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I need a pretty silent PSU for OC - here's my options

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Mastiff

Member
Joined
Mar 7, 2003
Location
Norway
This will be for a system with an overclocked P4 3.2 with watercooling, but the hitch is that I need it to be as quiet as possible. And it has to bee able to manage the mobo, a GeForce 6800, at least two harddrives, a DVD writer and a few USB-units (soundcard, gamepads, keyboard). I know that 350 real watts will probably do that (it does that on my current system, where I have had up to 6 discs and two external drives running on the Arctic Cooling Silent Case with a built-in 350W Seasonic powersupply), I'm not of the "anything less than 600 watts is for wimps"-scool of thought. ;)

Here's my options (please don't suggest anything else, that won't help me, these really are the options available to me in the time span I will need it):
OC PowerStream 420 watt
ThermalTake Silent PurePower 560 watt
Yesico FL-420T 420 watt fanless
Zalman ZM400B-APS

Of course the Yesico will be the quietst, and I'm inclined to go with that, but will that be a big problem with heat in a big tower? I will watercool both the CPU and the GPU, but not the bridge. I don't think the set I'm gonna use has enough cooling force to do that. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
 
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If you have a fanless PSU and a watercooling setup I would recommend perhaps attaching even a 7v 120mm fan to the PSU somehow as there isnt going to be much airflow in the case. Should still be pretty quiet tho.
 
Jeez, you're fast! :D Yes, that would be an option I could live with. A Papst 120 mm fan on 7 volts doesn't make much noise. So you think that would be enough? It's a rather large case as well.
 
Mastiff said:
Jeez, you're fast! :D Yes, that would be an option I could live with. A Papst 120 mm fan on 7 volts doesn't make much noise. So you think that would be enough? It's a rather large case as well.

As long as you get *some* airflow going through it I *guess* it should be OK. It will probably have a pretty hefty heatsink protruding from it to cool it if it doesnt have any fans.

Just in case they are designed to perhaps make use of case airflow. Watercooling means there wont be much.
 
No, it has a heatsink on the outside of the case. And the full load won't be used for more than a couple of hours 3-4 times a week. The rest of the time it's just going to be running quietly, with 0-10 % CPU load.
 
I have an OCZ Powerstream 520 which is very quiet, and will provide the power you need. The 420 would probably work just fine too. My old TT 480 was much louder and not as nice, can't believe I took the time to sleeve that POS.
 
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