PSU for upcoming Broadwell build

PSUs: The source of DC power for all components in the PC & often a big noise source.

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Freeco
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PSU for upcoming Broadwell build

Post by Freeco » Tue Oct 07, 2014 10:06 am

hi all,
I did some (early) research for a good and quiet/silent PSU over the weekend. I plan on buying a new HTPC when Broadwell is out. So yeah, I still have time to gather info. :)

Thing is that the last couple of years most PSU's are +400W rated, while power consumption of a typical desktop has gradually decreased over time.
Eg: my current desktop (i5 Ivy Bridge) only draws 120W from the power outlet when fully stressed (Prime95+FurMark). It's around 45W when idle, which is most of the time (reading mails, surfing the web, etc). I left the gaming scene years ago, so I don't need a power hungry GPU.
So I figure a 300W (or even less) would be ample of headroom for my builds. Thing is, there aren't that many quality/quiet low-power PSU's around :cry: Anyway, I'm whining :lol:

I came across the Corsair RM450 (link) which has an interesting feature for us noise haters: it's a semi-passive PSU. Meaning: the fan doesn't run until the load hits 40%. Translated for my kind of computer: it would never spin up at all.
OK, it would be the most expensive PSU I've bought so far (around €80 online) but it's gold certified and the silent operation is worth some extra cents.
The only downside, well personally: it's a 450W rated PSU and that's the lowest in the RM series. My typical load would be less than 10%. The efficiency of PSU's at 10% load isn't that great, even gold certified PSU's. According to a review at Tom's Hardware it's 'only' 80% @ 50W (link). That's not that bad, but having a PSU with a rating much closer (eg 300W) to my actual needs keeps playing in my head.

Any good and quiet alternatives? Let's say the price of the Corsair (~€80) would be the budget to spend on the PSU.
I came across these myself:
* BeQuiet L8 300W. (link) Specs claim low noise, and quite cheap. Bronze rated.
* Seasonic S12II 350W (link) Bronze rated, not sure about the noise level. Fan speed is dynamic though.
* Seasonic G360 (link) Gold rated and according to various reviews very quiet, however not silent. Also higher rated wattage then I'd like it to.
* Enermax Triathlor 300W (link) Bronze rated, not sure about the noise though.
* Enermax Triathlor ECO 350W (link) Also bronze rated, and not sure about the noise either.

quest_for_silence
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Re: PSU for upcoming Broadwell build

Post by quest_for_silence » Tue Oct 07, 2014 2:08 pm

Freeco wrote:but having a PSU with a rating much closer (eg 300W) to my actual needs keeps playing in my head.

Unfortunately it's far from certain that a smaller PSU may offer a better efficiency at 5-10% of rated power, because under a certain (I'm sorry for the calembour) value most of current PSUs tend to align their own efficiency, and above all because low loads efficiency is strictly topology-related.
Just as an example, the Cooler Master V550S-M 550W at 25W (the power level around any modern Haswell idle) is much more efficient than the Enermax Triathlor ECO 350W ( 81-82% vs 68-69%, while the RM450 is around 73%).

Freeco wrote:Any good and quiet alternatives? Let's say the price of the Corsair (~€80) would be the budget to spend on the PSU.
I came across these myself:
* BeQuiet L8 300W. (link) Specs claim low noise, and quite cheap. Bronze rated.
* Seasonic S12II 350W (link) Bronze rated, not sure about the noise level. Fan speed is dynamic though.
* Seasonic G360 (link) Gold rated and according to various reviews very quiet, however not silent. Also higher rated wattage then I'd like it to.
* Enermax Triathlor 300W (link) Bronze rated, not sure about the noise though.
* Enermax Triathlor ECO 350W (link) Also bronze rated, and not sure about the noise either.

