I'm facing a bit of a dilemma: I'm getting a dual-Opteron e-ATX server board, but I'm having some difficulties finding a quiet power supply that could power this beast in the Chenbro SR107 server case I'd like to get. As you can see this case separates the power supply, drives, and the motherboard into their own compartments. Unfortunately this means that the PSU has to have a straight-through fan configuration, and obviously it has to have EPS12V connectors. At least one PCIe connector, as well as a few SATA connectors, are also in the list. To muddle things further, I'd very much prefer active PFC power supply for a multitude of reasons. Fortunately, I think a good 400W power supply would probably suffice, though an extra 50W headroom probably wouldn't hurt given the dually nature of the computer.
Unfortunately, as luck would have it, most power supplies that fit all the other requirements have 120mm fans. It seems that very few power supplies have straight-through configurations nowadays, and the ones that do tend to have passive PFC here in the U.S.
I have researched the Seasonics, the Antecs, the Enermaxes, the Fortrons, and a number of others. So far it seems that the only viable candidates are the Seasonic Super Silencer rev.A3 power supplies, either 400W or 460W model. There have, however, been some doubts as to whether they could power a dual-processor board properly, and Seasonic's website is not being helpful in clearing that part up.
Would anyone have a suggestion for a suitable, quality quiet power supply? Fanless or with fan(s) in straight-through config.
Quiet A-PFC PSU, with straight-through fan and EPS12V?
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee, Devonavar
The first thing to come to mind is to get an enermax power supply and take out the bottom 92mm fan. The back 80mm fan should keep the power supply cool enough. There are several reviewed here and they score fairly well as far as noise goes. Enermax also makes a few high end power supplies that should have all the features you need as well as 3-4 12V lines. These tend to be very expensive though. Another option is to get FSP (Fortron Source) power supply. They've been known to be fairly quiet and they make APFC power supplies with 80mm fans.
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NoNameFace
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Unfortunately by all accounts the PC P&C Silencers do not have EPS12V connectors 
The only models they have that would work are the 510 AG/XE/ASL and the 850 SSI models. Given that you can get a FSP550-60PLN for less than half the price, I'd be more inclined to just get one of those and quiet it down somehow -- even if it means voiding warranties.
I was hoping that the new passive Magnum PSU would have been a candidate, but by some accounts it works with EPS12V and by other accounts it doesn't. It seems to have 2x 15A 12V rails, so specs-wise it'd probably have worked just spiffy. But then, this PSU is all about the bling, and bling doesn't tend to translate into quality particularily well. I read in the thread about that PSU that it may have gotten low marks in some credible reviews, but the jury is of course still out on that one. Meh.
Another potential candidate has been Thermaltake's (*shudder*) bling-bling PurePower 680W. Unfortunately by all accounts it's one loud power supply, so it'd end up on the surgery table anyway. And if that'd be the case anyway, why not go with the cheaper Fortron? You can get two Fortrons for every Thermaltake..
If you've gotten the impression that I'm leaning towards the Fortron, you're right. Either the Fortron or the Seasonic Silencer that's being discontinued. I'm still holding out a little on that bling-bling passive PSU, just in case.
Thank you, all of you who have replied with suggestions and thoughts. I appreciate your contribution, and you've given me more ground to work with.
The only models they have that would work are the 510 AG/XE/ASL and the 850 SSI models. Given that you can get a FSP550-60PLN for less than half the price, I'd be more inclined to just get one of those and quiet it down somehow -- even if it means voiding warranties.I was hoping that the new passive Magnum PSU would have been a candidate, but by some accounts it works with EPS12V and by other accounts it doesn't. It seems to have 2x 15A 12V rails, so specs-wise it'd probably have worked just spiffy. But then, this PSU is all about the bling, and bling doesn't tend to translate into quality particularily well. I read in the thread about that PSU that it may have gotten low marks in some credible reviews, but the jury is of course still out on that one. Meh.
Another potential candidate has been Thermaltake's (*shudder*) bling-bling PurePower 680W. Unfortunately by all accounts it's one loud power supply, so it'd end up on the surgery table anyway. And if that'd be the case anyway, why not go with the cheaper Fortron? You can get two Fortrons for every Thermaltake..
If you've gotten the impression that I'm leaning towards the Fortron, you're right. Either the Fortron or the Seasonic Silencer that's being discontinued. I'm still holding out a little on that bling-bling passive PSU, just in case.
