External 350W PSU from Soldam

[Justin_R]

Check it out at Soldam Japan.

Soldam also has a line of cases designed for use with this PSU. Check them out here and here.

If you want to see it in North America, e-mail Soldam's US customer line at [email protected] .

I believe I saw a pic of this PSU in some trade show article a few months back. It figures that Soldam would be involved with it somehow, as they've always sold small cases, for which external PSUs are a god-send. While perhaps not any quieter than an internal PSU, having an external PSU removes a major source of heat from the case while freeing up a lot of space, making the rest of the system much easier to cool.

[shiva]

Check it out at Soldam Japan.

Any word on how noisy it is? My Japanese is non-existent.

Unless I'm missing something, external power supplies are not a magic bullet. Is there any reasons to think that an external power supplies will or can be more quiet?

-krish

[PassiveMan]

Seems to me just like a internal PS it also has a fan. But there is one good use of it because you can place the PS literally anywhere, you could place it away from your PC/yourself to reduce noise and secondly place it in a cool place where the fans could be undervolted so it's inaudible.

I just wonder would it not be cheaper just to use your PS and put it in a wooden box. The only problem I see is getting long enough extension cables to make this work.

[Justin_R]

Is there any reasons to think that an external power supplies will or can be more quiet?

While perhaps not any quieter than an internal PSU, having an external PSU removes a major source of heat from the case while freeing up a lot of space, making the rest of the system much easier to cool.

Easier to cool means less airflow necessary. Less airflow necessary means fewer, slower fans. Fewer, slower fans means less noise.

External PSUs are surrounded by ambient temperature air and have fewer size restrictions than internal PSUs. Thus, they can be made quieter, although I don't know if the Soldam unit in its stock configuration is particularly quiet.

All of this may not make a difference to most users with mid-tower or bigger cases. It's easy enough to make a very quiet PSU for that size of PC. But one of the major problems with SFF PCs has been that they have these small PSUs that require small, high-speed fans which make an awful lot of noise. Additionally, all the components of an SFF PC (the CPU, the hard drives, etc.) are typically hard to cool because they are so restricted in space. Removing the PSU frees up a lot of space, making it easier to install cooling solutions for the remaining components. For example, my Magic 8 Ball tells me that if Shuttle sold a quiet (thermo controlled 80mm fan, say) PSU for it's "XPC" line, they would sell like mad.

While it's certainly possible to "fake" an external PSU by using extension wires and the like (something I did myself for an SFF PC I once built), Soldam's product (like any commercial solution) is much more polished.