My Prosilence 350 is toast! >:(

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Sat May 22, 2004 5:57 pm

WTF? It just won't turn on anymore.

It just lets out an oscillating high pitched speeeling noise. I checked the outputs with my DMM, and it's fluctuating like mad. 12V rail fluctuates from 11 - 13.5V rapidly. Same with 5V.

My precious fanless PSU is a goner. What can I do? I bought it from Siliconacoustics.com and I noticed that they don't carry them anymore. I am not surprised.

This PSU is not even a year old.
I guess RMA to the manufacturer? Do they have a United States headquarters? Shipping to Germany would be ridiculous.

-Ed

al bundy · Post by **al bundy** » Sat May 22, 2004 11:17 pm

In the SilentMaxx manual it says ""In case of overload or high temperature, safety is provided through a replacable fuse." I have no idea what the unit would do if the fuse blew - can anybody here comment on this, and whether or not inspecting/replacing the fuse might help?

Also, here is Silentmaxx.net's "returns" page which states warranty coverage for one year from purchase date. Some others around here have returned their units and received good replacements, so perhaps someone could please give Edwood some contact info and advice on how to proceed with SilentMaxx on this?

chylld · Post by **chylld** » Sat May 22, 2004 11:41 pm

sorry to hear about your misfortune, edwood. your case alone makes me rethink the whole silencing thing, and makes me take all the new fanless power supplies with a grain of salt.

this psu was, yes, taken off silicon acoustics a few months ago, just the same as watercooled psu's being taken off the market. the psu is something that really can only be effectively cooled with air, due to the power circuitry inside.

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Sun May 23, 2004 2:01 am

Here's the best part guys. This ProSilence 350 was used in an underclocked Pentium III @750MHz with a single Cuda 7200.7 120GB drive and a laptop slim CDRW/DVD drive.

Nowhere near the edge of it's limits.

Passive cooling of power supplies in lower power use is entirely doable. It's just that we have yet to see a manufacturer get it right.

-Ed

chylld · Post by **chylld** » Sun May 23, 2004 2:23 am

no offense meant to you ed, but maybe the whole fanless psu thing is totally unnecessary. a panaflo 80L @5v in a high-efficiency power supply (e.g. seasonic ss) is inaudible and perfectly fine, why not just stop there? companies are shooting themselves in the foot getting past this already-sufficient step

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Sun May 23, 2004 8:03 am

Once you've heard (or not heard) a 100% fanless system, it's hard to go back. I neglected to mention that the dead ProSilence 350 was in a computer that is in my bedroom, where I could barely even hear it (the slightest hard drive seek noise, it's in a SmartDrive2002).

It's not unreasonable to expect a $200+ power supply to perform fanless when it's supposedly designed and advertised to do so. Especially considering the very LOW load I'm putting on it. I am not running an Athlon or P4 on this power supply.

Another thing is that not all people are willing to void the warranty of their power supplies. (well, a good amount of people here excluded, of course.)

And I am not willling to just stop there. I think a passively cooled powersupply is a real possibility. It's just that no one had gotten it right yet.

And I'm still waiting for Seasonic to get rid of that stupid "revving" circuit of their current PSU's.

-Ed

zuperdee · Post by **zuperdee** » Sun May 23, 2004 11:46 am

Guys, before this turns into a big argument, I just thought maybe I'd put in my 2 cents... Personally, I'll agree, I think it sounds like the proSilence PSUs have problems. However, I also don't think ONE single bad brand is enough to extrapolate and make the general statement that ALL brands of fanless PSUs must be bad.

I for one will be interested to see MikeC's upcoming review of the Coolmax fanless units, for example. So far, I've heard pretty good things about them, mainly saying that they might add 1 or 2 degrees to your internal case temperature, but that they otherwise seem very stable, with good, stable voltages on all three rails. Admittedly, this does not say anything about the PSU's long term reliability, but IMHO, that can only be tested by using them over the long term.

I also wonder about the upcoming Antec Phantom. Antec is fairly well known for releasing products that are good and reliable.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Sun May 23, 2004 12:00 pm

zuperdee wrote:
I also wonder about the upcoming Antec Phantom. Antec is fairly well known for releasing products that are good and reliable.

Antec announced it over five months ago and still have no firm (or even infirm) release date. Kind of makes you wonder if there's "issues" with it.

Post by **MikeC** » Sun May 23, 2004 1:52 pm

Ralf Hutter wrote:Antec announced it over five months ago and still have no firm (or even infirm) release date. Kind of makes you wonder if there's "issues" with it.

From behind the scenes, yup.

I also know from casual chats with PSU makers --- who are all in Taiwan, with factories in China, and who generally all know each other and each others products --- that the ProSilence fanless PSUs failure rate is very high. This is not a verifiable quote, it's what has been said to me casually by a couple of good reliable contacts I have in different PSU companies. We could say it's just envy or competitive zeal that provokes such comments, but given the number of posts & emails I've seen about this, plus my own experience with fanless PSUs, I tend to think there substance to these casual observations.

chylld · Post by **chylld** » Sun May 23, 2004 3:00 pm

apparently the phantom was on display at some recent exhibition show, but was taken off after it had overheating problems.

Doomer · Post by **Doomer** » Sun May 23, 2004 11:43 pm

I suspected there are problems, after all it has been two months since it was in "final revision" and there is no word after that.

Overheating issues could be resolved with something like this:
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfis ... m&lp=ja_en

al bundy · Post by **al bundy** » Sun May 23, 2004 11:58 pm

Edwood wrote:Once you've heard (or not heard) a 100% fanless system, it's hard to go back. I neglected to mention that the dead ProSilence 350 was in a computer that is in my bedroom, where I could barely even hear it (the slightest hard drive seek noise, it's in a SmartDrive2002)...

So you did not have even a single fan in the entire system? Is it the same system you described in this thread (where you mounted the PSU with the fins horizontal instead of vertical)?