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Silverstone ST30NF 300W Silent PSU reviewed
VL writes "Silence is golden as they say, but in Silverstone's case, it's, uh, silver. Will this silent PSU bring it, or will enthusiasts continue to be plagued with noisy PSUs? 'Initially I had some reservations of how a 300W PSU would handle our test system in real-world testing. Needless to say the Silverstone ST30NF 300W PSU got the job done efficiently and quietly, or should I say silently. It doesn't come cheap, ringing in at close to $150, but that's the price you pay for a high quality PSU that does not make any noise at all.'"
It's not hard to develop a fanless 300W PSU (or even more, if you're
so inclined). I started my career in Silicon Valley working for a
company that made small lots of custom power supplies for "the
government": everything from teeny low power jobbies to big HV
monstrosities in the KW range that drove TWT's. In the 5 years I
spent there, we probably designed over 125 power supplies and nont
one had a fan and all had very high MTBFs. The key is using
high-grade, mil-spec components that can run hot (what were called
JAN, JANTXV, and JANS back in the day), and using monster heat
sinks. They are, however, not cheap. If you want to run at 105
deg C, you pay accordingly.
~
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
>> "It doesn't come cheap, ringing in at close to $150..."
Wow. Those $200 WalMart PC's have got everyone's value systems really fucked up.
I'd be a bit more comfortable with the unit having a fan when it does reach load temperatures. I have a similar power supply of fanless design that has a "backup" fan. It is 0rpm idling and when playing games it spins up. Makes me feel just a wee bit safer. Especially during the summer.
Is this even applicable with high end systems today? I personally run a CPU at 3.5GHZ, have an ATI 9800XT, a DVD burner, a DVD player, multiple HDDs, etc. I just can't see a 300W power supply working for that type of application. Maybe for a low end system, but at that point you're not going to pay 150 bucks for a PSU in a low end system.
I have a Taurus fanless PS, and have had it for probably around a year. It's a 350W, and seems to be working fine - doesn't even heat the top of the case up. Unfortunantly I still have 4 other fans in the box to move air around. But the fanless PS really helps. So what's so great about this one?
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
What's wrong with this one?
3 30
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=Seasonic+S12+
Got mine for $50 and the 120mm fan doesn't contribute any more noise than my CPU cooler or old noisy hard drives.
I have a 500 watt antec phantom in my newest computer, the thing is silent. It does have a fan in the case that the PSU does get too hot, it can cool it off. I have played some pretty high end games, done some 3d rendering and what not, still haven't had the fan turn on, and the PSU hasn't gotten hot. It is nice to know that it's there though. I don't think I would ever buy a powersupply that didn't function like this, as I due value the quiet. I hope they continue to improve on this technology to provide even more powerful PSUs than currently available. (And at a lower cost, because I seem to remember this supply costing a bit more than most other 500w PSUs)
Needless to say the Silverstone ST30NF 300W PSU got the job done efficiently and quietly...
Needless to say? Then why did you write a review about it? Or were you just padding your remarks with random babble to bring the word count up and to try to make yourself sound smart and competent?
Please, leave the verbiage to people who know how to do it, and just get right to the point.
Having just heat-fried a Enermax 600W power supply that Tom's Hardware said was so good, how about a nice noisy PSU that is actually reliable over time? Does anybody still make them? Seriously, I don't care what the sound level is in the server room. None of this thermally controlled crap. I just want a high-wattage ATX-EPS12 PSU that runs cool enough to keep on working and constantly contributes enough airflow to the case to allow the rest of the computer keeps working too.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Having used a fanless PSU before (Antec's), they're heavy, not to mention expensive. Seasonic S12's are practically silent and the PSU will run cooler with a 120mm fan giving it a little ventilation. The Enermax Liberty's are supposed to be very good too, nice to have the detachable cables in SFF machines. Spend your money on power-efficient components that don't make the cooling systems work so hard.
I have a Seasonic PSU, and it seems better in almost every way. The Seasonic's fan is very quiet, its construction is excellent, the efficiency is very high, it provides more peak power, and it costs less than this silly thing. I assume that it's also lighter, due to having a sanely-sized heat sink.
