Quieter PSU recommendations.

[spireite]

Ok, first the system

Unknown case, an Athlon 2100XP, CD, DVD, 1 IBM 80Gb HD, TV card, SB Live card, USB card, GF4 Ti4400, DigiTV card, MSI Kt3-Ultra2 mb.

Existing PSU is single fan Enhance 1125BTA 300watt unit, and the fan is loud. Recommendations to quieten it or replace it please!

Cheers,
Paul

[Big Adam]

What's yer budget?

Kustom do a whole range of 'low noise', 'quiet' and 'silent' PSUs from anything from £22 to £100


300W is perfectly adequate for your current system, however if you are planning to upgrade in the future, you may as well start by purchasing a quality (and slightly higher powered) PSU now.

BA

[spireite]

Upto 70 quid realistically. I don't envisage doing much on the upgrade front other than perhaps swapping in a higher powered video card and Athlon (eventually). If I swap to the newer topend raddys, I expect a better PSU would be needed.

Been warned off QTecs though.....

[[M]uuhh]

http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/product.php?view=1718&PHPSESSID=190bc2c08a762f561927ef0cfec91795

The Zalman is almost silant. i think so anyway

http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/product.php?view=1728

[Colin Fyfe]

Hi guys,

I just installed a 400W Zalman PSU which I picked up this afternoon from Kustom to replace my year old Antec TruePower 430 which I thought was pretty quiet but far from silent.

After about an hour, here's my impression: absolutely amazing, actually silent, no coil buzz/whine and great cooling to boot.

The Antec 430 was a two fan unit (both of which I believe are temperature controlled) and the 92mm on the bottom of the PSU made a real racket after a while. Being directly above my XP 1800+ T'bred/Zalman Flower Cooler, I'm sure it adversely affected airflow in my case too as it drew air away from the Panaflo at the back of the case and straight into the PSU.

Now my machine is making no noise whatsoever with 2 case fans (both Panaflo L1As undervolted to 7V), a 120mm NMB fan on the Flower Cooler (although the guys are getting in the new Zalman 7000A coolers so that's on its last legs), an 80GB Seagate Barracuda IV mounted in one of those new fangled Zalman heatpipe coolers and finally a GeForce 2 GTS also with a Zalman HS - basically if it made a noise, it had a Zalman part stuck on it and the noise went away. The CPU diode is reporting temps of 31-33C (idle, usually only a few degress out under load), case temp of 33/34C and a hard drive temp of 35/36C, all taken from MBM.

In short, I'm finally happy with my PSU after trying the 300W Q-Technologies unit (had to return because of a manufacturing fault in the whole batch!), the 400W Q-Technologies unit (coil buzz which drove me up the wall), the Antec 430 TruePower (quiet at first, but fairly noise in an otherwise quiet room within 20-30 minutes) and now the 400W Zalman.

It's a bit dearer than the others but it does work - it really is silent. (And no I don't work for Zalman but it would save me a fortune if I did....)

Being picky, I'd say I miss the PSU fan RPM monitor the Antec offered but that's my only criticism (and that's clutching at straws) of an otherwise flawless and highly recommended PSU.

Cheers,

Colin

[Alan]

Given the needs of your rig, I would go for greater silence than Colin's, and save some money and get the 300w Zalman. (It has only one fan, hence less noise sources)

[Colin Fyfe]

Hi Alan,

Just in case there's any confusion, the 400W Zalman only has one fan too whereas the Q-Technologies 400W has two fans. I'm not sure what the temperatures in the PSU would actually be like in practice, but if you look at the graphs on Zalman's site for the temperature vs fan speed/noise for the 300W and the 400W units, the 400W PSU performs marginally better and having been on for 4 hours or so now, it's still as quiet as the minute it went on.

Of course, on the basis of the system hardware and the budget, I'm sure you're absolutely spot on when you say that the 300W unit is the way to go.

Cheers,

Colin

[Graeme*Kustom*]

The Nexus PSUs are well worth checking out . We're pretty impressed with them.

[Alan]

Colin, that'll teach me to keep up to date with Kustom's shop. When I bought my 300w Zalman, the 400w did have two fans!

So I live and learn and now change my opinion to "save money not noise."

Colin, you may have noticed me on other threads, banging on about 300w is enough if you have a good 'un, did you need the 400w unit or is it the performance margin it gives? (Me, I just wanted to save money as it was the third expensive PSU I'd bought in a year!)

[P-J]

Originally posted by Colin Fyfe
the 400W Q-Technologies unit (coil buzz which drove me up the wall)...

Same problem here! Glad it wasn't just me. It's not particularly loud, but the noise is unbearable.

Phil.

[Colin Fyfe]

Hi Alan,

Colin, that'll teach me to keep up to date with Kustom's shop. When I bought my 300w Zalman, the 400w did have two fans!

Are you absolutely sure? I thought the Zalman always had one fan and the Q-Technologies had 2? Already long past the point of being pedantic, I'm going to abandon this point now :D

did you need the 400w unit or is it the performance margin it gives? (Me, I just wanted to save money as it was the third expensive PSU I'd bought in a year!)

