fuzzymath10 wrote:It would be interesting to be able to set different fan profiles for PSUs with fans. It's sort of built into the hybrid models, but what would be interesting is to let the PSU run hotter at lower loads in the interest of noise while remaining in tolerable conditions, and then if there is a spike which causes heat to build up, ramp up the fan more quickly and shut off in extreme cases.
I can't be sure if it's a cost or feature-set issue, but that's one reason I relegated my S12II-380 to a backup, because the fan sped up quite soon because of the way I designated the cooling of my case.
We do this with CPU and GPU coolers already.
The main problem with this usage model is that unlike CPUs and GPUs, a PSU subject to long term overheating is almost assured to break down. I'm guessing capacitors are among the key components which suffer heat deterioration over time. I used to run early Seasonics with Panaflo 80L fans at 5V... and eventually most of them failed for one reason or another. Granted, it took years, and I ran those PSUs 24/7 mostly, in very low airflow cases, and those PSUs did not have super Japanese caps or better than ~75% max efficiency. Anyway, I can't see any PSU maker allowing such user control over their fan behavior -- there'd be so much user error they could not afford to provide any kind of warranty.
This is very different from CPUs and GPUs, which have internal throttling and fail-safe kill switches to stop them from overheating damage. I've yet to see a single heatspreader CPU get damaged by heat in all of SPCR's years of reviewing and abusing them.
Going back to the fan behavior -- it's easy enough to customize, tho you'd lose the warranty. That's what fan modding of PSUs was all about -- back in the day when none were quite quiet enough. Given a reasonable sounding fan like the one in the G360, if you wanted to delay fan ramp up to a higher temperature, all you'd have to do is open up the unit, play with a variable resistor inline with the fan to set the minimum safe start resistance, then replace the pot with a 1-2W resistor of that resistance. Put a switch in line to switch the resistor in/out of the circuit during hot weather or high load stretches (like if you're video encoding or playing demanding games for hours).
One the other hand, it would be way simpler (and safer) to spend a few $$ more for a Seasonic X-560 or similar, which would give you better heat/noise headroom.