Seasonic fanless PSU - noises ? other quiet alternatives ?

PSUs: The source of DC power for all components in the PC & often a big noise source.

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gilwe
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2013 9:04 am

Seasonic fanless PSU - noises ? other quiet alternatives ?

Post by gilwe » Tue Feb 05, 2013 9:09 am

I need my PC dead silent as I use it for recording/mixing and do it many time late at night,
so dead quiet means I can listen to the music at very low levels and still be able to mix...

After replacing the intake/outtake fans (both are now 80mm running under 1000rpm) and the XPU cooler (Arctic Freezer LP 11 - very quiet), it became so silent I can only hear the hard drives motors...
but all this with the the 80mm PSU fan modded to run at 800rpm...

I'm afraid this is too low for such a cheap PSU so I would like to get an adequate, silent PSU for my system.

I checked for two options:

Seasonic S12II-520 (120mm fan)
Seasonic X-Series SS-460FL (fanless)

Basically I wouldn't mind spending the money on the fanless models but I read about these X model producing all kinds of whining and buzz noises (presumably from the PS coils?) while Youtube also demonstrates some bad experience of noises in the various X models...

What would you recommend getting for minimum to no noise ?

I really need it as silent as it may get, and wouldn't mind the price.

Thanks !

edh
Posts: 1621
Joined: Mon Mar 17, 2008 1:49 pm
Location: UK

Re: Seasonic fanless PSU - noises ? other quiet alternatives

Post by edh » Tue Feb 05, 2013 10:35 am

MikeC has just written an adendum on his review that may be of interest:
MikeC wrote:ADDENDUM, 5 FEB 2013: Sample Number Three

Last week, some six weeks after this review was originally posted, I received a third sample of the Seasonic 520W Platinum. This one is apparently representative of the current production models. I tested the new sample 3 times, with many hours of steady modest load (<100W) and also standby between high load testing, over a period of 5 days. All this was to ensure that no changes occurred as the unit "broke in".

Overall, the level of whining noise of the third sample is very low and did not change over time or load. It is very unlikely to cause any negative reaction with 99% of potential users. (The 1% who might complain are the ones who would never be happy with any product.) I would call it a residual level of noise — not audible when one's head is more than a foot away, under any load or acoustic background. There is a wee bit of whine associated with the 5Vsb line, and it varies a tiny bit as that load is raised and lowered, but not to any significant or noticeable degree. As a function of 12V load, the level of whine is very low, and does not vary. When the measurement microphone is placed right atop the PSU, the frequency of the trace noise can be seen as spikes at 4kHz and 6 kHz, but even from this intimate distance, the levels are just -10 dBA and -15 dBA.

The very low level of electronic noise achieved in this sample is nice to see. Seasonic reps assure me that the issues which caused the higher than expected electronic noise in the original sample have been resolved. Apparently, it is the quality of the winding process for the transformer that affects the noise I found, and this issue has been identified and corrected, with continuous monitoring assured for the future. Typical production variance of the electronic noise from my sample is estimated to be approximately +7%, -5% — this is very tight tolerance, and a +7% increase will not be audible as any change at all.

The electronic noise with the second sample really wasn't serious, and this one is much better, so all in all, it's a very positive result.

As mentioned in the review, Seasonic reports that adjustments in the BIOS of some recent motherboards eliminates electronic noise completely with many earlier production samples. The settings are:

BIOS set up to ENABLE ErP/EuP (S4~S5)
BIOS set up to DISABLE Audio Always On
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1313-page5.html

Interesting indeed.

What hardware are you running? Are you sure you need that much power?

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