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Power Hardware Hacking

Silent 500W Power Supply 252

Posted by CmdrTaco from the nice-juice-box dept.
NightRyder writes "To cope with the increased power demands of today's processors and video cards a 500W silent power supply has been released by Antec. The topic of silent power production has been an important one to the computer community recently, especially concerning the increased hardware demands by new game and operating systems. Considering the processing demands of something like, *cough* Windows Vista, its important to be able to keep your computer cool without it getting loud."
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Silent 500W Power Supply More

Silent 500W Power Supply

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  • "silent" (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    i did not find word "dB" in there..

    • Re:"silent" (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Cave_Monster ( 918103 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @12:56AM (#13673483)
      This fan is off most of the time but when the insides heat up it will be turned on until the temperature is below the set limit. When running, the fan's speed will vary automatically based on how hot the PSU is, so even it is running it may barely be audible because the fan is spinning slowly.

      So they have mostly eliminated the need for a fan by using some good heat dissipation methods. Though if you are running your PC for extended periods of time or your PC is tucked away under a desk somewhere where it doesn't get much air flow, I would expect the fan to be humming away as normal.

      • Re:"silent" (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Tatarize ( 682683 )
        Am I the only one who takes silent to mean that it's never going to make any noise? I'm sure with the /. users out there, everybody asks the question, oh really, how would you do it?

        Personally I would seal up the power supply, then have it filled with oil. Remove the fan, and coat the outside with heatsink bars. It's either that or alter the form factor of the powersupply by removing it from the console box. Probably combining it with an UPS and just use the extra area to properly disperse the heat, replac
        • My big concern is that even though power supplies don't exhaust a lot of air normally, these silent and fanless power supplies exhaust even less or none. This would mean you need something else to get rid of the hot air which becomes another fan elsewhere so what is the point?
        • It's either that or alter the form factor of the powersupply by removing it from the console box. Probably combining it with an UPS and just use the extra area to properly disperse the heat, replacing the powersuppy box with an empty box that takes DC in and splits it up properly (just wires).

          I vote for this option. I have a huge fanless UPS that is not even warm to the touch. Why do I need this hot "power supply" next to my CPU inside the computer, when the UPS could output DC and easily disperse the heat?

          • Re:"silent" (Score:4, Insightful)

            by InvalidError ( 771317 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @12:38PM (#13677172)
            Hook up your UPS to a two 70AH car batteries and let it run unplugged at full-load for an hour, it will be hotter. I read many stories about UPSes overheating or even catching fire when run for too long beyond what their stock batteries would normally allow at full-load. UPSes meant for extended runs have fans... look at APC Back-UPS XS and RS series... the XS has no external battery connector and no fan while the equivalent RS has both the external battery connector and a fan.

            Laptop bricks only provide 12-20VDC, the laptop itself has a number of extra converters in it to provide all the other voltages (Vcore, Vram, Vio, Vterm, 3.3V, 5V, etc.) from the battery and charge-controller circuitry. The laptops' external brick is there to decouple non-essential AC power circuitry from the mobile components, the laptop still requires local bulk power regulation. There is also the problem that an external PSU would have slower transient response times. With today's systems where the load can change by 10A in microseconds or less, an external PSU would probably need a secondary regulator (at least a large capacitor bank) inside the case. For a laptop, this is not an issue because everything goes through the battery controller. For ITX, this is not as much of an issue because they are mostly low-power systems.

            Since technology is moving towards local voltage regulators for faster transient response, PCs should migrate towards single-rail power distribution (something like 24V with 20-35V tolerance for easy UPS) to avoid triple, quadruple, etc.-tuple conversions... converting directly from a single higher voltage source decreases the load on intermediate regulators, reducing conduction and switching losses across the board.

            PSUs with efficiencies over 90% are possible but every 1% over 85% is more expensive than the last... synchronous rectification alone doubles the number of required high-speed, high-current MOSFETs and other parts.

    • Re:"silent" (Score:4, Insightful)

      by xs650 ( 741277 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @12:58AM (#13673497)
      With no fan, it should be pretty close to inaudaible from a couple of feet away.

      I looked up the specs on one and it was 82% efficient at full power. That's 90 Watts of heat it needs to get rid of without a fan. Toasty!
      • 90 watts at peak load. I doubt the power supply would last very long running at 500 W for any extended period of time..
        • Fortunately, pretty much no modern PC needs anywhere near 500W. Of course, the PSU does have a fan that kicks in when it gets too hot, so it's a moot point.
        • I doubt the power supply would last very long running at 500 W for any extended period of time..

