Ordered myself a Nexus Value 430W before the last three go out of stock again. Will post back with my results. Expecting great things.

Does the PSU have long enough cables to be used in an Antec Three Hundred or Cooler Master 590?(yes, I know the cases require modding to be silent). I'm worried in particular about the P4 connector since many motherboards seem to have it positioned on the top-left corner.

I'm installing this in a top-mounted case so I can't say, but the connector looks reasonable length. Besides, you can buy extension cables for a few £/$/euros and a lot of cases already come with this extension in the bundle.

Got the NV430 installed in my new system and I'm amazed. It makes the Corsair HX 520W I had seem like a PCP&C, there just isn't any discernable noise at all, besides the elecrical buzz, it may as well be fanless (This includes sticking my head right beside the unit).
HIGHLY recommended.

+1 I agree

Two quick notes from someone who has bought and RMA'ed one of these recently:

1. If you have a P18x you will need a 8-pin EPS extension.

2. If you are planning on using this power supply on an AFCI circuit, you may be out of luck.

I returned mine because it tripped the breaker in my bedroom. NCIX tested the unit and found no problems, so it seems that this PSU may not play nicely with AFCI breakers.

It could have been the cable, not the PSU. I've had more power cables go bad than PSUs now I actually buy decent PSUs.

Just bought this silent beast back in Holland, installed it over the weekend, and it is amazingly quiet....I do not even hear it from 1m...incredible...it seems stable so far haven't had problems with it...now I am a little bit frustrated of the noise coming from my external Iomega 1TB hd....grr

So far so good a month in with mine.

Just bought mine, and am looking forward to the arrival! *Thankyou* SPCR.

With PSUs like this, they're going to become a commodity soon - and that's a very good thing. Things like monitors and speakers, and especially CPUs and hard drives can always get bigger/better and progress up the tech tree.

But the PSU? Let's have a universal, quiet and efficient one, already. Inside every PC.

I hope Nexus sells tons of these things. Cheap, unassuming, no paint job (who cares), and nevertheless - it's better than the rest.

Received the Nexus Value 430 PSU today.

******EDIT********
They've updated it with 4 SATA connectors (instead of 2 which was mentioned in the review):
******************

Eager to hear the acoustic sig, at first, I plugged everything together, and then artificially stopped the CPU fan.

Great I thought - this is the quietest PSU fan I have ever had. I then thought hmm... I can still hear a very slight 'whoosh' noise at around 2 metres though. Fine I thought, this is still 100x better than before.

It was then that I realised that the HD was still on! Tried again with the HD unplugged and...

WOW!!!

Just as SPCR said, you have to put your ear right next to the thing to hear even the slightest sound (tiny click sounds mostly for me).

I'm still in shock almost - my previous PSU was rated at 17-18dba, and sounded like a jet engine in comparison. They always exaggerate the ratings for some reason (perhaps they measure at 10m instead of 1m ). But when nexus/SPCR says 15.5dba at one metre, they really mean it.

All I can say now is: EAT DONATION SPCR Quality journalism like this deserves it.

Google products doesn't show any results for this PSU.

http://silentpcreview.pricegrabber.com doesn't either.

http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/std ... upply.html has it for $80+S&H

ncix has it for the Canadian customers. $109.99 CAD + S&H

Looks like it's easier to find in the Euro zone than in North America.

Heads up to Canadians, NCIX has this PSU on sale for $90 until July 7th.

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php? ... omoid=1078

I'm going to buy one of these power supplies as part of my silent (or near silent) PC project.

Regarding the review comments about the vents in the cable side of the unit, I'm curious to know if anyone has experimented with blocking them up, and if it made any difference to the performance or the case temperatures.

anyone know the UL number on the Nexus 430?

from the article...

I've got a possibly silly question here:

My motherboard (Asus p5Q-EM) has a 4-pin ATX 12v connector socket on it, but I can't see one amongst the Nexus PSU leads. It has got a 4+4 pin connector in two halves, one half of which appears to correspond with the plug hole shapes in my motherboard, but I don't know for sure if that's anything to do with it. The PSU didn't have any instructions with it and the motherboard instructions just say not to forget to connect the ATX 12v lead, so I'm none the wiser at this point!

Should I connect the corresponding half of that 4+4 pin plug to my motherboard's ATX 12v socket? I can't see anything else on my PSU that would do it. I already have the 24 pin plug connected.

