In my pvr machine i have my old q-tec psu, it has two xinruilian fans in and according to the info i have found they push about 30CFM and are somewhere between 25 and 30dba depending where you look. Now i was think of changing them for two akasa amber fans at 20dba 25cfm. The quick question i have does it matter that much that the cfm is lower ?? Was thinking of two silenx 14dba 28cfm but i think cost a bit much for a cheapish psu. Then agian i may change my mind.
As long as you're running it at fairly low power levels, it might be OK - however, be very careful and monitor it closely after the switch if you do choose to try it. Particularly with very cheap, inefficient PSUs such as the QTec, overheating can occur if you swap out the fans and then try to run supplies under too high a load (I have had an eBuyer Extra Value unit smoulder). To be honest, I wouldn't recommend it, though. Get a Seasonic S12 300W and it'll cater to all your needs in near-silence
Umm, I wouldn't bother. If you really, really have to use that PSU for some horrific nightmarish reason, then I would use some panaflows or Papst's. SilenX don't shift as much air as they claim, and certainly aren't a good idea in any critical application. Seriously though, you'd be so much better off saving up the pennies and buying an Antec Phantom or a Seasonic. The phamtom is totaly passive, and Seasonic PSU's have the best fan controllers in them of any PSU's, according to Silent PC Rewiew(SPCR), so will remain quiet almost all the time. Q-tecs really are just about the worst PSU's you can buy. They're dangerous, I mean, they're banned in several countries for being too damn explodey. I would strongly reccomend that if you value any of the PVR parts then you don't stick a Q-tec inside that case.
Banned...never knew that. You dont by any change have any links with articiles about this have you.?? The Q-Tec i have had for sometime and has'nt of yet given me troubles though.... fingers crossed. Although it has'nt been in my machine for a long long time. Been in my dads for sometime and that machine is'nt always on.
Don't have any specific links to Q-tec badness. Googling should turn up a large number of issues. On the OcUK forum where I used to plant my virtual feet on a daily basis, there were frequent problems reported about the things, and there was a bit of a joke about them being closers in makup to something like TNT or C4 then an actual power supply. There is actually surprisingly little on google specifically about major problems with them(at least on the first page) given how bad the things are. But ask any seasoned techie and they'll tell you pretty much the same thign, Q-tec are bad news, they don't kill a component in everyones case, but if you value your stuff it's not worth the risk.
nothing wrong with Q-tecs. my old one powerd my entire pc. pump. 8-9 fans. and alot of other stuff. worked fine.....sort of. just turned into a space heater. handy really used to re-direct the air to keep my feet warm on a cold night. mmm toasty.
Well, I'm not even going to bother to disagree with Big Adam there. Someone else can if they want, but as far as I'm concerned, someone saying theres nothing wrong with Q-tecs is like someone saying the sky is bright yellow.
Alright, enough OT now or you'll be getting a Tagan in the post To the OP: Scan have a Seasonic S12 300W supply for a very reasonable price. You won't find a quieter and more efficient unit for that money.
Wow, thats a supurb link there, because thats a supurb unit for that ammount of money. I paid about £80 for its bigger brother the 500(I think) and it's a great unit, but to be able to get one that'll easily run a PVR for £35 is unbelievable.Seriously consider that, Monkey.
If you're going to stick with that unit, it all depends on the heat output - if the air poping from the rump is nice n cool, then go ahead.
what, just beacuse i'm sticking up for a product that happily powered my pc for a 3 years. Ok i did have to modify it to shift the heat and it sounded like an aircraft but it did the job it was suppost to. it works perfectly fine. so i might have gotten a good one by some fluke of the universe. one that really worked nicly. but never the less it worked nicly. i tend to reccomend/use stuff i used before rather than using review optionons beasue i used the product before. also why i reccomend danger den stuff, or westen digitel harddrive. i used them before and they worked lovely. i used q-tec power supplies before so i reccomend them depending on the system. i know they won't power a high end system like an amd dual core sli monster machine but they will happlie power some of the older kit. which is what my old q-tec did.
I have dealt with a total of one Q-Tec PSU's, and that was swapping it out for a mate of mine for a Hiper. Plugged it in just before the change and was about to turn it on to test the system before BANG, big spark could be seen through the PSU fan and a smell of burning. Avoid them at all costs.
fine......i had the one in a million of a good one. the day i bought it the universe must have loved me. as i never had any problems with it.
wow, did'nt expect this to turn into a debate about q-tecs, lol. Anyways so changing the fan out for a slower one is a bad idea then. Does this count for all psu's of just q-tecs,not nessacerily for a slower fan, just changing it in general, say for a led fan that push's the same or more cfm or a bigger fan?? So out of all the psu's out what ones are the quietest, reliable and are fairly cheap? With the q-tec i have read others with problems with them but the bit about them being banned in my opinion is proberly a rumour, i say this because the only refereance to this i can find is people saying it on forums, if there was much truth to it i would think there would be news articalys.
Generally it's not a good idea with any cheapish power supplies unless you can find a model with very similar airflow but lower noise. On more expensive units, it can usually be done without many problems. Check out the Seasonic 330W that I linked to above - it's a bargain at that price. Very high quality quiet units (with regard to the Q-Tecs: I do remember seeing something relatively official-looking which stated that certain Q-Tec PSUs (specifically the 400W models) were banned in Finland because the component spacing for certain parts was dangerously small)
K Thanks... any other makes that are high quality but very quiet ?? I know antec,enermax and ocz psu are of high quality but the prices are a little high for a machine thats running a 1800+, 768mb pc2100, Ti4200, DigiTV, HDD + DVDrom and a Abit NF7
Big Adam: I wouldn't have disagreed strongly if you'd said "I have a Q-tec, and I had no bad experiences with it" or something along those lines, but saying "Theres nothing wrong with Q-tecs"(implying the majority of Q-tecs are fine) is just something that I, and many others on this board are going to strongly disagree with. It's not impossible to get a unit from them that doesn't explode or kill components, but a number of people have had one or two that died, it's just not something that can be ignored. I found a quote on the SPCR forum explaining why the Q-tec's were banned in finland Monkey: If you can afford it, go for the Seasonic PSU, it'll power what you've got there easily,safely, quietly, and for a long time.
