Seasonic Sets to Release First 80 Plus Ruby Certification Consumer PSU
Seasonic has become the first hardware manufacturer to earn the coveted 80 Plus Ruby certification for an ATX power supply with their new Seasonic PRIME ENTERPRISE RX-1600. Obviously, this is a high-wattage unit and while it seems a bit at odds to say it’s a consumer unit and it’s called PRIME ENTERPRISE seems at odds, it just means you’ll be able to buy one without a B2B account. For those pushing the latest generation of workstations and AI systems, this efficiency improvement can be a long-term cost saver.
Being one of the leaders for bringing new standards to market, Seasonic is also one of the flagship PSU manufacturers in the world, creating PSUs not only for themselves, but also manufacturing them for other major brands. While the cost is likely prohibitive to your typical high-end PC builder, the efficiency can save every extra bit of power, and if you’re rendering or running AI tokens 24/7, those high wattage efficiency savings can start adding up fast when it comes to paying the electric bill.
What is 80 Plus Ruby?
Administered by CLEAResult, Ruby is the newest and most stringent tier in the 80 Plus list.The criteria place a heavy focus on low-load efficiency, which is a vital metric considering many systems spend a vast majority of their time idling rather than running at full capacity. To successfully achieve Ruby certification, an ATX power supply tested at 115 V must hit the following strict targets:
- 85% efficiency at 5% load
- 91% efficiency at 10% load
- 93% efficiency at 20% load
- 95% efficiency at 50% load
- 91% efficiency at 100% load
- A power factor of at least 0.95 at 20% load
The inclusion of the 5% and 10% load points is a massive shift for the industry, ensuring that power supplies remain highly efficient even when the system is barely ticking over, and going forward, will be something we’ll start testing ourselves in PSU reviews to track this new metric, as the current focus is an efficiency sweet spot around 60%.
Advancing the Seasonic PRIME ENTERPRISE RX-1600 Platform
Meeting these strict targets requires significant advancements across the entire platform, spanning everything from switching control and component selection to overall cooling design.
Walter Sun, CEO of Seasonic, highlighted the importance of this achievement. “Seasonic has been involved with 80 Plus since the program’s launch, so this result is significant for us,” he explained.He further noted, “Reaching Ruby at 115 V reflects the continued focus on efficiency in our engineering work. We are at a point where every additional percent of efficiency is difficult to achieve, but the effort is worthwhile because these small gains translate into enormous savings on a global scale.”
Jeremy Townsend, Senior Vice President of Delivery Services at CLEAResult, praised the manufacturer’s efforts. “Ruby sets a new standard for what high-performance power supplies can achieve, including efficiency at low load, which is where most systems spend the majority of their time,” Townsend said.“Seasonic has been part of the 80 Plus program since the beginning, and this milestone reflects what the program was designed to drive: real efficiency improvements that reduce energy waste and lower costs for businesses and consumers. We expect Ruby to help set the pace for what manufacturers will be working toward heading into 2027. Congratulations to Seasonic for this achievement.”
It’s certainly interesting, and given the cost from Gold to Platinum is still quite high, and there’s still very few 80 Plus Titanium PSUs on the market, which are again more expensive, expect RUBY to put that premium up even higher, but still, it’s good to see this tech working down to consumer levels!
On the plus side, at least I have a PSU load tester that is capable to testing these new units, perhaps they’ll be kind enough to send me one so I can see how it performs at 230v?
