QUIETEST PSU WHATS YOUR OPINION?

romperstomper · 30 Dec 2007 at 13:17

Bikerz said:
HOLD IT!!!!!

People say Corsair 520w, I have one and it idels only taking about 160W and is not silent. Its the loudest thing in my system!! My system is water cooled with 5 yate loon Low speed fans on a fan controller, even at 1200 rpm loons the psu is still loudest part of pc. My pc 3 meters from my bed under a desk and I can hear psu at night with pc idleing

Well I would say somthing is wrong with it then ,I have the 620w and I can not hear it over my case fans on low ,infact I just pulled it out stuck a pencil in the rear case fan and still could only hear it with my ear within 6 inches of the psu ..now thats low noise !

Bikerz · 30 Dec 2007 at 13:19

well new case with sound deading on way, so cant wait for that, then might try and get a truley silent pc from over a couple of meters

Jokester · 30 Dec 2007 at 13:24

For any given power consumption the 620W is quieter than the 520W version as far as I'm aware.

Jokester

>:|sh4d0w|:< · 30 Dec 2007 at 13:28

The Corsair HX series are indeed very quiet, nice big 120mm fan that spins very slowly.

J.D · 30 Dec 2007 at 13:36

Bikerz said:
HOLD IT!!!!!

People say Corsair 520w, I have one and it idels only taking about 160W and is not silent. Its the loudest thing in my system!! My system is water cooled with 5 yate loon Low speed fans on a fan controller, even at 1200 rpm loons the psu is still loudest part of pc. My pc 3 meters from my bed under a desk and I can hear psu at night with pc idleing

HOLD IT???? <----- ROFL.

How do you sleep at night?. People farting and humping in your street will keep you up all the time. A cat fight springs up 2 miles away at 3am. Bikerz wakes straight up like it's happening underneath his bed.

Sean_UK · 30 Dec 2007 at 13:39

Cr0fty said:
+1 Corsair 520w

Bikerz · 30 Dec 2007 at 13:41

ROFL cheers JD. I live in the country with not a house for a few miles, so no traffic or anything around here so yes maybe im too used to total silence, grrrr

Darren555 · 30 Dec 2007 at 13:45

Jokester said:
For any given power consumption the 620W is quieter than the 520W version as far as I'm aware.

Jokester

Not according to Corsair.

InkZ · 30 Dec 2007 at 13:45

My 620 is quiet.

Bikerz · 30 Dec 2007 at 13:51

SO they about 20db ideling? When it says system load surply it mean psu load? as system load on mine is only about 260w, so wont be anywhere near the 520w caplability, so surly wont go about about 23db?

Mekrel · 30 Dec 2007 at 13:54

slap ed said:
a lot off votes here for the corsairs however as a balanced opinion i have both a corsair hx 620 w psu and a fsp 7oow epsilon , and after much playing around in the same system i ended up using the fsp psu . just my opinion but i think it is definately quieter than the corsair but not modular unfortunately

You've made a bad choice then because the Epsilon units, and pretty much every power supply based upon them are poor especially with ripple with 12v lines often succeeding the amount of ripple set down by ATX specification.

JonnyGuru said:
Things were satisfactory until test 3. During test 3, I started to see ripple on 12V1 and 12V2 that was nearly 100mV. By test 5, the ripple was 100mV on 12V3 and 12V4 and had exceeded 100mV on 12V1 and 12V2. By test 6, the ripple on 12V1 and 12V2 had exceeded 150mV.

ATX specification has an "allowance" for 120mV. Mind you, test 6 was very stressful, pushing the power supply to it's limits, but it doesn't change the fact that the ripple exceeded spec and this is the first power supply to date I have had do this.

What's wrong with too much ripple? Well, if the voltage fluctuates too erratically, it can over work other regulators used to provide Vcore to the CPU, GPU, etc.

A representative of OCZ did find my findings concerning and asked that I return the unit for an exchange. I did so, and in the interim I obtained an FSP Epsilon 600W. The 600W version of the power supply the OCZ GameXstream is based on. In testing that unit, I found a good deal of ripple as well. When a brand new GameXstream was finally returned to me, I immediately plugged it in and found the same results as the first sample.

Fortunately, it is very unlikely any of us will have one of these power supplies at or above 400W, at least for any considerable period of time, but this high ripple measurement will be taken into consideration when calculating the performance score.

