Will the Seasonic X-1050 work okay in the Fractal R4 case? The hole on the bottom of the R4 for the PSU intake looks like it lines up with a standard PSU. But the X-1050 is longer than normal, so the intake looks like it is partly over a bar on the bottom of the case. Is this no big deal that the X-1050 intake might be partly covered? Just wanted to make sure.

If the X-1050 were installed upside down, it would have no obstruction on the intake, but warmer case air. Does it make any difference if a PSU is upside down other than the air temperature?

Anandtech's review does allude to it taking a 170mm PSU with a fan and up to 270mm without. I think that's what they mean in their specifications at least:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6102/frac ... revolution

Why do you need a 1050W PSU? What components are you fitting that need that level of power? Given that this is a standard ATX case you would not be able to fit a dual/quad processor motherboard which is really the only realm where that level of power is needed.

I've recently built a computer using the Seasonic X-1050 and will be using the R4 when it arrives in the coming weeks. The explanation, as far as my use case goes, is that it is one of the quietest PSU's SPCR has ever reviewed. The lesser wattage models get louder as they get close to their maximum, and the original run (650, 750, 850) are known to have electrical whine in cases, which may scare one off.

As far as the PSU fitting goes, I currently have the X-1050 installed in an old Thermaltake V3 until my case arrives, and while I don't know whether the fan on the top (or depending on your rotation, the bottom) fully goes over the hole in the bottom of the case, feeling behind the case I can feel warm air going out, and feeling under the case where the fan is I can feel cool air...I had read too that that fan would blow hot air into the case, so I'm not sure what's going on there.

None the less, if you like I can post back when I install the PSU in the R4 which should happen in the next week or two.

Thank you both for the replies.

edh, the article you linked cites 170mm length with bottom fan for the R4, so the X-1050 at 190mm length would not be an exact fit. Don't know if it would work anyway (with intake down position) with the intake partly covered by 20mm distance?

The X-1050 has more power than I would need, and I'm not deadset on it. My reasons were similar to lordmilko, that it seemed to be the only PSU reviewed by spcr that had no electric buzz or hum at all -a huge plus having none of that type of sound. Quiet is more important to me than efficiency. I like that it would be quieter under load. For example, on spcr's charts, the Seasonic X-650's fan seems to ramp up earlier, so that by 400w it is louder than the x-1050.

However I don't know how much of a downside there is to having a PSU that has much more power than required, particularly at low loads (like using Word or Excel)? I understand that it can be less efficient when using lower power, but how much of a downside is that? A lot? Is inefficiency the only concern? I don't know, and am not an expert on PSU's.

I may go with one gpu card, so max power under load could be less than 400w. Other PSU's for consideration are the AX850, AX750, and Seasonic X-650. Those had reports of some buzzing though. I don't care about the price differences -one of my computers went through 4 PSU's, and the time and hassle and shipping costs of that was much more than saving $50. In that regard the X-1050 seemed to be a quality unit that would last, and without any buzzing or humming. But we'll see, if it doesn't fit in the R4 and/or there are other reasons not to use it, then will have to find another option.
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See my own discussions on this issue

As you may be aware, while the Corsair AX850 is cheaper than the X-1050, it seems quite loud when you compare it to the X-1050 (25db vs 16db @ 400W, 35db vs 16db @ 500W). You may never hit that level of power usage, of course, however even at lower levels there is still a disparity between the two (AX850 is still 5db louder at 300W), so it really depends how safe you want to feel.

Looking at how the X-1050 fits in to the current case I'm using (which is itself not a very special case) the bottom fan seems to more or less line up with the holes in the bottom, however in this case it was a bit difficult to tell due some of the constraints this case imposes in fitting the PSU into the case. From observing pictures of the inside of the R4 and considering the length from the end of the PSU to where the fan starts, I would estimate the fans should mostly if not completely be over the holes in the bottom of the case.

What other components are you using then? If you have any kind of gaming graphics card with a stock cooler there is going to be far more noise from that. Even if you have a passive graphics card the buzz from the graphics card is highly likely to outweigh the PSU buzz.

Seasonic now have a Platinum series which supercedes the higher end X series. Would a Platinum 860 make more sense if you really do have that kind of power draw? If not there is also a 520W fanless Platinum model.

That's not even out yet, and who knows when exactly it will be out.

Isn't "electric buzzing" something that could vary sample to sample?

I have my R4 now, and can state that it is the case that the X-1050 fan does not completely stay inside the fan area in the bottom of the case; it goes over by about 1cm. However, this hasn't really presented itself to be an issue so I wouldn't consider it to be much to worry about.

Thanks for the feedback. 1cm overlap doesn't sound bad at all. I could even drill a couple holes for air on the case bottom where it overlaps.

I researched, and indeed there are some customer reports of buzzing, whining, etc, on the earlier Seasonic and Corsair models like the 650 and 750. That is annoying sound that I want to avoid. Low resonating fans are more acoustically tolerable to me than whining and coil buzzing that is loud enough that non-spcr users are complaining about it.

It's hard to know the ratio or probability of getting the same model PSU with coil buzzing, or not, but I didn't see any reports of that problem on the x-1050 and the Seasonic platinum series (which did have some DOA complaints).

That thread you linked was helpful lordmilko, about having a too-powerful PSU at low power usage -although there didn't seem to be a definitive answer. I may go with the Seasonic Platinum 860, which would in theory be more efficient than the x-1050 at low power draw, but perhaps enough power that the fan won't ramp up much during gaming.

I'd like to note, perhaps for those that may come across this thread in the future, that the X-1050 does in fact make a whine, as does the ASUS GTX 670 DirectCU II. However, these noises are only audible with your head right next to or pretty close to these components; I wouldn't have even noticed it had I not been trying to diagnose some other components' issues in my case. I had a hard drive I had to replace because of a whine; not all whines are created equal. I wonder whether we can even make a noiseless power supply of computer sized wattages without any noise being produced - at any distance - what-so-ever.

In any case, not only does the noise from my PSU and GPU die off quickly with distance, but a sound dampening case like the Fractal R4 basically eliminates any whine that may try to travel far. That said of course, YMMV.

Remember, with the Seasonic Platinum 860, Anandtech reported noticeable whining. I believe I refer to this in the article I posted above. Although reading over Anandtech's original article, I can only find a statement that the noise is noticeable at close range, much like my one is. It may not be the case that there's a problem then.

I think there might be a higher incidence of whine from certain products, but it certainly varies. I have an ASUS DCII GTX 670 TOP, and it has no whine whatsoever, but my Sapphire 7970 in another computer has it pretty badly (although it's improving with time). I sort of think my culprit there is a PC Power and Cooling MKII power supply, because the motherboard on that computer (a Gigabyte Z68) also has some whine when CPU changes states (as does its replacement). So 3 whiny components in one system makes me wonder if it's due to some resonance with the PSU.

I've noticed a similar thing. My 9600GT used to make a bit of a squeal under some conditions when powered by the Enermax Modu82+. It could be switched on and off just with glxgears. Since I've replaced that with an X-400 (which itself doesn't give me any squeal) the graphics card no longer squeals either.