Bitfenix Unveils The Whisper PSU Line

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Bitfenix, a company well known for its quality chassis, released its second PSU line which is called "Whisper." The Whisper units address users in need of silent, reliable, efficient, and fairly low-priced PSUs.

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Aris Mpitziopoulos
Aris Mpitziopoulos
Contributing Editor

Aris Mpitziopoulos is a contributing editor at Tom's Hardware, covering PSUs.

24 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Vatharian
    Four 12V rails? Thank you, I'll pass. I'll get it, times when cross-loading lines would blow up fuses is gone (I had PSU that needed 100W resistors on unused 12V rails or else would shut down at 8A difference), but come on, that's wasting power!
    Reply
  • turkey3_scratch
    18913934 said:
    Four 12V rails? Thank you, I'll pass. I'll get it, times when cross-loading lines would blow up fuses is gone (I had PSU that needed 100W resistors on unused 12V rails or else would shut down at 8A difference), but come on, that's wasting power!

    I think you have some misconceptions of how multi-rail PSUs work.
    Reply
  • Mod by San
    more likely that you had a faulty PSU -_- or did you purchase it in like stone age?
    Reply
  • Belphegore
    Silent "Perfromance", eh?
    Reply
  • Vatharian
    I understand them perfectly, I was making a comment in view of history of PSUs, when regulations forced max 20 A per rail, resulting in 6-rail 1200W monsters.

    Multi-rail PSUs have advantage of isolating devices from each other (so you can run noisy fans/pump and delicate soundcard or some exotic interface that requires stable ripple-free power source from one PSU, but the cost is you have to carefully balance current on different rails, and if you don't have right number of devices, you'll end up wasting power - you won't be able to use full current capacity of power supply. Efficiency will also suffer, since it's unlikely you'll be able to balance the rails for that sweet 75%. Single-rail has advantage of giving you always your max current capacity regardless of number of connected devices, at the cost of small crosstalk, but they are usually much higher quality. Some PSUs use multiple bridged rails, which is possibly worst choice - you have (usually) lower quality components, you have crosstalk, and small imperfections will create current flow between regulating circuitry of each rail, that will hurt service time and efficiency.
    Reply
  • turkey3_scratch
    18915649 said:
    I understand them perfectly, I was making a comment in view of history of PSUs, when regulations forced max 20 A per rail, resulting in 6-rail 1200W monsters.

    Multi-rail PSUs have advantage of isolating devices from each other (so you can run noisy fans/pump and delicate soundcard or some exotic interface that requires stable ripple-free power source from one PSU, but the cost is you have to carefully balance current on different rails, and if you don't have right number of devices, you'll end up wasting power - you won't be able to use full current capacity of power supply. Efficiency will also suffer, since it's unlikely you'll be able to balance the rails for that sweet 75%. Single-rail has advantage of giving you always your max current capacity regardless of number of connected devices, at the cost of small crosstalk, but they are usually much higher quality. Some PSUs use multiple bridged rails, which is possibly worst choice - you have (usually) lower quality components, you have crosstalk, and small imperfections will create current flow between regulating circuitry of each rail, that will hurt service time and efficiency.

    No no no no. A multi-rail unit can easily be turned into a single-rail unit just by shorting the shunts that go to the protection IC. The protection IC is the only thing that differs, what wires are linked to what overcurrent protections; overcurrent protections which kick in far after the rated amperage of said rail. You don't need to do any manual distribution, what cables go to what protections are already built into the design.

    It has no effect on efficiency. All the wires from these "rails" all come from the same source, the same 12V rectifiers, they're filtered by the same capacitors. Just some of those wires are separated into their own little protections so in the situation of an overload from a short that SCP does not detect the unit will shut off before you have melted wire at the bottom of your case.

    Multi-rail costs more money to implement than single-rail (and stuff that's worse never costs more money). This is because multi-rail is safer, there is no denying that. But of course the some companies chose a better route: use the cheaper, less-safe single rail and turn it into a marketing point. Now we have XFX's "Easy Rail Plus" or some crap like that. And the American market bought this stuff like crazy, so much that spending more money for multirail is almost pointless since 90% of people do not realize it's a safety measure and nobody will buy their multi-rail power supplies based on false myths from sly marketing gimmicks.
    Reply
  • NightLight
    what does alarm me, is the poor solder quality shown in the picture. If you look at the blue tantalum in the right upper corner, there's almost no solder between the top pin and the board. Same for numerous points I can see.
    Reply
  • emgarf
    If they can't even spell "performance" correctly, they can't be trusted to design electronics.
    Reply
  • memadmax
    Looks like a decent build. If there were caps on the lines that go to the GPU card(s) not just the main one going to the mobo then I would be more interested in this box.
    Reply
  • therealduckofdeath
    @Nightlight, if you zoom in (a lot) you notice it's a visual illusion making it look like there is no soldering.
    Reply