Well, set aside that in 2015 a new, renewed and better-built RM-series (along with a new TX-series which looks promising) will substitute current one in the Corsair lineup, I would discard the Triathlor ECO and Seasonic S12-II too, as they are proven but old designs, and the Enermax also cheaply built, but above all as they are not efficient at very low loads.
The efficiency of the BQ L8 at 25W is around 74%, not that high, the fan speed at low ambient temperature (to say, 25°C) is just under 700rpm, quiet but not that quiet, while the smallest Triathlor 300 (it should be almost EOL, any other Triathlor has been retired) is very similar, actually slightly better, with an around 77-78% efficiency and a minimum fan speed of about 650rpm. Both are not that good quality-wise.
Better candidates are the quoted Seasonic G-360 (and its OEM counterpart SSp-350GT if you don't plan a PCI-E connector), as the efficiency at 25W is around 75%, while about the fan profile you can read in the relevant SPCR review, and the SFX Silverstone ST-30SF, with an 80% efficiency @ 25W, and which is fanless up to 180-220W at 25°C, up to 120W at 50°C (I'd add that usually it's substantially cheaper than the Seasonic, about 20-25% less expensive).
But my favourite PSU is probably the Be Quiet Straight Power E10 400W: although not modular, although more powerful than your desiderata, although not the most efficient unit at very low levels (around 76% at 22-25W), it should be the quietest fanned unit in the market (less than 200rpm up to 180W) for a decent amount of money (55-65 euros averagely in EU) and a long warranty.

EDIT: corrected the 25W efficiency figure for the Seasonic G-360.
Last edited by quest_for_silence on Tue Oct 07, 2014 10:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

lodestar
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Re: PSU for upcoming Broadwell build

Post by lodestar » Tue Oct 07, 2014 3:10 pm

quest_for_silence wrote:...But my favourite PSU is probably the Be Quiet Straight Power E10 400W
The problem with this PSU in the UK market is its pricing. It costs significantly more than the Seasonic G-360 and a touch more than the Seasonic G-450. Perhaps that will change. There is also a potential question mark about component quality, it features no Japanese capacitors at all.

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Re: PSU for upcoming Broadwell build

Post by quest_for_silence » Tue Oct 07, 2014 8:58 pm

lodestar wrote:
quest_for_silence wrote:...But my favourite PSU is probably the Be Quiet Straight Power E10 400W
The problem with this PSU in the UK market is its pricing.

Sorry, but that's something beyond of what may concern me: luckily the OP is belgian, and maybe there the relevant quotations are more similar to other EU countries.

Set aside that, the E10 is vastly quieter than any Seasonic G at any power level (and a bit more advanced and better performing than it, technically-wise) and the relevant price is averagely well below "the price of the Corsair (~€80)" which is the budget to spend on the PSU: given that the OP is looking for "a good and quiet/silent PSU", that's why it's my favourite over the similar wattage competitors, even if the proven Seasonic G is still a solid unit (as a matter of fact, both those units are nearly as efficient as most of smaller ones: as already said, at the 25W level the G efficiency is around 75% and the E10's one is around 76%, while, as a comparison, the smaller Seasonic 80Plus Gold-rated platform used in the their SS-300TGW/TGM and SS-300M1U units give the same efficiency, around 75%).
Last but not least, be quiet! grants on that unit a five-year warranty, either via the reseller or directly from the company's headquarters in Germany, and in the first year be quiet! also offers a 48-hours on-site exchange service, which is an honest proposition (and probably a decent value for the users).

Freeco
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Re: PSU for upcoming Broadwell build

Post by Freeco » Wed Oct 08, 2014 11:38 am

Thanks for the 2 additional choices, Luca.
To list them up, for my own reference as well as others:
* Silverstone ST30F 300W (link) Bronze rated. SFX form factor (80mm fan) with ATX bracket
* BeQuiet Straight Power E10 400W (link) Gold rated

I actually got my own thoughts tangled up. :oops: Like I said, this would in the first place a PSU for my HTPC which would have a Broadwell i3. Although favorable the PSU doesn't has to be dead quiet, as the HTPC will be 4m away. And the fan in my projector @ 1m from my ears makes more noise than the HTPC anyway (around 22dB @ ECO if I recall the specs correctly).
I was getting mixed up with the PSU I'll buy for yet another upcoming build: my Ivy Bridge desktop replacement. But most likely I'll wait for the release of Skylake later next year.
In any case, I still have plenty of time to find some reviews and make my evaluation. Thanks for the suggestions.