          I doubt it is possible to get even near 500W with actual computer equipment connected to the power supply. You need to get the configuration exactly right to reproduce that number.

      • It's not fanless (Score:3, Informative)

        by Daverd ( 641119 )
        From TFA:

        The Phantom 500 has been bumped up from 350W to 500W but has number of other interesting changes, the most important of which is the addition of a fan. This means this power supply is no longer fanless but is Antec has still labeled it as "silent".
    • Oh, well, it's -Inf.

  • Bad Editing Or Terrible Spelling? (Score:5, Funny)

    by hvatum ( 592775 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @12:50AM (#13673453) Homepage
    The topic of silent power production has been an important one to the computer community recently.

    Yes, the topic of silent power production has been an important one to the computer community recently. Right alongside in-home cold fusion and perpetual motion machines. Oh wait, did you mean silent power conversion?

    • Batteries produce power (Score:4, Informative)

      by Markus Registrada ( 642224 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @01:44AM (#13673696)
      ... silently.

      Power is defined as energy transmitted/consumed/converted per unit time. A battery (like a fuel tank, or a dam) stores energy. Unplugged, power is zero. When you draw from it, it's producing power, and drawing down its energy reserves to do so.

      Things get simpler when you use precise language, and avoid confusing yourself.

    • Do not fuel cells produce power? I thought they do. And they are silent and their applications to computer industry were much discussed recently.
    • The Rampmaster Regenerator [rampmasters.com]... perpetual motion machine?

  • There was a story about power supplies earlier (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ReformedExCon ( 897248 ) <reformed.excon@gmail.com> on Thursday September 29, 2005 @12:51AM (#13673455)
    I remember that the story was discussing how the advertised wattages of these power supplies were pretty much lies or gross exaggerations. So we're talking about 500W of power without cooling, but how much power can be drawn until the thing dies from heat exhaustion? And can the 500W output be sustained for extended lengths of time?

    Also, does anyone find really strange that slashdot would put the CSS definition files in the images.slashdot.org domain? One computer I use shows Slashdot completely stripped down. This one shows it "normally". Any way to get rid of advertisements and images without losing the formatting as well?

    • Re:There was a story about power supplies earlier (Score:5, Informative)

      by nametaken ( 610866 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @12:53AM (#13673471)
      This newest incarnation of the Antec Phantom line has an 80mm variable speed fan. Its in the article.

    • Re:There was a story about power supplies earlier (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Plus this one from antec is just the 300W version with a Plastic-encased fan on the front and re-badged to 500W... although it's a damned good power supply.

      These XYZ reviews should be stopped,they are getting to a page for one paragraph almost, it's rediculous. Besides there are a million and one sites that have already reviewed these PSUs. There is some troll (no doubt from XYZ) who keeps submitting their stories to slashdot to get traffic.

    • The CSS would be coming from the images domain as a measure to assist in caching. The css can be cached in a similar manner to the images, and it makes it easier to be able to configure it in a domain basis.

    • Any way to get rid of advertisements and images without losing the formatting as well?

      Yes [mozdev.org]

    • IT IS NOT SILENT (Score:3, Interesting)

      by CaptnMArk ( 9003 )
      It has a fan.

      Silent = no fan
      Quiet = quiet fan

      (2x fan -> ! Quiet)

      IMO

      (I now have a silent 350W power supply)
      • It's still silent if the fan never turns on when you use it the way you use it. Besides, not even passively cooled PSUs are totally silent, the actual conversion has been known to create a sort of hum, buzz or ticking, especially on bad models. (Used to be worse than it is these days.)

        Also, PSUs with 2 fans can still be very quiet. There's one brand of PSUs where the inner fan starts to spin up earlier than the exhaust fan (which is more easily heard). Creates positive pressure, very nice idea and apparentl
      • To be fair, silent would also have no coil whine. Even without a fan you can still hear a power supply, you just have to get close enough. "Silent" just means quiet enough that you can't hear it over the background noise. It's a subjective definition, and that's what they're counting on.

        Volume generally decreases with the number of fans, for a given airflow volume. If you want your machine to more quiet, double the number of fans and halve their rotational speed. Or quadrouple the number of fans, and r
        • Currently, the biggest problems in my machine is hard drive noise. I have 3 hard drives (rubber mounted).

          I have a fanless PSU and CPU and a single exhaust case fan.

