Strange results from PSU comparison?

[Crashman]

I've owned the FSP Aurora 350W unit. It was very quiet, unless I turned the fan speed up all the way. Tom's showed the thing was nearly as noisey at full load as minimal load, which would tend to show that they left the fan turned up full speed for the entire test!

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[KrazeIke]

Maybe they had an 80mm version.

 

[Crashman]

No, it was the one using 120mm fan and a rear potentiometer.

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<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[Wintec]

I agree. I just bought the Fortron FSP350-60PN power supply from NewEgg, and it's the quietest power supply I've ever owned - with the speed turned down. Active thermal control turns the fan speed up if the power supply gets hot under full load. I think this supply rates as the best value out there, and should have gotten much better rating here at Tom's.

 

[Crashman]

Like I pointed out, there test showed the thing nearly as noisy at minimum load as full load, that would seem to indicate they had the potentiometer turned up to full speed all the time.

Another thing I'd like to point out is that the supply put out more POWER than other supplies with similar ratings. Would it have been quieter than the others at full heat under the same load and with the potentiometer turned down so that autofan controlled the speed?

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<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[Wintec]

Hello again

Crashman, it looks like we're going to agree till we're blue in the face! I suspect that since the efficiency of this Fortron (they make others with active PFC that are better) is low, it will be a touch loder than the other units, but I think you ask a good question. I'd love to see an update to th article.

Anyway, just to back up my comments about value, 2/4 of the 350W class PSU's are not available in the U.S., and the High Power one is $77 at the only place I could find it for sale vs. the $42 for the Fortron 350W at NewEgg. In the 400W class, the Vantec is $54 at NewEgg, the Nexus NX-400 seems to be ~$100, the Silverstone is $59 at NewEgg. In short, $42 is a great price for a stable power supply that has plenty of power in reserve, and is quiet as well.

And no, I have no relation whatsoever to Fortron, I just happened to have looked into this subject quite a bit prior to my recent purchase.

 

[Crashman]

Yes, like I said, I've had the unit, at minimal speed by potentiometer it was nearly silent. At 1/2 speed it was barely audible with the rest of the parts working. This was on an Athlon XP2400+@2600+, MSI K7N2-ILSR, 2x512MB Geil PC3200, WD800JB, Radeon 9600, CDRW, DVD, Floppy, Zip, etc. All loaded in an ancient midtower with no case cooling, relying solely on the Fortron's 120mm fan to remove case heat. And at 1/2 speed fan, it never reached the temperature where automatic control would have kicked it on full force.

There's another thing: Play with fan speed on these, find the lowest speed where the heat never kicks the fan on full blast. It would be stupid to turn the fan all the way down, and have it kick up full speed every 15 minutes for a couple minutes, when setting it somewhere in the middle keeps it cool full time without the kick up.

The same unit powered my monster P4 system before it went in a customer's system.

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