Until we have here on SPCR a review, i found one. Just a few quotes:



Cheaper than a S-12 500 (probably than a S-12e+ too), more efficient and it's seems that it's quiet too. A winner?
Of course they have a 400W model for normal peoples.

At least according to specs, Antec Neo HE 550W is capable of producing about 42A to its three 12V rails simultaneously, so that 36A is not that "whopping". Using only two rails it would be that 36A, since it is 18A each. Just as a side note.

To put it in another way, Antec Neo HE is capable of producing 504W to 12V rails alone, which is about the same as the silverstones total rated output.

But then again, the Neo HE is rated a total 50w higher than the silverstone so that shouldn't be much of a surprise.

...and in my country Silverstone Element is $53 cheaper than NeoHE 550 and $42 cheaper than S-12 500...

A review is in the works, pending some questions about the sample we received. Efficiency and noise are pretty similar to the 80+ Enhance that we tested not long ago — no surprise since the innards come from Enhance.

It uses the same fan as the SilverStone Strider ST60F... which is the same fan used by the SilverStone Strider ST56F reviewed by SPCR.

And it was NOT quiet (it's a high speed fan unlike Seasonic's).
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article294-page4.html

It's high speed depending on how much voltage you give it. It really is going to depend on how well the fan controller is built.



As DanW points out: The NeoHE is a 550W while the Silverstone is 500W. The Antec costs almost twice as much. That's like pointing out that the Corsair HX620W puts out 50A on it's 12V rails and not recognizing that it's a 620W PSU.

Err... No. It's high speed because it's high speed. HS (2200rpm max).


Seasonic's fan is medium speed MB (2050rpm max).

"Err..." 2200RPM Max... as in Maximum. What makes you think it's always... or even ever... spinning at 2200RPM?

...

1. Ever read a PSU review? Apparently not because if you did so you'd know this.

So yes it is going to spin at 2200RPM!

2. Did I say it would be always at 2200RPM? No, then don't put words in my mouth. I specifically said "max" as in "it would go that fast". And since no (generally speaking) fan starts at less than 5V (4~5V) a high-speed fan would start faster hence louder! YES! And in this case, that would mean 24dB right from the start.

3. It's a high-speed fan! If they wanted it to be quiet they would have chosen a medium-speed fan like the one on the Seasonic.

Jeez... One person tries to bring some facts (that some people would find useful) into the discussion and is treated like a liar..

LOL! You're funny. I'm actually picturing you with veins buldging from your temples. Or eyes buldging like the coffee drinking guy from the old MadTV episodes.

I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but you can't deny that you made the implication that the fan could not possibly be quiet because it's the same fan as in the ST56F. Did I misunderstand that?

Of course the fan can potentially be given a full 12V and spin at full RPM if the temps get up that high. And if it does, then it will be loud. But the Element 500 is a much more efficient power supply than the ST56F and shouldn't get as hot. If it doesn't get as hot, the fan controller isn't going to spin the fan up as fast as early as it did in the ST56F. So we can't make the assumption that the ST50EF is going to be as loud as the ST56F even at the same load just because the two have the same fan.

Of course, this is all speculation until SPCR gets the review done.

The two fans only have 150rpm difference in top speed, and presumably that difference persists throughout its working range. This is not a big difference.

Like Sthrioll said, until it hits the SPCR testbench we won't know anything about its true performance (acoustically). So let's reserve judgment until that time. There's no point arguing over it until then, and most issues should be covered in the article anyway.

Since very few people will ever reach 400W, I doubt the fan will run at full speed. However, I doubt even more than it will run quietly.

Hmm, so it will stay at 4.7 volts for a longer time, emitting only 24 dBA. Sure "sounds" like a new champ to me.

Of course they could lower the controller voltage... Oh wait, this is a high speed fan and probably won't start at 3 volts it would have to get to reach 20 dBA.

Oh, I feel that I've opened Pandora's Box.
I guess that "king" wasn't a good choice, maybe "contender" is more appropriate.
I'm pretty sure that after SPCR review Element will fall behind Seasonic or NeoHE, but I want to point at a PSU which is efficient, silent and cheaper than well-known S-12, and maybe someone which is not a hardcore silencer is willing to trade 2-3 dBA in full-load for saving a good amount of money.