Thank you, all of you who have replied with suggestions and thoughts. I appreciate your contribution, and you've given me more ground to work with.
Aye, so it would seem. Still holding out on that passive PSU, but a fan swap seems the likeliest at the moment.
Ah well. I have these neat Torin blowers that push a lot of air quietly. When you undervolt them the only sound you hear is the air noise... which admittedly can be a lot by SPCR standards. The Chebro 107 just might have enough space in the PSU tunnel to rig one of those blowers to cool things down.
Ah well. I have these neat Torin blowers that push a lot of air quietly. When you undervolt them the only sound you hear is the air noise... which admittedly can be a lot by SPCR standards. The Chebro 107 just might have enough space in the PSU tunnel to rig one of those blowers to cool things down.
On your suggestion I have spent the day looking into Tagan power supplies.
They look very nice, but there are a few things that will likely keep it from my short list: first of all it looks like Tagan has problems with quality control. Second, they reputedly run hot. Whilst the latter would probably not be a problem because it's sitting aloof in its own space, the former is a show-stopper. The Fortron PSU would likely run just as hot, but at least FSP's QA seems to have their act together.
I am very curious about that new XG Magnum passive power supply. Newegg lists its efficiency at 90% -- which of course is wholly unconfirmed. Most of the reviews around the 'net have been very favorable, and show good voltage regulation, but no-one has really pushed it to see where it buckles. How much power can it really supply you with?
Beyond that one... who knows. Take a gamble and go Tagan TG480-U22? Hunt down a Seasonic SS460rev.3 and hope it can supply steady enough power for a power-hungry dually rig? Play it safe and unimaginitive and go Fortron? At least the list of potential candidates is only four candidates long
They look very nice, but there are a few things that will likely keep it from my short list: first of all it looks like Tagan has problems with quality control. Second, they reputedly run hot. Whilst the latter would probably not be a problem because it's sitting aloof in its own space, the former is a show-stopper. The Fortron PSU would likely run just as hot, but at least FSP's QA seems to have their act together.
I am very curious about that new XG Magnum passive power supply. Newegg lists its efficiency at 90% -- which of course is wholly unconfirmed. Most of the reviews around the 'net have been very favorable, and show good voltage regulation, but no-one has really pushed it to see where it buckles. How much power can it really supply you with?
Beyond that one... who knows. Take a gamble and go Tagan TG480-U22? Hunt down a Seasonic SS460rev.3 and hope it can supply steady enough power for a power-hungry dually rig? Play it safe and unimaginitive and go Fortron? At least the list of potential candidates is only four candidates long
I second tombcat's suggestion.
My Tagan 480W used to power dual Barton's + 6 HD's + 3 CDRoms + ATI AIW 8500DV without any problems whatsoever. It ran 24/7 for about 2.5 years.
Extemeley quiet. I did have a fan duct that supplied cool air directly to the
PSU though.
Now that I sold my dually setup, my Tagan is not doing anything right now but I plan to sell it as part of my watercooling setup.
My Tagan 480W used to power dual Barton's + 6 HD's + 3 CDRoms + ATI AIW 8500DV without any problems whatsoever. It ran 24/7 for about 2.5 years.
Extemeley quiet. I did have a fan duct that supplied cool air directly to the
PSU though.
Now that I sold my dually setup, my Tagan is not doing anything right now but I plan to sell it as part of my watercooling setup.
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MikeC
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Why mess around? IMO, the Seasonic S.S. 460 is your best bet. It's a known excellent performer, and it has 25A 12V capacity, 27A peak, tons of power on the 5V and 3.3V lines, which may still be useful in a server board, as they have not gone all (or nearly all) 12V yet, AFAIK.
The max power draw from any Opteron is ~90W. Two make 180W, which means 15A on the 12V line, assuming ALL the power for the CPU comes from the 4x12V plug. (This may depend on the motherboard.) That leaves 10A for all the rest. As long as you're not using a high end gaming vidcard AND more than, say, 4 drives, this is plenty. A mid power vidcard + 4 drives would probably still be OK.
Full disclosure about your intended components would help us help you better.
The max power draw from any Opteron is ~90W. Two make 180W, which means 15A on the 12V line, assuming ALL the power for the CPU comes from the 4x12V plug. (This may depend on the motherboard.) That leaves 10A for all the rest. As long as you're not using a high end gaming vidcard AND more than, say, 4 drives, this is plenty. A mid power vidcard + 4 drives would probably still be OK.
