That sounds encouraging Was thinking of something along these lines: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/500w-northq-pacific-ii-fanless-psu-atx-22-plus80efficiency-0db-noise!!
Northq? When i said fanless PSUs are reliable i didn't mean that fanless PSUs from shoddy brands are reliable aswell.
SPCR tested passive PSUs a while back: http://www.silentpcreview.com/Fanless_PSU_Torture_Test_Roundup Anyway IMO they are all more or less pointless. I wouldn't really want to have a 100% passive PC, as I just don't trust all the components can stand the heat for too long. You CAN have a huge cooler on the CPU and GPU and it may work with zero fans, but there will always be those pesky power circuitry components etc. getting crazy hot under/around the main heatsinks. This could easily be prevented by having atleast a single slow turning (virtually silent) fan somewhere in the build. And again, if you're going to have that single fan somewhere, why not have it in the PSU? Also these units are so high wattage, I can't imagine anyone building a rig that consumes closer to 400 W, but still works without a single fan... Not without some crazy modding anyway. And don't take me wrong, I've been using a Silverstone Night jar 400 W to power a Q9450 + HD4870/HD4890/HD5850 build for ages and it seems rock solid, but this was done in a case with plenty of airflow. EDIT: Ofcourse with lower wattage builds passive cooling seems more viable, but then why would you buy a 400 W+ power supply when you could get away with a picoPSU?
Seasonic is the only one I'd ever use tbh. Most 'semi-fanless' PSUs only fire up when under high use anyway and are mostly 'passive': my X-650 does.
Aye, and ofcourse you always get many more "semi-passive" quality watts per buck then you get 100% passive ones, thus the semi-passive PSU doesn't have to work as hard and is even more likely going to stay silent anyway.
I don't think we can speak of "working hard" in a passive build. My guess would be that the 400W fully passive Seasonic unit won't go past 50% load. Those many more semi-passive quality watts won't ever be used.
That's a great review - thanks for that. The Seasonic X-400 looks like a go-er, the others look like a disaster waiting to happen. Just need to decide on a good s775 and passive gpu cooler for a radeon 4850
Have another review: http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=200. Looks very good indeed.
I used to have the semi-fanless Antec Phantom 500 a while back. It had such grat heatsinks on the outside that it never fired up it's fan, not to mention looked awesome. I'm no tester though, so stability and ripple and such i cannot comment on. I agree mostly with the sentiment that fanless PSUs are pointless, as they all require decent case airflow, and thus fans. However, you can always upgrade your PSU by swapping out the fan.
Nice one, thanks! It certainly looks good. A couple of years ago when modular PSU's became 'the thing' I changed my tagan for an HX corsair and instantly regretted it on the noise front. The x-400 sounds like a good idea
I have had a Tagan 420w for 10 years now, still going strong and quiet as anything. It powers my test rig. I also have a Corsair HX520 and that is also dead silent. Maybe you had a dud?