HardOCP on GameXtreme 1010w and OCZ epsilon based units in general said:
The first and most apparent was apparent right out of the box. The unit is labeled with 2 different 12v amperage ratings which were quickly followed by the unit being specified for more ripple/noise than what is allowed by the ATX12v specification. Yes, the unit does not comply with ATX12v spec by OCZ’s own admission. We recently saw this issue in our 450w-500w Battle Royal from a couple of less-than-reputable manufacturers, so finding this issue carrying over to a much better OEM and brand is extremely disappointing. This worry was then borne out during testing when the OCZ GameXStream exhibited more ripple/noise on the 3.3v/5v rails than is allowed by the ATX12v specification. Previously other reviewers have reported out of specification ripple/noise on the 12v rails with other OCZ/FSP Epsilon based units at high loads, however we were unable to verify these ourselves because neither unit we had in for testing would complete a 100% load test.

pastymuncher · 30 Dec 2007 at 14:07

chezney said:
just for fun here is a 600w version of the zalman by all accounts near silent does anyone have one of these? I am always scepticle about reviews.

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=351&pgno=0

I have the 750w version and i would say that you will not find a quieter psu anywhere, aside from a passive one. It works like a passive one most of the time anyway. The fan spins at a very slow speed when needed and it is completely silent. Add to that the excellent selection of modular connections and it's super stable rails and it all makes for a superb psu. They have also been getting very impressive reviews too.

Before this i, briefly, had an OCZ GameXstream 700w which was quiet but failed after only 4 weeks of use. I would'nt recommend any of these units to anybody.

Munky1080 · 30 Dec 2007 at 15:27

I recommend the Enermax Noisetaker...I can barely hear it if I put my ear up to the exhaust fan. It keeps flushing air out of your system for 2 minutes or until it gets below 40 degrees, as well.

J.D · 30 Dec 2007 at 15:38

Bikerz said:
ROFL cheers JD. I live in the country with not a house for a few miles, so no traffic or anything around here so yes maybe im too used to total silence, grrrr

I'm insanely jealous :eek:

. I'm about 100 - 150 foot away from the A720 and on the edge of Edinburgh City. I'd love the peace

.

Pastymuncher, I've had the OCZ 700Watt and it's fine?. My m8 gave me a loan of it after I sold my X1900XT and PSU to a friend. The OCZ 700Watt wasn't enough to power 8800GTX in SLI as well as his E6600 @ 3.5Ghz so he bought a new PSU. Thing is that it only failed SLI with Oblivion and all the other titles worked. Then it went into my AMD machine with my 2900Pro and now it's sitting in his sons system with 1 8800GTX and E6600 that he just got for Chrsitmas and this is over a year now. Still running perfectly so it seems you've just had a bit of poor luck.

Bikerz · 30 Dec 2007 at 15:40

Yeha I like it where I am J.D, bar the poor road condition to get to my house, which isnt much fun with a car slammed on coilovers! (my fualt i could raise her, but looks soo good low). My mate also runs a ocz psu and not had a problem with it

chezney · 30 Dec 2007 at 21:18

Right well I have defiantly decided I am going to go for this psu

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-020-ZA&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=235

It has beaten the corsair in terms of noise in all the reviews i can find and it has a little more headroom so that I do not need to worry about future upgrades and as for the question about OCZ stealth PSUs my case is full of under volted yate loon fans and the OCZ PSU is like thunder by comparison, its very loud. Thanks for all your input this thread may go on a while as there seem to be a lot of corsair fan boys out there (puts cat amongst pigeons) and seems like a lively debate.

Duke · 30 Dec 2007 at 21:29

Spec looks good, then for that price it should be! Let us know how you get on

Pulsedriver · 30 Dec 2007 at 21:43

chezney said:
Right well I have defiantly decided I am going to go for this psu

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-020-ZA&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=235

It has beaten the corsair in terms of noise in all the reviews i can find and it has a little more headroom so that I do not need to worry about future upgrades and as for the question about OCZ stealth PSUs my case is full of under volted yate loon fans and the OCZ PSU is like thunder by comparison, its very loud. Thanks for all your input this thread may go on a while as there seem to be a lot of corsair fan boys out there (puts cat amongst pigeons) and seems like a lively debate.

Join the club, im about to order that PSU too

longshanks · 30 Dec 2007 at 22:40

That Zalman looks great, on paper. Let us know what you think of it guys.

chezney · 30 Dec 2007 at 23:42

will do am gonna have some spare cash in about 2 weeks i will post some comments on this thread around that time as to the performance (christmas cleaned me out again).