I have the choice of:

Antec Earthwatt EA 650 Green 650W

Antec High Current Gamer 520W

Coolmax V500 500W

thermal Take TR-500W

Is any of the above consider as a quiet power supply? (I think Earth Watt should be, but it doesn't say what is the dB in fan noise on their website), and which other 1 is quiet, and which 1 is the most silent?

Do I take it that these are the only PSUs available locally? Is ordering on the Internet a possibility at all? What components are you going to power with it? How much power do you actually need?

Here is the SPCR recommended list:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/Recommended_PSUs

This might be 1 year out of date but things don't change as fast with PSUs as other components. None of the PSUs you list are on the SPCR recommended list but that does not strictly mean that they are bad.

I would automatically ignore the Thermaltake. They do not produce quiet components and their official specs on how loud their components are appear fictional.

The Coolmax is very very cheap. I would avoid it as it almost certainly won't have any kind of fan control so the fan will spin at maximum speed all of the time. Just Googling for this PSU also shows some pretty bad opinions on it's power output.

The 2 Antec's appear good but are by no means the quietest PSUs. I would look elsewhere.

I agree with the post above by edh. I would also add that the reputation of PSU makers is crucial since this usually equals to the reliability of the PSU. I have never heard of Coolmax so I would suspect that their products are too cheap = bad quality. The unit is probably not that quiet neither.

The Earthwatt Green will probably be the most quiet unit. The Antec HCG is targeted towards gamers who seldom require quietness, so the HCG will most likely be loud.

fyi - the HCG 520 is our old friend, the Seasonic M12 II, rebadged for Antec. Pretty damn quiet when it first came out 6-7 years ago...not as quiet by today's designs.

http://www.antec.com/product.php?id=2457&fid=339

this is antec hcg-520, it only says Quiet 135 mm double ball bearing cooling fan

didn't say how many db

I occasionally assembles silent PC for clients, so I want to select a source locally to avoid internet shipping cost. And locally what they have is antec.

I am surprise the Earth Green is $20 higher than the HCG 520

thanks for all the input so far, people

Manufacturer numbers tend to be pretty irrelevant. If each company is measuring in a different way you can not compare. Everything Thermal Take says for noise levels is total fantasy for example.


I am surprised as buying online tends to be cheaper. Many retailers will offer free delivery for something like a PSU and even if they don't the price difference will more than make up for it. It also avoids buying last generation technology. If you were to buy online something like the Seasonic G series would make most sense.

I thought a lot of seasonic fanless psu fails? Is the G series fanless?

I've never heard that Seasonic fanless PSU's are more prone to failure than any other PSU's. In fact, I've never heard about a fanless Seasonic unit fail. Seasonic produces quality products, so you shouldn't worry too much about the reliability of their products.

And no, the Seasonic G series is not fanless. But according to the SPCR review of the G 360 model, it runs very quietly.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1221-page3.html

I read the review above, in the end, fanless PSU is too much risk

I would not assume that unless you have a case which will not allow space for the PSU to vent heat out naturally by convection AND at the same time use it at 100% power. For virtually all system applications it is fine. The X series fanless are now a few years old and if they were liable to fail as you suggest, these forums would be littered with complaints of them blowing up as they are a very popular PSU on here.

it's not me who suggest it, it's the review

You're taking that out of context. That's for earlier passive PSU models. Many of them did require additional airflow to work and perhaps you should look at the fanless PSU torture test to see how the X series compares with earlier models. It's no competition:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/Fanless_P ... st_Roundup

The efficiency of modern Gold and Platinum rated PSUs means that much less heat has to be dissipated by the PSU and hence passive cooling is finally feasible.

I can tell you that if modern fanless PSUs were as unreliable as earlier models these forums would be littered with complaints of X-series PSUs blowing up. As yet we have 0 failures in 2.5 years.

be that as it may, it's too risky for me. I don't want the possibilities of my PSU shutting down. And as you know from the good old basic noise equation, your PC will have CPU cooling fan, and various system fan. So as long as your PC's PSU fan is at the same dB range as the other fan, then the total noise in dB would be about the same

Well it's your money I suppose.


