quitest psu?

AcidHell2 said:
So the akasa by a country mile then. Thanks very interesting as it uses a 80mm fan, but is still head and shoulders above the rest for sound at least.

Wow and only £120 that's cheap for a 1kw psu
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You should read other reviews, im pretty sure the akasa isn't the quietiest 1kw PSU avaliable.
The Zalman 1kw is one of the quietiest, read other reviews.
 
This is what I hate about reviews, everyone you look at is different grrr.

Whats a nightjar?

But taht powerup review is stupidly loud for all psu' Although it is at 10cm.
 
have you found the quietest one yet acid? I'm after the same thing myself atm >.<

although more in the 800-1kw range.
 
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I can tell you from personal experience that the Zalman ZM850-HP is very very quiet. In fact I would go as far as to say the fan is almost inaudible. I need to put my ear right next to it to even hear it.

And I have tried a heck of a lot of fans over the years (and settled with the Noctuas, even those I reduce in speed slightly) and am very fussy about system noise.

One word of warning though is that I currently have mine away for RMA. Since upgrading to my IP35 board and GTX260, there was a terrible screaching/squealing sound from the PSU. Contacted Zalman and they apologised for the inconveniance and told me to return it, so I assume they are aware of the issue.

Will see what happens when i get the replacement, but other than that issue, I found it an excellent unit.
 
Thing is the zalaman fan is rated a 31dba. Although that will be at max speed. I find 30dba extremely loud and annoying.
and one of teh power calc reckons I need 800wtas. But that's only with 2 water cooling loops.
I'm surprised a computer mag hasn't done an extensive noise test on every psu they try. It's not particularly hard.
 
I'd probably ignore the calculator and go for this, http://www.silentpcreview.com/Seasonic_M12D_850W unless you are sure you need 1kw (that is a hell of a lot of power though... ~13p per hour of use excluding monitors :/ )then I'd get 2 PSU's with the adapter to make them both turn on at the same time (a block that sits between the 24pin module that connects the green and a black on the second PSU.)
 
AcidHell2 said:
Thing is the zalaman fan is rated a 31dba. Although that will be at max speed. I find 30dba extremely loud and annoying.
and one of teh power calc reckons I need 800wtas. But that's only with 2 water cooling loops.
I'm surprised a computer mag hasn't done an extensive noise test on every psu they try. It's not particularly hard.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but depends on how they measured 30dba. It was probably a lot closer to the unit than other manufacturers. Techpowerup reviewed it and at 10cm they found it to be 31dba idle and 33dba load - at 10cm! And it was by far the quietest in their list. See here... http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Zalman/ZM850-HP/5.html

Believe me I couldn't stand anywhere near 30dba either. My loudest system fans are my Noctua NF-P12's (3 of them) which I run at between 800-900RPM. By default (1300RPM) they are rated at 19.8dba and I clearly heard them over the Zalman, hence why I reduced their speed.

To be perfectly honest, I don't think I ever heard the fan spin up on the Zalman, not even when I had 2 x 8800GTX in SLi for a short time. It's a very cool running unit. Probably largely thanks to the huge heatpipes.

Don't just take the manufacturers dba ratings as gospel, is basically what I am saying.
 
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