UK_Peter
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Re: PSU for upcoming Broadwell build

Post by UK_Peter » Sat Oct 18, 2014 5:59 am

quest_for_silence wrote:Just as an example, the Cooler Master V550S-M 550W at 25W (the power level around any modern Haswell idle) is much more efficient than the Enermax Triathlor ECO 350W ( 81-82% vs 68-69%, while the RM450 is around 73%).
That's fascinating! Where do you find this out? This post has been the most helpful I've seen for a long time, as I try to find a PSU most efficient in the 15-70W range for my Haswell build.

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Re: PSU for upcoming Broadwell build

Post by quest_for_silence » Sat Oct 18, 2014 7:41 am

UK_Peter wrote:That's fascinating! Where do you find this out?

The most interested people in power efficiency are the germans and their neighbors (austrians, swiss, dutch and so on), so most of the figures are from german reviews: IIRC lots of data come from ComputerBase.de, but also cross checked on the ones by TechPowerUp!, with some from nl.hardware.info.

To be fair, you may use also the various performance charts published by Tom Hardware's Guide, which should contain lots of data: I usually avoid to rely upon them (to be honest, I usually reject most of THG contents), due to some questionable data I found into over the course of time, and to my own prejudices too.

Obviously, feel free to think "out of my box", and use which data you think best.

MikeC
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Re: PSU for upcoming Broadwell build

Post by MikeC » Sat Oct 18, 2014 11:11 am

SPCR PSU reviews have routinely measured power efficiency at 20W and 40W loads for years... but of course, we don't do nearly as many review as some other sites.

One reason for fewer PSU reviews at SPCR recently is that the PSUs themselves have become so consistently quiet (and generally, way better than any computer needs them to be) at low-to-mid loads that the incentive isn't that strong anymore. Take a look at the table here -- http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1306-page5.html -- and you'll see that up to ~250W, the majority of the PSUs we reviewed in the last few years measure <15 dBA SPL. That's silent in most environments. Granted, our table is a select list -- I don't request PSUs that I suspect will be noisy and the makers of noisy PSUs don't send them to me. :lol: But if you stay with the well-recognized quiet PSU brands, it's hard to go very wrong these days. Yes, some models will be quieter than others but in the context of an entire system with other fans and/or HDDs, the difference will be subtle, most often trivial.

With your other environmental conditions, Peter -- 4m distance and 22 dB projector -- the noise differences among the PSUs in the table I refer to would be impossible for you to hear.

The other thing is that even though I pioneered the practise (on hardware review sites) of measuring efficiency at super low power, I'm also the first to point out the relative significance of these measurements: When viewed in terms of actual watts, not percentages, small differences in efficiency at low power load is trivial.

Simple example:
85% vs 90% efficiency difference at 400W load -- 470W AC input vs 444W, a difference of 26W, which is significant by most standards.
85% vs 90% efficiency difference at 40W load -- 47W AC input vs 44.4W, a difference of 2.6W, which is not very significant by most standards.
85% vs 90% efficiency difference at 20W load -- 23.5W AC input vs 22.2W, a difference of 1.3W, which is pretty insignificant by most standards.

(Yes, I know the efficiency is never that high at the low loads, but this is just to illustrate.)

bastiaan
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Re: PSU for upcoming Broadwell build

Post by bastiaan » Mon Oct 20, 2014 10:52 am

Freeco wrote:* BeQuiet L8 300W. (link) Specs claim low noise, and quite cheap. Bronze rated.
I own this PSU and I am happy with. It was a steal for the 30 euros I paid for it. I can also confirm the low noise insofar as to say that I can't hear it at all (but the CPU fan in my system is not exactly silent). Like your system, mine doesn't really go much over 100W.