Full disclosure about your intended components would help us help you better.
Why mess around, indeed? That's what I keep asking myself
Inevitably I keep returning to the same conclusion: because the allure of the passive power supply is a great one, and that I do not want to completely exclude potential power supply options even if they've not been formally reviewed at SPCR. After all, there is a finite number of reviews you can reasonably do, and new options pop up all the time. The Tagans, for example, have not been reviewed here, but by all accounts are very quiet when you get one that works.
Another reason I'm still researching is because I am not entirely convinced that SS-460's 27 peak amps on 12V rail is enough in the long term.
It is true that the top of the line Opterons are rated at 95W, but the top of the line Athlon64 dual-cores are rated at 110W and I'm pretty sure things are going to go even hotter for a while. I'd like to keep a decent margin for future expansion, in case AMD doesn't go low power across their product lines during the lifetime of this motherboard. I do intend to upgrade the processors before scrapping the whole system, and I don't think it'd be particularily sane to have to replace the power supply at the same time. That is the other reason I am looking at the alternatives for SS-460. Future expansion.
At the initial stages the workstations are fairly basic. Two Opteron 246 processors (cooled with Scythe Ninjas?), two gigabytes of memory, ATI Radeon X700 Pro, and two <200GB PATA drives. Nothing particularily fancy.
Later though... two dual-core Opterons is a sure bet, much more memory is in sights, two reasonably high-end video cards -- although cooling those quietly will be a nightmare, to be sure -- and the eight hot-swap SATA trays are just begging to have laptop drives in them configured as RAID arrays. These are systems that we intend to grow over time, but by the same token we'd like to avoid unneccessary hardware swaps.
And hopefully they'd be reasonably quiet, too
Inevitably I keep returning to the same conclusion: because the allure of the passive power supply is a great one, and that I do not want to completely exclude potential power supply options even if they've not been formally reviewed at SPCR. After all, there is a finite number of reviews you can reasonably do, and new options pop up all the time. The Tagans, for example, have not been reviewed here, but by all accounts are very quiet when you get one that works.
Another reason I'm still researching is because I am not entirely convinced that SS-460's 27 peak amps on 12V rail is enough in the long term.
It is true that the top of the line Opterons are rated at 95W, but the top of the line Athlon64 dual-cores are rated at 110W and I'm pretty sure things are going to go even hotter for a while. I'd like to keep a decent margin for future expansion, in case AMD doesn't go low power across their product lines during the lifetime of this motherboard. I do intend to upgrade the processors before scrapping the whole system, and I don't think it'd be particularily sane to have to replace the power supply at the same time. That is the other reason I am looking at the alternatives for SS-460. Future expansion.
At the initial stages the workstations are fairly basic. Two Opteron 246 processors (cooled with Scythe Ninjas?), two gigabytes of memory, ATI Radeon X700 Pro, and two <200GB PATA drives. Nothing particularily fancy.
Later though... two dual-core Opterons is a sure bet, much more memory is in sights, two reasonably high-end video cards -- although cooling those quietly will be a nightmare, to be sure -- and the eight hot-swap SATA trays are just begging to have laptop drives in them configured as RAID arrays. These are systems that we intend to grow over time, but by the same token we'd like to avoid unneccessary hardware swaps.
And hopefully they'd be reasonably quiet, too
PSU's output is much improved when it is not running hot, so even with what seems like an underpowered PSU, as long as you make sure it is running cool, you will get very good output.
My main problem with Seasonic is that I just don't like the fan arrangements. All my computers are in rack mount cases with all the airflow going cleanly from front of the case to the back exhaust. My CPU cooler (passive) also depends on this one way clean direction of airflow. The side mounted (or undermounted for regular tower cases) 120mm fan greatly interferes with this.
Anyway, I've changed all my PSU's to Antec Smart Power 2.0 500 Watters because 1. I like their in-line fan setup much like the Tagan's and 2. I like the modular cabling. In fact, I ended up buying 6 pin ATX connectors/pins and molex connectors/pin and making my own modular cables with very precise lengths.
Antec's are very quiet, although I find the Tagan's to be a bit quieter. If you want to see how I had set up the air ducts to my Tagan, check out my FS in about a week when I finish taking the pictures and listing it in the thread.
My main problem with Seasonic is that I just don't like the fan arrangements. All my computers are in rack mount cases with all the airflow going cleanly from front of the case to the back exhaust. My CPU cooler (passive) also depends on this one way clean direction of airflow. The side mounted (or undermounted for regular tower cases) 120mm fan greatly interferes with this.