          Coil whine is not noticeable yet.
          • Yeah. I had to make a custom sound-deadening enclosure with it's own series of fans to get my HDD's down to a reasonable volume. Of course, I also need a computer capable of running games... My fanless C3 is with a 1GB flashcard is pretty quiet, but try getting that to run Half-Life 2. So I'm stuck with the more noisy one. But there is a lot you can do to get the noise down.

            It sounds like you're already hooked up, but just in case I recommend Silent PC Review [silentpcreview.com]. They were one of the first sites dedicated

  • Buy the highest efficiency p/s with a 120mm fan (Score:5, Informative)

    by Brian Stretch ( 5304 ) * on Thursday September 29, 2005 @12:52AM (#13673462)
    You're better off buying a high-efficiency power supply that has a 120mm thermistor-controlled fan. Seasonic's S12 500W is my current favorite. The 120mm fan is virtually silent at moderate loads and not too bad at higher loads. High efficiency means less waste heat for the fan to need to cool and lower electric bills.

  • I WANT a loud power supply (Score:5, Funny)

    by dirtsurfer ( 595452 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @12:53AM (#13673468) Journal
    I live in an old apartment building with thin walls and I have very loud neighbors who work the late shift.

    I want my power supply to be loud. I need as much white noise as I can get.

  • Slashvertisement? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29, 2005 @12:53AM (#13673469)
    This powersupply looks nice but what is the news? The article even mentions that this is not antecs first silent power supply. There are also completely silent PSUs made by other companies with better efficiency than this.

  • A better review (Score:5, Informative)

    by alexo ( 9335 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @01:05AM (#13673517) Journal

    here [silentpcreview.com]

    • Re:A better review (Score:2, Informative)

      by Evro ( 18923 )
      Hey, but that one probably wasn't submitted by the guy who runs that site as a simple gimmick to boost traffic! I wonder if Slashdot gets kickbacks...
    • "Mike", the builder of the test rig in that article, would have been much better off buying a water-cooled PowerMac G5 for all the extra expense he's incurred and I'm sure he's still far from silent!

  • Going in my next PC (Score:3, Interesting)

    by goodbadorugly ( 837673 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @01:07AM (#13673526)
    Having just discovered this power supply a few days ago, I can definitely say its going in my next PC. Although my primary machine thus far has been an Apple Powerbook, I can definite say that I miss a decent windows computer in my life (I switched to mac just this April). A friend asked me to troubleshoot his PC just a few days ago and scarily enough it took a few seconds to get into the groove of things in his windows environment.

    Having said that, the value of a good power supply in your computer is second to none and the power supplies from Antec have never disappointed.

    What intrigues me about this particular model is that unlike its less powerful brothers it actually does have a fan. Though under light loads the fan stays off or does very little spinning. For a computer I am building that is doubling as both a light gaming machine and a PVR the large rated output and silent properties make for one killer combination.

    And thats what I tell myself every single dang day so I can justify its 200 dollar price tag!
    • Although my primary machine thus far has been an Apple Powerbook, I can definite say that I miss a decent windows computer in my life (I switched to mac just this April). A friend asked me to troubleshoot his PC just a few days ago and scarily enough it took a few seconds to get into the groove of things in his windows environment.

      Just out of curiosity, what is it you miss about Windows? Also, why is it that troubleshooting made you nostalgic?

  • It is not silent (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29, 2005 @01:16AM (#13673569)
    It has a fan.

    If that fan is moving, noise is generated.

    Ergo it is not silent.

    QED.
    • Even if it didn't have a fan it still wouldn't be silent. There would be a slight hum of electricity and possibly some pops and cracks has a various components heated up. You can't have something that quite but you can have one you can barely hear, much less over your 5.1 system.
    • It's not just fans... inductors can make noise too. On most laptops, you can hear the pitch of the power supply's whine as the processor's current needs change.

      Inductors generate magnetic fields, and those fields react against other fields to generate a force -- no matter how well potted, there is just a little bit of movement..

  • Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)

    by yum ( 24177 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @01:23AM (#13673594) Homepage
    Do you really need that much power? [silentpcreview.com]
    • No, but the 500W version of the Phantom comes with a fan that will kick in if things get too hot. The 300W (or is it 350W?) version has no fan, so if something goes wrong it just overheats.

  • Overrated subject? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by markass530 ( 870112 ) <markass530@NOspAm.gmail.com> on Thursday September 29, 2005 @01:23AM (#13673595) Homepage
    I understand how the proliferation of the p4 and its space heater specs created a bit of a backlash against the modern computer and its exponential power requirements & noise generation, but I think it's gone overboard. Who doesn't have some kind of background noise on the computer be it, a movie, or mp3 playing. How really big is the market for absolute silence, beyond media pc's, where high power requirements shouldn't exist.