As far as recommendations go: it depends on what you are prepared to pay. If you're spending 40 euros or less, get the L8 300W. For 60-70 euros, get the Cooler Master V450S if you want the best efficiency at low loads, or the Seasonic G360 if you want the highest quality components and longest warranty.

I can't second the recommendation for the BQt E10 400W. The difference between it and the L8 300W that would matter to your system is that it is ever so slightly quieter. But that difference, as measured by computerbase.de, is only 0.6 dB(A). That may matter to some, but not to me. ;)

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Re: PSU for upcoming Broadwell build

Post by quest_for_silence » Mon Oct 20, 2014 12:26 pm

bastiaan wrote:that difference, as measured by computerbase.de, is only 0.6 dB(A).

I like very much the guy who did that measure (Philip Pfab), but unfortunately that measure is just wrong (in an about 400rpm difference in rotational speed, there are some more dB than just an half).

bastiaan
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Re: PSU for upcoming Broadwell build

Post by bastiaan » Mon Oct 20, 2014 10:32 pm

bastiaan wrote:As far as recommendations go: it depends on what you are prepared to pay. If you're spending 40 euros or less, get the L8 300W. For 60-70 euros, get the Cooler Master V450S if you want the best efficiency at low loads, or the Seasonic G360 if you want the highest quality components and longest warranty.

I can't second the recommendation for the BQt E10 400W. The difference between it and the L8 300W that would matter to your system is that it is ever so slightly quieter. But that difference, as measured by computerbase.de, is only 0.6 dB(A). That may matter to some, but not to me. ;)
I came across this review showing rather stellar low load performance in the E10 400W. If the test results hold up elsewhere, this puts the E10 400W in direct competition with the Cooler Master V450S, and with its 5-year warranty, perhaps even with the Seasonic G360.

The review's author seems to have drawn a few lines depicting 80+ efficiency levels, in the apparently mistaken notion that it is defined for 230V inputs. (And the lines are wrong for 230V redundant 80+ certification.) Ah well.

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Re: PSU for upcoming Broadwell build

Post by quest_for_silence » Tue Oct 21, 2014 12:06 am

bastiaan wrote:If the test results hold up elsewhere, this puts the E10 400W in direct competition with the Cooler Master V450S, and with its 5-year warranty, perhaps even with the Seasonic G360.

The review's author seems to have drawn a few lines depicting 80+ efficiency levels, in the apparently mistaken notion that it is defined for 230V inputs. (And the lines are wrong for 230V redundant 80+ certification.) Ah well.

Although I like that PSU, I have more than a doubt about those danish findings, they look like a bit far from what it's technically possible nowadays: as a matter of fact, efficiency-wise the E10 is very close to the former E9 (and still efficiency-wise, the Seasonic G-360 is slightly inferior to both those units).

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Re: PSU for upcoming Broadwell build

Post by Pappnaas » Tue Oct 21, 2014 12:50 am

bastiaan wrote:The difference between it and the L8 300W that would matter to your system is that it is ever so slightly quieter. But that difference, as measured by computerbase.de, is only 0.6 dB(A). That may matter to some, but not to me. ;)
My personal guess is that computerbase has not the equipment to catch anything below 33 dB(A).

Nevertheless, i do have some trust in their findings. As always, take everything not measured by spcr with a grain of doubt :mrgreen:

bastiaan
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Re: PSU for upcoming Broadwell build

Post by bastiaan » Tue Oct 21, 2014 9:42 am

quest_for_silence wrote:
bastiaan wrote:If the test results hold up elsewhere, this puts the E10 400W in direct competition with the Cooler Master V450S, and with its 5-year warranty, perhaps even with the Seasonic G360.

Although I like that PSU, I have more than a doubt about those danish findings, they look like a bit far from what it's technically possible nowadays: as a matter of fact, efficiency-wise the E10 is very close to the former E9 (and still efficiency-wise, the Seasonic G-360 is slightly inferior to both those units).
Computerbase.de has a review of the E10-500W, and it calculates the efficiency of that unit at 10% as 84% (230V), and it doesn't break 90% until some some point after 20% load. That's nothing to sniff at, but it seems a fair indication that the E10-400W's efficiency figures may indeed not be as stellar as suggested by the Danish review.