Now, while this PSU is "totally silent", the power supply is assumed to have at least a minimal fan by just about every ATX system designer. As another poster mentioned, if yours doesn't have a fan, you're going to have to either choose very low-power components, or put in/ramp up other fans to compensate. So unless you're going to put this on some teeny underpowered VIA or Pentium-M-based system, you're going to make up in noise anyway.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Sure you don't need a fan in a power supply for TWT's. That's because they are usually mounted to a cold plate along with the TWT. The cold plate is liquid cooled with coolanol, a silion based coolant. The pumps pumping the coolant are 20 time as loud as any PC. PC power supplies really don't require a fan either. The fan is used to suck air from the front of the case to the back. A CPU fan is useless if you don't have sufficient air flow. Putting a PSU without a fan in many cases will cause your CPU to overheat. The way to fix it is guess what? Add a fan, you don't gain anything.
I found the review rather lackluster. In reviewing a fanless PSU I would think the PSU temperature and the case temperature would be measured both idle and under load for every PSU, instead of just saying "by the way it hit 51C under load". Also I would expect a more constant load draw than "running prime 95" for an hour or so. Perhaps hook up the PSU's to resistors so we can take the randomness out of the equation. Average fluctuation on each of the voltage lines (5, 12 & 3.3) measured in 5-minute intervals over the course of a half hour rather than a single reading would be nice as well. How well does it provides power under a brownout situation, does it survive a power surge while still giving proper power to the computer components? Does it even run longer than an hour at a time? So many questions unanswered.
SPCR generally does rather high-quality reviews against consistent baseline, which allows to do the comparison. It also covers all aspects of "silent computing" (and is essentially dedicated to it - including forums). For this particular PSU, just go here.
This is important, because there are too many unapproved power supplies out there. Those are the ones that fail, or worse, catch fire, when loaded up to their rated load.
The heat pipe arrangement looks like an afterthought. A simpler design would have the power semiconductors on the back plate with the fins. That's how industrial power supplies are usually built.
This is not a very good review. They did not make any useful measurements of the supply, nor did they even crack it open to see if it's well designed.
For some reason they used an actual computer as a load. That is going to result in an inconsistant load and useless results.
They claim to have measured "power" with a simple DMM. You cannot measure AC power this way. What they probably measured was apparant power. This doesn't take into account inductive or capacitive loads.
The voltage table is useless because the amount of load is unknown and inconsistent between tests.
There is no measurement of electrical noise on the output - which is the only problem I have ever had with PC PSUs (besides outright failures).
Basically their only real conclusion as "all of the power supplies worked".
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All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
0 dBA is extremely quiet, and fanless PSUs may be extremely quiet, but using '0 dBA' to mean 'practically silent' just perpetuates confusion over the dB scale.
While having no fans makes manufacturing completely silent PSU possible, it doesn't make PSU completely silent by default. Case in point is my fanless PSU - while it has no fans, it manages to produce some noise by itself (detached from the motherboard and peripherals) and through the graphics card (electric noise?). Either way it's constant whining/whistling, although rather quiet, is perfectly audible at night.
I agree. The second thing I noted is they failed to test the PSU. You might think that putting a PSU ina "high-end" system is testing it, but suffice to say, it isn't. You need to connect them up to a load generator, not a PC if you really want to test a PSU. 'Custom PC' (a UK mag for high-end computer customisation) did a review of 31 PSU's a few issues back, and they used a load generator to do it. They found that none of the silent PSU's could either output their correct voltage, and to top it off, some of the "silent" PSU's and the low-end PSU's actually exploded while being tested.
o duction.html Take a peak :)
If you wish to get a proper review of PSU's, my suggestion would be to grab that issue, as it is quite intresting to read. Infact, I've just checked, and they have put the whole Labs online from that issue, so http://www.pcpro.co.uk/custompc/labs/26/psus/intr
NeoThermic
Use my link above, or to view my server, NeoThermic.com
We don't need no stinking control room....
I've had issues when doing PC recording with the fan noise bleeding into sensitive condensor mics. Silent power supplies are great because they will allow more flexible design on home recording studios with the ability to keep the system in the room with you. A longtime issue fo DIY bands.
Right now I use a FW800 MDD Mac Dual 1.0 G4 which still has a siginicifant amount of fan noise. But much quieter than my first recording box which was a cobbled Frankenstien PC in a old Gateway case.
Right now our "control room" is in the studio with us. I can turn around and set up takes and start the recording...The Mac is quiet enough that the negligable and the seperation of the keys, guitar and drums is far enough so as not to be picked up. Vocals and acyustic guitar tracks will still be an issue. But I have panels to isolate the mic from the computer fan noise....
We've been tossing around the idea of putting together a PC for recording as well (keyboard player has been a PC user for recording and has a load of software we could use)
For you music junkies....grab some free tracks:
http://soul-amp.com/