Which Zalman PSU

martinlk · Post by **martinlk** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 9:12 am

I'm planning on purchasing the Zalman ZM300B-APS PSU along with a Zalman CNPS 7000B-AlCu CPU cooler. My system is a P4 1600MHz Northwood with a low-end gfx card, a single hard drive, and a DVD burner. I was just wondering if there was any reason to shell out a "little" more for the 400W version?

Where I live the 300W is about $73 and the 400W is about $115. I should mention that I like the first price a lot more than the latter.

Talz · Post by **Talz** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 10:02 am

The only reason would be if you want to be able to use the same power supply with significantly more power hungry hardware than you have right now.

martinlk · Post by **martinlk** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 11:51 am

I might upgrade my cpu/motherboard to a 3GHz or similar at some time, but I'll never use my machine for gaming that requires crazy power-hungry graphic cards. Will 300W be enough for me?

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 7:34 am

I'm running my P4 3GHz Prescott without hot graphics card on a 300W PSU made by Fortron. (They make the Zalman PSU too.) I've run it on some other 300W PSU's too. Its running fine.

wim · Post by **wim** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 9:26 am

300 is more than enough for you, it would be very silly to shell out $ for the other one.
however the zalman psu isn't very good (in terms of noise) until you've modded it.

martinlk · Post by **martinlk** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 2:33 pm

wim wrote:however the zalman psu isn't very good (in terms of noise) until you've modded it.

Really? That's not what I heard. What products in the same price range are better alternatives?

Post by **Rusty075** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 4:47 pm

The Recommended Power Supplies article will point you towards several alternatives.

silverback · Post by **silverback** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 8:29 pm

300 watt should be fine for 3 ghz but keep in mind if you try and put something like a gforce 6800 gt video card you may start to experience some problems. A high end card like that will make it choke. If you stay midrange components everything is great.

teejay · Post by **teejay** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 11:05 pm

wim wrote:however the zalman psu isn't very good (in terms of noise) until you've modded it.

Have to agree with Wim, after some basic silencing my psu quickly became the loudest component in there.

The upside is that the psu can stand pretty low airflow situations due to large heatsinks so it will run fine with something like a Nexus fan. My Nexus-modded ZM400 has the fan hooked up to the psu fan controller circuit and runs ~900rpm idle up to 1100rpm when gaming: still audible but passable.

martinlk · Post by **martinlk** » Tue Dec 07, 2004 12:30 am

I'm not a big fan of modding things, since I have no way of getting all the little gadgets like nexus fans and such cheaply. It'll probably end up being very expensive for me if I have to mod a PSU.

How loud is the Zalman? I mean, is it just a faint whirring? It seems odd to me that a company like Zalman would make a noisy PSU.

If you really think I shouldn't get the Zalman, could you recommend any specific products as an alternative?

How is the Zalman compared to the Nexus NX-3000? The recommended units list says that the Nexus "Looks similar to Zalman".

teejay · Post by **teejay** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 3:29 am

I cannot give an objective statement on "how loud the Zalman (psu) is", but I can tell you my experiences with it. When I first got it installed, I qualified it as inaudible, period. It replaced a dual fan Enermax psu with no temp or manual control on the fans, so that went at full blast all the time. Big difference. Added a second computer with a cheapo Q-Tec psu (at the time a 2-fan rig) and the Zalman was much quieter, so I felt really happy about it.

As time went by, I started applying more and more silence-oriented mods on both machines. The Q-Tec rig became mostly inaudible, the other one got more quiet but with a clearly present noise signature. At some point I remember thinking "well, it can't be the Zalman psu... it's a Zalman! Quiet by design". Stopped the fan anyhow with a soft object and was instantly amazed by the difference. Swapped the psu fan for a Nexus one and got a big improvement. Of course, now I have to do something about the harddisks, but that's another story.

Sorry for the ramble... apparently in a sharing mood

. Bottom line: the Zalman is quieter than many other psu's out there so it might well be a big improvement for you. Just remember that in stock form it is not the quietest thing money can buy, so if you'll keep silencing you will find it on your path at some point.