I'm not sure why champ comes into play here. 24 dBA certainly doesn't compare to the 20-21 dBA that the NeoHE, Seasonic Models and a few others achieve. It's certainly a very good psu and an option for many, but definitely no "champ". Not to mention there's a number of new models out there with very high efficiency and possibly lower noise.

I thought my sarcasm was pretty obvious.

Now what is that saying about sarcasm being the lowest form of wit...?


24dB(A) is still very quiet for normal people who aren't absolute silence freaks.

I'll shut up now.

Serves me right for reading too quickly and not noticing

That was my point.

Now, not a scientific approach, just a slice of real life usage.
Yesterday three peoples bought this PSU (yep, I'm persuasive ) and all three told me their first impressions: cold and silent.
Cold - a good thing, means high efficiency, low RPM, quiet.
Silent - heh, nothing scientific, dBA numbers or so, only three pairs of ears. For now it's enough for me.
One of them told me that with this PSU CPU temperature rose with ~3°C over old Delta PSU, so it's seems that PSU fan is spinning at low RPM's.
It's seems that jonnyguru was right:


Now I'm waiting for a SPCR review...

Hi guys, for Element series power supplies, we use two different model fans:


ST50EF - AD1212HS 0.44A

ST40EF - AD1212MS 0.34A

SPCR reviews of ST50EF-Plus and ST40EF would be nice.

You made some quality points. I just wanted to point out that in the SPCR review of the ST50EF-Plus the fan voltage never hit 12 and it stayed consistantly lower than the chart you posted. In fact I just checked over 10 SPCR reviews and couldn't find another power supply that hit 12v. Most topped out at 10.x or 11.x volts on the fan control.

It's notable that comparing to the Seasonic supplies the fan controller in the S12 maxes at 11.0v in the 330w, 430w, and 500/600w reviews.

I was wondering about the acoustic effect of placing a diode in series with the fan (to give a small constant voltage drop).

A 1N5819 Schotky diode would give about a 0.35V drop (assuming that the fan never draws more than 1W). Using 4 in series/parallel would ensure a consistent 0.7V drop and would give almost the same voltage curve as the S12-650E+.

Has anyone tried this form of undervolting with PSU fans? I'm tempted to try with my ST-50EF+ (which I think is very quiet apart from coil whine when the PC is off and is about 60% of the price of a S12 500E+ down here) but if anyone has already tried this, I'd love to know.

Greg

Some over here know my disappointments about this PSU in terms of noise. I got today my PSU and tested it next to another new one. Both had that whine sound with no load un 5v and both fans where spining as fast (or at last my eyes seen that) and the same amount of fan sound. I got back home and told my that i'm a silent freak. Then, I got my multimetter and tested the voltaje on the fan with no load un the PSU again. There was 5.6v and not 4.5v to the high speed ADDA fan (2200RPM and ~85CFM at 12v based on the datasheets). That was a lot more compared to the numbers that SPCR got in the review.
Now I can't imagine that the other PSU i've tested had another bad fan-controller. Nor it has an old one because it was even other revision of the PSU (the fan grill is a bit different and some wires inside of it were routed differently). I don't want to tell that is something wrong in the SPCR review either but there is something strange over here!
SST Guy, can you tell us what is the starting voltage for the fan? And how to lose the whine noise? The fan controller monitors the temperature, load or both?

To note some other thing, probably almost half of the noise it makes is by the buzzling or whine or whatever is called. I'll try to get some more load un 5v line to see what it happens.

If the S12-430 is as silent as STEF+, then I must to admit that NeoHE430 is the quietest active cooled PSU ever made in large serie. To be more specific, i own a NeoHE430 and it's damn quiet PSU but it has an ugly drawback, I RMAed 2 time in almoest a month and a half and you don't want to know the stories!

The SPCR reviews clearly show that the S12-430 is quieter than the NeoHE at all loads.

Not quite at all loads, actually.

And if you look at the S12-330 sleeved version, it scores 21 dBA at low loads, suggesting the same for S12-430 sleeved version.

I reckon the NeoHE sounds smooth at low loads too. My sleeved S12-430 certainly doesn't.

The 430 has bigger heatsinks, so it doesn't follow that it will be noisier just because the 330 is.

I was actually referring to the minimum noise before the fan ramps up.

Unless there's reason for Seasonic to implement a lower minimum voltage for S12-430 's fan controller?