for SLI GFX solutions and multi-core CPU systems. The PSU itself is build in accordance with ATX12V Version 2.2 and EPS12V.

If we look closer at the voltage rails for a minute, we see there's nothing to complain about. There's enough overall juice for a pretty high-end system, Yet focus on the important 12 Volts (dual) rails.

One tiny downside; you only get to play around with only two PCIe connectors for your graphics cards, 2x PCI-E 2.0 6-pin. The new 8-pin connectors are not mounted on this PSU. These two pro-claimed  separate 12V circuits each are rated with a 22 maximum peak load to ensure the stable distribution of the power requirements of your high-end gear. The specs state a 45 AMPs 12v rail maximum peak.

To give you a broader overview, one GeForce 8800 GTX draws 9A.

Cabling ... looking good there. There's a lot of modular cabling, and thus you get to have options (which is great).

Included with the PSU, you get the following connectors: (20+4)-pin Main Power Connectors for M/B x 1, 8 and 4-pin 12V Power Connector for M/B each x 2, 4-pin Peripheral Power Connector for HDD, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CD R/W, DVR R/W x 7, 4-pin Floppy Drive Power Connector x 2, SATA Connector for Serial ATA drives x 2 and 6-pin PCI-E Connector for PCI-Express card x 2.

Power Efficiency
Judging from the specs the power efficiency of the PSU is rated at +80% overall efficiency with a load of 100%. Measured at 230V (which we use here in Europe).

But what does that mean? The Power Efficiency of a power supply?

First and foremost; the higher the better, efficiency is good. When power is drawn from your wall socket and travels into your power supply, not all of it is transformed into electricity that your computer consumes. A rather large part of that current will get lost as there is heat that is dissipating in the capacitors or leakage in circuits and other insufficiencies. So it boils down to this: If your computer requires 500 watts of power, a power supply will draw more than that from your electric company. Here's an example:

If you have a generic power supply with an average 70% efficiency a 350 power draw (350/70x100) watt load would mean it is drawing 500 watts of current from your wall socket while your PC only uses 350 watts, interesting eh?

Let's do that math again with an 80% power efficiency in mind: 350/80x100= 437 Watt. So that's saving 63 Watts over a 70% efficient product. If you have your PC powered on a lot , think about this theory and what it can save you in the long term. The higher the efficiency the less power loss, the less money you have to pay. And hey ... it's good for mother nature as well.

Active PFC
This model has a very nice feature called Active PFC. To put it in simple terms, Active PFC PSUs are more expensive and, from a power consumption point of view, more efficient. Power Factor Correction (PFC) allows power distribution to operate at its highest efficiency. There are two types of PFC, Active PFC and Passive PFC. This PSU has Active PFC. Active PFC uses a circuit to correct power factor, Active PFC is able to generate a theoretical power factor of over 95%. Active Power Factor Correction also markedly diminishes total harmonics, automatically corrects for AC input voltage, and is capable of a full range of input voltage. Since Active PFC is the more complex method of Power Factor Correction, it is definitely more expensive to produce an Active PFC power supply.

The product we'll be testing today is the SL-8600EPS. Now if you have a peek at the soly-tech website here, you'll notice there's oh .. three product series with that same product number. Again, their website could really use an upgrade, we found the right specs though.

Let's browse through them, courtesy of Soly-tech: