Finally Some Quiet?

In an era when CPUs routinely consume 100 watts by themselves, PCs impose growing demands on power supplies. The watts graphics cards require don't lag much behind CPUs, while bleeding edge, dual graphics card SLI configurations need even more power, of course. Intel and AMD's introductions of dual-core processors underscore how PCs demands for juice will only grow.

This all means that power supplies will have to output more power, which will in turn will generate more heat and require often noisier fan power to keep everything cool and stable.

So how do vendors with cool and quiet power supplies that we review here get the cooling job done? While it's possible to find power supplies rated from 300 to 400 watts that use no fans for cooling, two vendors in our review take a different path. While they support temperature-sensitive cooling fans in their designs, these fans are only activated when absolutely necessary; otherwise these units employ only passive cooling techniques as well.