What does everyone think about fabless psu?

[WhereHere1]

Hi guys,
Just wondering what everyone’s opinions on the fabless psus are? I’ve seen seasonic make fabless, a well respected company.

however, I’m not sure how well this will perform.

I’m currently running about 10 HDDS, two NVMEs and two GPUs constantly mining.

Would a fabless psu be suitable in this situation? I am thinking about reducing the noice.

 

[Tetras]

If you want to reduce noise, it's probably cheaper just to way overspec the PSU than buy a fanless PSU that will cope with that level of load. I'm surprised the fan is beating out the hdds and GPUs for noise though.

 

[Meddling-Monk]

There's a few things to consider here:

Currently, you can't purchase the Seasonic TX700 PSU (The 700W PSU, the highest wattage fanless PSU currently available) in the UK from a normal etailer, so you'll be running the risk of getting duds delivered, or not as described ones, or scalped pricing ones, or a foreign version, or without proper warranty. Silverstone has got a rebranded version of this, the NJ700 coming out, it's white casing instead of black, but the same overall. But I haven't seen any stocks of this anywhere yet. But if you can get these, then you have at least another 400-500W to use on the GPU, after factoring in other components like the average modern CPU, RAM, motherboard, HDDs etc. But since sourcing them is troublesome, this is less likely an option for you right now. When these were available, they were around £250-270 depending on various factors. Right now, when I can find them, they're listed for a lot more now, often well above £300.

There are the 600W and 500W versions available to purchase, but these will limit what GPUs you can run for mining even more. Assuming they can power what you need, they are available here and there. The 500W can be had for £130 to £150. And the 600W (older model) for around £200. Only the 700W and 600W ones are Titanium efficiency, the 500W ones and lower are Platinum efficiency. Although this shouldn't be an issue under most circumstances for most people.

If you go with a semi-passive overspec'd PSU, currently the highest these remain fanless (silent) is up to around 600W only before their fans kick in. So if silence from the PSU if your main goal, look around for the 600W Fanless PSU and compare it with the highest end semi-passive PSU price wise. If there's a noticable difference in favour of the fanless PSU, most likely that'll be your better investment price wise.

Personally, when the 700W fanless PSU was available (TX700) I found that to be the better deal overall. Not only was its maximum output higher and remaining silent compared to a semi-passive PSU, but it was a good deal cheaper too: £200 (when I got it on a deal) compared to well over £350 for a 1600W model that can stay silent until only 600W fanless (best I've seen, and that one was more than £400). But silence was my goal I went fanless over semi, but your mileage may vary.

Given that you have GPUs always on, the likelihood is their fans will be spinning most of the time. In such a scenario, I agree with Tetras, a low fan noise or semi-passive with low fan noise PSU may be the better option, as the fan on the PSU is unlikely to be louder (or, much louder) than thoe on the GPU, especially if its inside a case.

And, also agreeing with Tetras, the HDDs are likely to cause a lot of vibration noise unless if you used a string/elastic mod to isolate them from the case (to prevent the vibrations of echoing from the case). Meaning the reduced noise from the PSU is unlikely to be noticed or of any real benefit over a semi-passive or low fan noise PSU because there's more noise coming from the HDDs.

So a lot of this will be determined by the details of the rest of your setup. Whether fanless is viable for you, or sem-passive is better, etc.

 

[mattyfez]

^what he said.

Personally a PSU with a hybrid fanless mode seems to make most sense to me.
It's silent as the fan doesn't spin until it's under moderate /heavy load, and then the fan kicks in if it it needs additional cooling.

Also as mentioned above, HDD drives are surprisingly loud and annoying once you've quietened the rest of the system so I'd suggest only using SSD sata or m. 2 drives if at all possible.

If you're running ten spin drives I'd hazard that's where the lions share of noise and vibration is coming from.

 

[Meddling-Monk]

Just a minor heads up, there are now some stocks of the Silverstone Nightjar NJ700 available. Due to rules on competion, I won't mention names or places, just do a search yourself if interested. However, OCUK hasn't shown signs of including fully passive PSU's yet unfortunately.

But I'd like to give a rough price for silent operation review for anyone interested in going with such a PSU.

Right now, you can grab the NJ700 (700W Fanless) PSU for around £220. That's 700W where no extra noise is generated.
Right now, the closest semi-passive PSU equivalent, Corsairs AX1600i, stays passive till "around" 640W. But this PSU is not in stock here at OCUK at the moment (think it's a rarish item) and it is listed for at least £450.
Another alternative, is Bequiets Dark Power 12 1500W, which for up to 750W (50% of it's full power), has the fan running but only produces around 12.1 dba. But I don't have the details of how this was measured, so can't say whether you'll notice it or not. This is priced at £430 here at OCUK.

So at the posting time of this reply, 19th August 2021, in order to gain the same "fanless" silence (or near equivalent), you need to pay over twice the amount in order to do so.

Or...

Whilst not sure if suitable to do, in theory, you can also get 2x the 700W Passive PSU (£440), and have ~1400W on tap (that is fully silent due to both passive PSUs being fully passive), and still only be at around the same price as the sem-passive option (£440 vs £450), or just a bit more than the low fan noise option (£440 vs £430). And that's assuming you need more than what the single passive PSU offers. So if your system can run on 700W or less, you can just grab the one if it's suitable* for rest of the system.

* Suitability here, is having passive or super quiet setup (ultra low noie fans at super low settings, watercooling, etc). If you have HDDs, Optical Drives, noisy GPUs coolers, noisy CPU coolers, then you won't really benefit from the advantage of going passive and having no noise from the PSU as those other parts will create enough noise anyway. In which case, consider the semi-passive options, or low noise options instead. If you're largely silent/passive already, then you may consider the two Passive bridged PSUs if more than 700W, or the single semi-passive, or single low noise option, as the prices are near enough each other anyway.