Lifespan decreases exponentially as temperature increases. That applies to many components, take capacitors for example. Look up the specs of your graphics card's capacitors (or the capacitors near the CPU on your mobo) and enter the specs on the capacitor lifespan calculator . You'll notice that as...

Ceramique. I've never been a fan of silver compounds, too messy.

The 350W smartpower is a great moddable PSU because it emits one of the lowest electrical noises of PSUs I've tested. It runs quite hot with a 80L@5V, yes, but it can take the heat. I forgot to plug back the PSU fan after doing some testing awhile back, and the PSU ran fanless for a 45 minutes. It w...

What kinda bothers me is the patent pending part. Many of us have planned/attempted similar stuff (pretty damn similar, if I check my old plans). I guess that's how this industry works :( Ah well, a cabinet built according to the rough plans on the page would definately not allow enough airflow to c...

Glad to know you got it to work with a ZM80C-HP!

I did it myself with a spare gf3ti200. So far I have 4 cards cooled with 2 zalman kits, and 2 spare heatpipes to play with

Despite ridiculous airflow (2 80L@5V exhaust incl. PSU) the card is rock solid.

Easy - go down to your nearest electrical goods shop and get an indoor/outdoor digital thermometer. Should be less than €10 and while not 'laboratory accurate/calibrated' will be as good as you can get. Put the outdoor probe next to any other thermometers you can find to check the calibration is no...

Inexplicable: thanks for taking the time to collect that data, it's really interesting/helpful. About innacuracy of temps-yes, I did use onboard sensor and realise my results may be flawed, but they should still be useable data on a relative basis (differences in temp, etc..). It is also possible to...

Let us know how your ducting project turns out. Hope you don't fail pathetically like myself ;) I know that ducting theoretically "arranges" the flow to be straighter and less turbulence-prone, but that doesn't really show in real-life listening tests. I'd still be pleasantly surprised if you end up...

Not the Alpha PAL series. A PAL isn't that structurally different from other heatsinks, doesn't it perform a few degrees cooler with the fan blowing downwards? I don't own one so I wouldn't know, but logic dictates blowing against the fins will provide more turbulence around them than just sucking ...

MGP wrote:Puff, fyi, I think Ralf was addressing me.

hit the reply button too fast on that one, sorry ralph

Why keep beating a dead horse? Try one of the 400W Super Silencers instead. They're only a few dB louder (as if you could tell) and don't have the issues of the Tornado. I've been using one for the past few months and have been real happy with it. I just went to buy another PSU and was first lookin...

An excellent alternative might be the Seasonic Super Silencer 400W. I've been using it in this system for the past 2 months and the case temps have been running around 38-42°C daily without the PSU fan increasing in speed at all. According to MikeC's review of this PSU, the fan should be starting t...

This is not really answering your question, but I've tested numerous ducts/airflow schemes and I've concluded that although it may seem advantageous to have one fan do both exhaust and CPU cooling, it isn't worth it. Modern heatsinks are designed for downward airflow, and ducts add to the resistance...

I hate to be a nitpick but doesn't the liquid in the heatpipes make noise when it boils? Mind you, nice warm bubbling beats fan noise anytime :wink: z. No, it doesn't. It evaporates more than boils, there's not that much liquid and the temp isn't that high. :) A heatpipe doesn't make noise at all a...

Nice design man, interesting how you got your heatpipes. I've been designing a heatpipe HD enclosure for awhile now, prototyping began a couple weeks ago but the only way of getting 5mm heatpipes was buying that zalman HD cooler, they are a total pain to rebend correctly (need straight pipes). Ive b...

Kinda interesting, but I can't get past the feeling I'm reading a Chenbro promotional brochure.

It is known that the 9500 and 9700 series of cards cause some whining from PSUs, this has been widely reported as a problem and aknowledged by ATI. I've tried everything (enermax,antec,seasonic FS/SS,nexus) but still my 9500pro causes PSU whine, so I can't use it. Can anyone tell me wether the 9600/...

Oh, I have no doubt it's going to be useless for people like us, I've modified and done airflow testing with dozens of PSUs/fans, both with ATX cases and custom down->up airflow cases :) Still, it's nice to see every company make silence-oriented products, regardless of their success at it. Competit...

Available with PFC or without . Nice to know Enermax is getting into the silent PC business, hopefully these won't be as whiny as their previous offerings. I'm kinda disappointed that they chose to go the "80mm exhaust/92mm below" route, although a quiet setup of that type is possible. I have a 5V p...

MikeC wrote: I will try loading up this system over the next few days to see if I can replicate your results. Once I've seen it for myself, then I can report more confidently the findings to Seasonic -- who have already been asked to examine this thread, BTW.

Thanks

I know I'm posting a lot in this thread, but I've had the PSU for 4 hours now and here are my final observations: Ambient temp in my room rose to 25C as I get to the warmest part of the day. The case temp now hovers around 40C with one L1A helping exhaust (raised voltage with fanmate to what I'd gue...

You're right, blocking the holes (used no-residue painter's tape) shaved off a couple degrees, but since I was hovering around the switching temperature this is a huge deal. I will do extensive testing with 3D apps to see about the speedup, hope it doesn't occur. It's such a shame that the PSU goes ...

Physical differences between the SS300FT and SS300FB I've noticed so far: -Shorter cables on the SS300FT, the ATX cable is especially short. The rest of the cables are also shorter. -No fan monitoring cable :( -No full range on voltage (mine just has a sticker with "200-240V" on it). The insides see...

Just got my SS300FT from KnQ. After 45mins of 100% CPU utilisation, no sign of speedup at all (other fans 2 L1As@5V, cudaIV in suspended SD2002) with 50C CPU temp and 38C case temp (ambient 23C). But 3Dmark2001 did it, seems high CPU+high VGA utilisation was enough to trigger a speed increase. Back ...

The SS-300FT uses a single 80mm fan for cooling afaik.

I assume your sample uses a 120mm fan for cooling or you'd have mentionned it?

Edit: never mind that, got confused with model numbers. Seems like the same as the Tornado minus the extras.

Same here. Costed a little over 69pounds (~100euros) shipped to France, but there's no other way to get that supply here. Thanks for the link!

That'd be one hell of a cool case!

This should allow you to passively cool two graphics cards using one ZM80A-HP kit. It should also work for the ZM80C-HP but I don't own one. You will only use one heatsink per graphics card, which cools almost as well as both heatsinks from my testing. One heatsink with no fan is more than sufficien...

I'd be weary of any PSU that advertises 450W with 19A on the +12V rail. Not that 19A isn't plenty for the average PC, but I'm suspicious of any company that bases their wattage on peak output.

I have no idea how quiet it is. But it's still a 250W supply

2.1 kg?! Wow. My interest just went waaaay up. That seems wrong to me, but I don't have access to better data. Zalman's site has nothing up on it. Anyone else know better? Perhaps I won't try building my own case for my next computer....But where would the fun be in that? :P Mark More like 21kg, I ...