Thanks very much

Just plug lower part in 4-pin socket and you're good to go. It worked for me and I have run my machine 24/7 nearly a month now. Done some gaming, picture editing and such without hitch or crashing.

Thank you.

I just wanted to make sure in case I blew the thing up before I got a chance to use it!

I could find plenty of references to similar questions via Google, where people have a 4-pin connector on the PSU and an 8-pin socket on the motherboard, but nothing the other way round like my situation!

Better safe than sorry. Enjoy excellent PSU!

Thanks for the excellent review, SPCR!
I bought the Nexus Value 430 and it's really quiet

However, my machine does not wake up from stand-by/ACPI S3 mode anymore.

The power button does nothing, clicking the mouse turns on its LED but the power supply does not want to turn on.

Do any other owners of the 430 Value have the same issue?

I even got the PSU replaced and the replacement unit has exactly the same problem. I put back my Corsair HX520W and sure enough, wake up works again.

My board is an Intel DP35DP; I tried the newest and second newest BIOS.
The power consumption of the entire machine is never above 180W.

I have connected the 24-pin ATX power connector and one of the 12V 4-pin CPU power connectors to the board and two SATA connectors to hard disk and DVD drive.

The voltages are all in range. During S3, the 5V stand-by line is powered and the memory LED is ON as well.

Thanks for any suggestions.

I haven't tried the stand-by feature, but mine isn't as quiet as it should be, based on the description in the review.

I just wanted to mention that in case anyone reading this is expecting theirs to be effectively silent. I can still hear mine over 12' feet away in the far side of the room.

Hi,

The Nexus Value 430 is now being sold at NewEgg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817610002

Has anyone else had problems with sleep mode using the Nexus Value?

I have asked Nexus about the issue and all they did is "get in touch with Microsoft" because they think it's a Vista problem.

I'm pretty sure it is completely unrelated to software. In fact, I have done some further investigation and found the following behavior:

# # # Step 1: PSU connected to mains power (230V AC)
PS_ON# (pin 16): 3.9V
PWR_OK (pin 8 ): 0.0V
-> Conforms to ATX specs

# # # Step 2: Press power button -> Machine turns on and boots Vista
PS_ON#: 0.0V
PWR_OK: 5.0V
-> Conforms to ATX specs

# # # Step 3: Put Vista into sleep mode (S3) -> Machine enters sleep mode
PS_ON#: 3.9V
PWR_OK: 0.0V
-> Conforms to ATX specs

# # # Step 4: Press power button -> Nothing happens
PS_ON#: 0.0V
PWR_OK: 0.0V
-> Violates ATX specs, unless there is a reason why the PSU cannot turn on (short-circuit or over-load), however, nothing has changed to step 2, at which the PSU turned on just fine

So the problem is that the PSU does not turn on after sleep mode even when signaled to do so by the mainboard. There's nothing Vista could do about this I guess

Nexus has not replied to my emails for some tim; I guess they are still talking to Microsoft.

And what happens if you simply shut the machine down and press the power button? From the PSU side of things, there's no difference between S3 and S5, so my guess is the PSU doesn't have the power on +5VSB to resume from S3. Try with less RAM.

Thanks Monkeh16, I'll try with less RAM.

However, I have measured the +5VSB line, it's 4.95V during S3, which is more than the two other PSUs that work had (one was as low as 4.75V). Also, +5VSB is specified with 2.5A, which is not too much, but should be enough for two DIMMs and a keyboard.

I'm having intermittent problems with my Nexus 430 not booting.

In one situation when it didn't, the voltage on +5VSB was all but zero, then I came back a day or two later and it was a normal reading and the PSU booted fine.

Sometimes the computer shuts down on its own, but I am not sure if this is a PSU or an unrelated issue. Problems booting back up are PSU's, though.

I have not tried S3. I'm running Ubuntu 9.04 but first ran into the issue even before an OS was installed.

I haven't looked into this in considerable depth, and it is fully possible that this is just my unit being wonky. Interesting to know some others are having issues too, though.


I am withdrawing my comment and offering an apology - the problem, at least in my case, turned out to have been a wonky power extension bar. Go figure.

I have removed all cards excetp video, all USB devices and all but one DIMM module, yet the problem is still the same.

I'm completely sure it's not a software problem, but Nexus told me they were still waiting for a response from Microsoft. I hope they will figure out what the issue is and fix it in a future version of the PSU.

I don't see how it can be a software problem, but if the machine boots from S5 it should boot from S3 too. It could easily be the board (DP35DPs are good boards, but.. far from perfect).