Anyway, I've changed all my PSU's to Antec Smart Power 2.0 500 Watters because 1. I like their in-line fan setup much like the Tagan's and 2. I like the modular cabling. In fact, I ended up buying 6 pin ATX connectors/pins and molex connectors/pin and making my own modular cables with very precise lengths.
Antec's are very quiet, although I find the Tagan's to be a bit quieter. If you want to see how I had set up the air ducts to my Tagan, check out my FS in about a week when I finish taking the pictures and listing it in the thread.
I'll definitely look forward to your ducting solution! 
To be honest, that keeping the PSU cool part is an unknown to me. While the PSU is separated from the motherboard and the drives, it is above all the other components. No doubt it'll warm up more than if it was at the bottom like it is in the P180, but I've no idea how much of a difference there'll be. I'd like to keep the number of fans at an absolute minimum because the thing will be noisy enough as-is, so I'm going to try to avoid putting a fan in with the PSU. It'll have to keep itself cool.
To be honest, that keeping the PSU cool part is an unknown to me. While the PSU is separated from the motherboard and the drives, it is above all the other components. No doubt it'll warm up more than if it was at the bottom like it is in the P180, but I've no idea how much of a difference there'll be. I'd like to keep the number of fans at an absolute minimum because the thing will be noisy enough as-is, so I'm going to try to avoid putting a fan in with the PSU. It'll have to keep itself cool.
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MikeC
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Irianta --
When you consider that you can get a refurbished S.SS-460 w/ 3 year warranty for $56 directly from Seasonic USA, I just don't see that replacing it at some point in the future is a big deal.
http://store.seasonicusa.com/repr1.html
okayfine is right, basically, not so much that PSU oputput increases when cooled, but certainly it works best when a bit cooler. There is some ideal temp -- I often notice PSUs reaching higher efficiency after they've been run with a middling load for a while. Making some kind of fresh air duct shoul be easy in that case -- just sacrific the top CD bay and create a straight through tunnel for the PSU.
For details on PSu ducting, check this thread in this forum, Building a PSU intake duct/vent and lilla's PSU duct:
http://home.earthlink.net/~lillarenfro2/index0002.htm
BTW, okayfine, the Super Silencer is a conventional 80mm fan PSU.
When you consider that you can get a refurbished S.SS-460 w/ 3 year warranty for $56 directly from Seasonic USA, I just don't see that replacing it at some point in the future is a big deal.
http://store.seasonicusa.com/repr1.html
okayfine is right, basically, not so much that PSU oputput increases when cooled, but certainly it works best when a bit cooler. There is some ideal temp -- I often notice PSUs reaching higher efficiency after they've been run with a middling load for a while. Making some kind of fresh air duct shoul be easy in that case -- just sacrific the top CD bay and create a straight through tunnel for the PSU.
For details on PSu ducting, check this thread in this forum, Building a PSU intake duct/vent and lilla's PSU duct:
http://home.earthlink.net/~lillarenfro2/index0002.htm
BTW, okayfine, the Super Silencer is a conventional 80mm fan PSU.
Here's a picture of it : If the image doens't show up below, here's the link : Picture.Irianta wrote:I'll definitely look forward to your ducting solution!
To be honest, that keeping the PSU cool part is an unknown to me. While the PSU is separated from the motherboard and the drives, it is above all the other components. No doubt it'll warm up more than if it was at the bottom like it is in the P180, but I've no idea how much of a difference there'll be. I'd like to keep the number of fans at an absolute minimum because the thing will be noisy enough as-is, so I'm going to try to avoid putting a fan in with the PSU. It'll have to keep itself cool.
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MikeC
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If there is no seal on one of the 4 screws on the cover, try opening it up to see if there is any sign of wear/abuse inside. Also, you can probably bend the cover back w/o any problem (I've had a PSU or 2 that got dropped accidently in the lab...). Do they both look like this? Have you tried either of them -- ie, do they work?
Unfortunately both units have the seal on one of the screws, so I'm reluctant to try opening them. I think you're right about bending the cover back, but I'm more concerned about the innards. I've not tried either of the units, because I fear that if they haven't been tested they might have problems that'd fry the motherboard or give me an electric shock... mains voltage can be just a mica shim away sometimes. Both of these refurbs are going back to Seasonic, I'm afraid, basically because I don't trust their refurb quality control