Could PSU wattage overkill be beneficial to silence?

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

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee, Devonavar

Post Reply
Runes
Posts: 9
Joined: Wed Jul 17, 2013 4:43 pm

Could PSU wattage overkill be beneficial to silence?

Post by Runes » Thu Jul 18, 2013 9:35 pm

I've noticed most people here try to get the lowest wattage PSU they can that will meet their power demand requriements.

Now I'm not an electrical engineer, but I have a couple theories and I'm wondering what you all think.

Is getting a high wattage PSU (that is also still high quality, I'm not advocating cheap brands & build quality) more likely to be silent?

Here's what I was contemplating
  • Higher wattage PSUs tend to have bigger & better heatsinks for cooling the components.

    Higher wattage PSUs tend to have bigger better capacitors, coils, mosfets, PWM chips and more conditioning.
    - Which means less load on each component at the same wattage because it's distributed amongst more VRM. This could mean less heat since heat causes resistance.
    - Since it's distribued more amongst beefier parts it may also be less suceptible to capacitor & coil squealing / whining / buzzing.

    Higher wattage PSUs sometimes have bigger enclosures & higher end fans
Am I onto something or am I misunderstanding? :?:

kater
Posts: 891
Joined: Thu Sep 07, 2006 11:20 pm
Location: Poland

Re: Could PSU wattage overkill be beneficial to silence?

Post by kater » Fri Jul 19, 2013 8:07 am

this is way too general; in the end, it all boils down to a specific model; have you had the time to read SPCR's PSU reviews, at least, say, a dozen newest reviews? this could be a good start to verify
also, I seem to remember such topics / thoughts surface here from time to time, so you might use the search feature for older discussion

just to quickly address one of the issues you're raising, namely heatsinks - in the era of affordable golden efficiency heatsinks really matter little; see how puny heatsinks in new SS or BQ are

concerning fans - no matter how hi-endish the fan is, if it spins at, say, 1000 RPM, it will be noisy (as in plainly audible); OTOH - if you match a good, intelligent controller with a generic fan, it will keep it in check (say, 600-700 RPM) thus making it effectively silent in many situations; also, AFAIR, majority of fans used in PSUs are ball bearing fans, without those fancy sleeve, hybrid etc. bearings; hardly hi-end if you ask me; still, it may be that recently ball bearing fans in PSUs are not used so often anymore - I'm not really up to date with current news; but I'd guass their reliability still is a major factor - especially that 3 or 5 years of warranty are quite common

speaking of controllers - I'd say this is much more important for a quiet / silent PSU than super high efficiency or a hi-end fan; especially in low / mid load, where other PC components are still operating v quietly;

Post Reply