There's some odd things about adding fans. Two identical fans at the same speed will be about 3dB louder combined than a single fan. Sound is additive like this but there is also an element of psychoaccoustics to it so for the human ear at different frequencies the effect may be much greater.

I thought according to that sound formula from physics, it's only about 1 db. I don't have that formula off hand but I have seen it

edh is right about the fan addition in dB. It's not just the noise of the fan, but also the increased turbulence noise from the air that contributes to this. Sound is a funny thing to deal with, it has a lot of variables that the physics formula doesn't account for.

As far as the HCG series from Antec, they are actually remarkably quiet for what they are. When under a lighter load, I can't say I can hear my 750 at all. Under load all the PWM fans kick up a little, so I'm not sure I'd be a good judge for how noisy the PSU gets alone. The Earthwatts series is also quiet, but from Antec I would have to say the Neo Eco series is the quietest I have had a chance to work with.

In all honesty however, I would not limit myself to that list of power supplies. 500W is a lot, and even for a really heavy duty system, you could get away with a 360-450W unit with no problem. The Seasonic or Corsair units are remarkably quiet, as are BeQuiet units, however I have no personal experience with BeQuiet. If you absolutely need high power, SeaSonic or Enermax. The Pro87 series or even the Modu+ series from Enermax are some really good units. I have used them in customer builds, and going on two years later, not a single hiccup from that Enermax, which is used in a CAD design machine for an engineer with a laundry list of a resume (parts on space shuttles, military fighter jets, etc). That machine cranks away without a single hiccup.

If you're really limited to just that original list, the Antec HCG isn't bad, but the Earthwatts is a better pick for lower noise overall, but again, you likely don't need anything more than 450W at the most.

I would love to use a 360W for my clients, as I'm an environmentalist, I don't want people to waste electricity. Although I am hoping that even if a PSU is 500W, as long as the sys. doesn't need it, it's not going to use 500W regardless.

However, from a very basic motherboard from Gigatbyte w/ no PCI attach to it, just 1 SSD + 1 DVD burner, it says on their manual p.15:

"to meet expansion requirements, it is recommended that a power supply that can withstand high power consumption be used (500W or higher). If a power supply is used that does not provide the required power, the result can lead to an unstable or unbootable system."

so you can see w/ comments like that, I'm reluctant to use 360W or so.

As to Corsair, I lost all confidence w/ that brand since their SSD fail, I am currently fighting w/ those crap out SSD. I am using 2 x Corsair SSD on my system, 1 day, 1 of them just disappear from boot up, so I move that connector to the SAS port and has been stable since. So I know there is something crappy about their SSD, in short, I can't trust any product from them.

I don't know BeQuiet is that good. Their huge CPU block dB level is much higher than Noctua, so I could infer by saying their PSU is also not as quiet, I mean, in the end, it's the same fan

I wonder how many yr. of R&D is Enermax been around?

1 primitive question for all of you: the fan in these PSU, are they blow hot air OUT or sucking cold air in?

Yes, they always say things like this but not all PSUs are the same. If you were to take a Cheap-o Industries 360W PSU and ask it to supply anything close to that power it would fail to do so in a good way. The voltage lines would be very unstable or worse, the thing could blow up. 3rd party manufacturers are worried out this stuff so overrate their requirements so that even if someone has a dreadful cheap PSU thats optimistically rated at much higher wattage than it actually can, it will still work. If you have any 500W PSU they're saying it's OK. If however you have a very high quality lower rated unit from a good brand, it will perform just the same as a higher rated low quality unit. So the Seasonic G360 really will perform better than some cheap 500W and you are safe to use it.


According to their website they were founded in 1990.


Hot air always goes out of the back. Therefore if it is a rear mount 80mm fan it is under negative pressure sucking air through the PSU and expelling out of the back. If it is a 120-140mm fan mounted on the udnerside then it works under positive pressure blowing air through the PSU and out of the back.