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Re: PSU for upcoming Broadwell build

Post by UK_Peter » Tue Oct 21, 2014 1:39 pm

MikeC wrote:One reason for fewer PSU reviews at SPCR recently is that the PSUs themselves have become so consistently quiet (and generally, way better than any computer needs them to be) at low-to-mid loads that the incentive isn't that strong anymore.

The other thing is that even though I pioneered the practise (on hardware review sites) of measuring efficiency at super low power, I'm also the first to point out the relative significance of these measurements: When viewed in terms of actual watts, not percentages, differences in efficiency at low power load is trivial.
You make great points Mike and I hadn't considered it in terms of actual watts, only in terms of "OMG 73% efficiency at 20W!!!"

It would be nice to see more reviews, not only for the quality of fan noise but for coil whine/electrical noise. I agree PSUs have improved - I picked up a £19 PSU to replace a blown one in my home server, and there's a gentle whoosh of air and nothing more.

Why electrical noise? Well I may have been unlucky with my new PC, but the motherboard whines at random times (on 2 different PSUs), and the PSU (SilverStone SST-SF30) had to be RMA'd due to the electrical noises and crackling it made. To me the high pitched and unpredictable electrical noises are more annoying than variances in quiet fans - they hit a frequency that reminds me of fingers down a blackboard...

If you are reviewing less because they're all of such good quality, perhaps it is worth rephrasing the caution on http://www.silentpcreview.com/Recommended_PSUs ?

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Re: PSU for upcoming Broadwell build

Post by UK_Peter » Tue Oct 21, 2014 1:58 pm

Reading back through the thread, is there any reason to recommended something other than the Corsair RM450 for the OP? It looks like it'd do everything required.

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Re: PSU for upcoming Broadwell build

Post by MikeC » Tue Oct 21, 2014 3:14 pm

UK_Peter wrote:If you are reviewing less because they're all of such good quality, perhaps it is worth rephrasing the caution on http://www.silentpcreview.com/Recommended_PSUs ?
Well, the qualifier I mentioned about how sample suppliers know not to set noisier PSU? It's also true that I don't review any cheap PSUs -- never have. Almost all the PSUs reviewed at SPCR have been "brand" names that have established reputations to uphold. So again, I'm commenting on a relatively select sampling -- ie, only the top half of the class. But I stand by my comment that the vast majority of brand name PSUs are better (electrically) than they need to be for the computers they are powering. This is after some serious chats with techs, VPs, CEOs, etc, at several big PSU brands -- Enermax, Seasonic, Enhance, etc.

At the same time, some models in some product lines ARE uncharacteristically louder. That particular caution in the Rec. PSUs page was prompted when some new models in a Corsair line that had been made by Seasonic were significantly noisier than the previous models. It turned out they were from a different mfg, which had a more aggressive cooling approach.

Electrical noise is a bit tricky. Used to be the fan noise would drown it out, so the PSU makers that went with super low noise fans got criticized for this first-- ie Seasonic. It's there in most power circuits, at some level or another, and if it's inaudible at 1' or greater, I don't see this is a problem; no one sits that close. But it is often interactive (depending on component combinations), and the super-high efficiency components seem to exhibit it more often than lower efficiency ones. Very difficult to characterize a model as buzzy without first checking several, preferably from different production runs, and with more than just a dummy load, preferably 2-3 systems or more. This is why I hesitate to make a big deal of it. On the one hand, when it's encountered in a PSU, I always mention & discuss it, but I also caution about the realities of sample variance, interactive aspects, etc.

Motherboard & video card VRM circuits are notorious. They're often the culprits of PSU whining noise -- whether they cause this noise in the PSu or make the noise themselves. Again, it may seem more commonplace now that fans and HDDs really are quieter.

And yes, the Corsair RM450 looks like it should be pretty quiet, esp. with its fanless mode, seemingly to >150W.

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