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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 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.
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?
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