I certainly don't need it right now although the 400W did offer slightly better sound characteristics and since I'm hoping to drop in another Barracuda, a Radeon 9800 Pro with a Zalman cooler sometime soon (i.e. before Half Life 2 and Doom III come out) and perhaps move up to a faster Athlon now that I've finally managed to get a hang of the whole noise/temperature balance, it's good to know that the extra capacity is there. Like you say though, a 300W would probably have been fine for my current power needs.

It's interesting that Graeme mentions the Nexus units. I had considered the 300W Nexus but trying to pick who's best out of Q-Technologies, Zalman, Nexus and even SeaSonic now these days is a nightmare.

I wish someone would produce an up-to-date review comparing all of the "silent" PSUs in the same machine (an actual sealed-up case running real apps) left on for say 24 hours and took sound level readings at start-up, after one hour, two hours, four hours, and so on to give an accurate comparison of all the current units. Even Silent PC Review don't have a direct comparison....

Every silent PSU these days claims to be quieter than the last but without a head-to-head real world comparison how can you tell?!?

Anyway, coming down of my soapbox about the need for clearer PSU reviews, I'm still amazed at how quiet the Zalman 400 is and highly recommend but it is nearly £100 and the 300W is probably just as good in execution - I just had a craving for the anodised black, efficient, heavy, more-power-than-I'll-need-for-a-few-months-yet 400W unit ;)

You've had 3 PSUs in a year! See, you need that big comparison I was ranting about above ;)

Cheers,

Colin

[Colin Fyfe]

Hi Phil,

Same problem here! Glad it wasn't just me. It's not particularly loud, but the noise is unbearable.

Thank God it's not just me!!! I'm actually obsessed with it now. I dropped the Zalman 400W in and the first thing I did was check it was quiet (and it definitely is that) and then actively tried to hear coil whine :)

You've certainly got more tolerance than me - I had the PSU swapped out in less than a week when I heard it. Argh, the noise! Get the noise out of my head!!! ;)

Are you thinking about changing it for another unit?

[P-J]

Hehe! I have no tolerance either. I sent the PSU back about 48 hours after having it since it was truly unbearable. I sometimes found my ears 'ringing' that sound after leaving the house. I got a refund and just went and bought a stock 400w crappy PSU since my view of silent PSUs was tarnished by that Q crap :/

Generally, when the computer was 'idle', it was fine but during hard disk/mouse/screen activity, the coil buzz 'matched' whatever I was doing with the machine. I don't know whether this was the same experience you had?

At the moment I have two 80mm case fans running at 7v, an Akasa 60mm CPU LED fan running at 7v and the GFX card fan running at 7v, all through a homemade fanbus. I also have the HD running in a silentdrive, completely inaudible. I can switch all the fans off using the fan bus and the power supply noise is extremely loud in comparison.

Once I've UV'd my case I'll be looking into getting a quiet PSU and I'm extremely tempted by the 350w fanless that kustompcs.co.uk have on offer. If I can't bring myself to buy that (as is most likely the case) I'll probably look into the 400w Zalman you've so highly recommended :)

Phil.

[blackstar]

i've got a 350W fanless, and its soon to be RMA'd - the 12V line fluctuates heavily between 11.7 and 11.6V, i've never seen this kind of behavior before from a PSU costing over £30. its the first time i've had a BSOD with this machine, and its not using anywhere near the limits of the rails of this PSU. i've seen one other user with this PSU have similar problems with it.

if you have a Lian Li case, you'll also need to modify the PSU plate - and, be aware that the screws holding the case of the fanless PSU protrude (even though they are countersunk) to such a degree, its going to scratch the inside of a Lian Li case *very* heavily.

in short, im not happy.

[streetster]

no offence or anything... but why not buy a £40 or so PSU, then replace the exhaust fan with one of the panflo liquid bearing fans - the 14 or 21db ones.. i have a 21db one on a heatink in the p4 rig i have, and being completely honest the harddrive is louder than the fan... i also have a 340w chieftec psu which is pretty damned quiet aswell...

if anyone wants a link to the liquid bearing fans (which are in the region of a fiver inc) pm me, as i doubt kustom want me posting links to competitors :)

cheers

Mark

[blackstar]

that is a good way to do it, imo - i'm replacing it with a Zalman 400W PSU btw.

[streetster]

yeh. imo it seems stupid to dish out £70 or something for a 'silent' psu, when you can get a decent high spec wattage etc. one for £40ish (ie enermax) and then add a £5 silent fan and you are laughing...

byebye
mark

[Skipper]

Folks,

Reading through this thread has interested me as I'm in the process of waiting for a Vantec Stealth 520W PSU because my ears are suffering under the torture of an overstressed Quiet-PC 400W PSU.

Does anyone have any experience of these units? Will I still need my ear defenders over my cotton wool balls? ;)

Many thanks!

[Koolpc]

Lovely jubbly Q-TEC 550 in my machine!
Cheap and does the job well, no probs. Noisey, who cares!

[tiptoe]

Has anyone done this ..... with a paniflo fan ?

i have a chieftec psu ... are they all 80mm fans in P4 psus?

Does anyone have any instructions on how to do this ?

From what i have read in the past, its dangerous ..?

Excuse all the questions, just fancy a zalman but i could buy something else if i can save the money on my noisy psu by changing the fan!

Thanks