On the rear of the power supply you’ll find the IEC socket and a blue illuminated main switch. The latter is of particular importance, as a user operating a passive power supply cannot hear whether or not it is switched on. There are no other indicators showing the operational status of the unit.
The power supply is a full range unit that can be operated on a voltage ranging between 110 V and 240 V. There is no need to manually switch between the voltage ranges.
The output of the power supply is 400 watts, and 560 watt peaks are possible for short periods of time. The combined performance of the 3.3 V and 5 V rails is a maximum of 130 watts.
During use, the power supply makes its presence known by a high-pitched, high-frequency noise that occurs most often when under heavy use. Up to a load of approximately 250 watts this noise can hardly be heard, but the higher the load gets, the louder the noise. This is a very annoying noise that detracts from the "silent PC" concept.
With no additional ventilation, constant operation under full load at 400 watts is not possible. The power supply switches itself off due to overheating after approximately two hours. A level of 300 watts, however, can be maintained permanently. A minimal movement of air in the computer case—such as a slowly rotating 120 mm fan—enables the device to be operated permanently at high load.
The test with the D201GLY2 board from Intel was not a problem—this kind of mini ITX board often causes problems with power supplies.
Know of many HTPC boards that need an 8-pin CPU connection? :\ I sure don't.
If you have found a fanless PSU thats safe to touch -- thats great. but if these things get to 40, 50, 60c - then we need to know not to buy them.
I am quite interested in getting a capable (above 400watt) PSU that doesn't require a fan, but I really need to keep an eye on the temperatures.
I have a fanless mb and vid card (3850 radeon), and would wonder if adding a fanless psu into the mix would jeopardise the system by reducing the air flow through the case. (after all I wouldn't get a fanless PSU if my other components were noisy to begin with!?)
Perhaps an article focused more on configuring a quiet computer (for the purpose of gaming) could be in order?
this is not true you shouldn't have any equipment in recording area except for microphones and the band, so the recording occurs next door on whatever medium you use. also if you want to have silent recording station then it's probably cheaper just getting a silent laptop which will have enough power to record multiple channels easily
it's nice to have a silent PSU but at this price and low wattage eeek
Not everyone has the luxury of spare room to store noisy recording equipment in and reason for storing it in another room is due to noise so how is that not true? Yeah you'd need fan less psu, cpu, and video card plus a SSD or two ideally as well, but if you were getting a fan less psu chances are you'd want the other things as well anyway.
I use 120mm fans from Scythe, a Scythe CPU heatsink, a Thermalright GPU heatsink with a 92mm SilenX fan and a fanless PSU. The hard drives are in Logisys drive silencers. All fans are controlled by a manual Zalman fan controller (you certainly don't want to run them at max). Case rattle has been eliminated with a judicious application of duct tape.
Even though it is basically completely silent, the machine is certainly no slouch.
They claimed that the PSU had to shut down due to overheat. That never happens when it is touchable temperature so under full load it is a paws off.
Also the efficiency numbers should give a fair indication what the temperature will be considering the loss becomes heat. I wouldn't go so far to say it is a pointless review. Its easy to tell from the info they give whether its too warm or not. Its just to read between the lines.
It's for them SLI HTPC's. Don't you know???