No personal experience with the Nexus (I intend to change that however), but it seems that they have improved from version to version (NX-3000, then NX-3500, now NX-4090) so I'd always get the latest version you can afford.

wim · Post by **wim** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 7:00 am

martinlk wrote:How loud is the Zalman? I mean, is it just a faint whirring? It seems odd to me that a company like Zalman would make a noisy PSU.

yep it is odd. like teejay it's really impossible for me to tell you how loud it is, but i can otherwise tell you what i thought of it. my friend got this same one you're considering (ZM300B) and when we first got his build running i was quite surprised at the racket that thing made. i expected better too, had to halt all the other noise sources including hard drives before i would believe that it was actually the Z psu. zalman just aren't very good with fans. fortunately the psu is otherwise a good quality build (fortron based product) and they mod quite well. that one is chugging away quite happily now with a panaflo 80L swapped, it stays at good temperature and the sound is below the noise floor of his system.

i'm sure there are people that would call it a faint whirring. maybe you're one of those yourself, i have no idea how hardcore you are or aren't, so i can't really tell you how loud it is. but in relative terms i can tell you, if you don't want to do any modding the seasonic (super tornado) is a much quieter psu (in stock form i.e. quieter to begin with). almost certainly the nexus you mention is too but i haven't tried one of those myself. if nexus are putting their own fans in their latest psus we can probably expect a lot better than the zalmans.

sthayashi · Post by **sthayashi** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 11:52 am

To give you guys a reference, the Zalman 400B is quieter than an Antec True Power 550, and perhaps a little louder than a stock Seasonic Super Silencer.

Rest assured the Zalman is very quiet, but not the quietest thing out there. It's quiet enough for the casual enthusiast, but not quiet enough for the obsessed.

martinlk · Post by **martinlk** » Thu Dec 09, 2004 1:29 am

sthayashi wrote:Rest assured the Zalman is very quiet, but not the quietest thing out there. It's quiet enough for the casual enthusiast, but not quiet enough for the obsessed.

I'm new to this, so I'm definitely not obsessed with silencing my system.. and I probably never will be. All I'm trying to do is replace all my noisy components with quiet ones and see (read: hear) how it works out.

What attracted me to the Zalman PSUs were the fact that they seem to fit my new Centurion 5 perfectly. The Centurion 5 has the "rare" top-mounted screw holes, which the salman supports.

Plus the Zalman has long chords that i hope will enable me to hide my cables like this:
(Notice the atx power plug is hidden behind the mb tray)

I looked at the NEXUS NX-3500, but it is more expensive and it doesn't support the top-mounted screws. I know the top-mounted screws probably don't mean a thing, but I still want something that supports them (just because I can).

martinlk · Post by **martinlk** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 1:07 am

anyone?

Can the Zalmans be modded with papst fans? Are papst fans quiet?

Qwertyiopisme · Post by **Qwertyiopisme** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 1:25 am

IMO a top mounted screw doesn't add that much, sure its nice, but not a real selling argument. I owudl just that the quietest PSU i could find(assuming the price is good) and if it has that screw then thats good, but I wont get a noisier one jsut because it has that screw...

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 11:09 am

I have five 80mm 1500RPM Papst fans. I use none of them, because they make to much motor noise. But they are more quiet than any other fan I have heard except Nexus. (I have never heard a Panaflo.) But the Nexus fans have probably not enough airflow for use in a PSU.

teejay · Post by **teejay** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 4:52 am

martinlk wrote:anyone?

Can the Zalmans be modded with papst fans? Are papst fans quiet?

Sure they can. Papst fans used to be pretty good, but these days quality varies from fan to fan and like Tibors said: too much motor noise. Both my PSU's use Nexus fans at ~1000rpm and are churning away quietly with them (posted about this before in this thread so I won't repeat the details). Both PSU's have an air duct so that helps, I'm not sure if I would trust Nexus fans in there in a regular setup.

The heatsinks in the cheap Q-Tec PSU do get very hot (at the moment 55C with the fan at 950 rpm, measured with an analog sensor from a Coolermaster Aerogate II) so I will probably put a 120mm fanned psu in my Lian Li PC-V1000 and put the Zalman in the other case. The Zalman psu has large heatsinks which helps a lot in low airflow situations.