    • My "media PC" is a medium tower on the floor next to my TV. It needs a decent power supply to run my GeForce FX 5200 Ultra (which I use for TV-out and to play Halo), and it could stand to be a lot quieter. It's distracting trying to watch a movie with that fan running.
      • Yep, that's how I got started on trying to soundproof my PC too. I first started to be annoyed by noisy computers when I bought a DVD drive and rented a few movies. Whenever two movie characters spoke softly, it would be an ordeal just trying to understand what they're saying, because the white noise was drowning it.

        And generally, even when I'm not watching a movie or listening to music, a quiet conversation is 45 dBA. A normal conversation at 1 ft distance is 60 dBA. Doing the same near a 40 dBA PC puts th
    • My gaming machine (runs hot and rather noisy due to case fans including a blowhole) produces a fair amount of noise, which can be an annoying distraction when I'm actually playing (esp. games like CS where you might want to hear faint footsteps etc). I suppose I should get headphones...

  • Why all the silent computers? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Zakabog ( 603757 ) <john&jmaug,com> on Thursday September 29, 2005 @01:30AM (#13673633)
    I've got 2 computers with 6 hard drives, a refrigerator and a small pepsi machine, my room sounds like a wind tunnel and that's just the way I like it!

    I've really never been bothered by the noise, it's very loud in my room and I'm just used to it. If it was silent in here I'd never be able to fall asleep because I'm just used to hearing that noise in the background and that always helps me sleep. Kind of like a wave machine or something, it's peacefull. Lets me know we still have power. If I wanted to make a silent PC I could probably do it pretty easily, water cooled and kept in a box (like a wooden box or a cabinet or something like that) with sufficient ventilation.

  • 500W+ (Score:2, Insightful)

    by khann80 ( 792242 )
    While I am impressed with a quiet strong power supply I would rather see advances in NOT needed something this big. Though a single computer doesn't really draw that much power most of the people (read geeks) I know have a bunch of computers. I really don't want my computers drawing more power than the house next door.

  • While you're spending $200 on a PSU... (Score:4, Informative)

    by saskboy ( 600063 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @01:33AM (#13673651) Homepage Journal
    Don't forget to invest at least $50US into a UPS, so that your investment is isolated from surges, and browouts. You'll also benefit from being mostly immune from short power flickers, as long as your modem and router are backed up by the battery in the UPS too.
    • And be careful what you hook up to the UPS. You don't want high-current things like laser printers hooked up, and not just because it'll drain your battery faster. Also, motors are bad. Something about inductive loads. I've got two separate strips, well marked as to whether they are 'interruptable' or 'uninterruptable'.

    • I run my system on a UPS for the reasons you state, but I had an experience that makes me wonder.

      I had a motherboard that died (fried capacitors, anyone?), and the resulting load tripped the circuit breaker for that room.

      But the UPS kept the power coming in spite of the tripped breaker, and the result was a fair amount of smoke from the MB before the power supply in the PC finally gave up and died.

      I got lucky, but it could have easily burned the house down...

  • .. a comment disparaging yet-to-be-released Windoze

  • Thank Joe Betts (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Markus Registrada ( 642224 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @01:53AM (#13673733)
    It was Joe Betts, working at IBM Almaden Research Lab, who designed the first 90%+ efficient switching power-brick, for the Thinkpad. Before that, bricks were all twice as big, and ran hot-hot-hot. After that, all the other guys had to clean up their acts too. He didn't study electrical engineering in school, but he didn't let that slow him down; he learned what he needed when he needed it.

    Nowadays he's at Oqo.

  • This is lame. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Zebra_X ( 13249 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @01:55AM (#13673738)
    Considering the processing demands of something like, *cough* Windows Vista, its important to be able to keep your computer cool without it getting loud."

    There have been a number of posts in recent weeks that have been all /cry /moan /sob about Vista's requirements.

    High computing requirements are a fact of life when you have an operating system that has a fully abstracted graphics layer (OS X comes to mind). No doubt Vista will be "borrowing" the quartz architecture. From Apple's site "Quartz Extreme functionality is supported by the following video GPUs: NVIDIA GeForce2 MX and later, or any AGP-based ATI RADEON GPU. A minimum of 16MB VRAM is required."

    I don't read anything about people complaining that their G4 or G5 requires a dedicated GPU and very fast processor to run OS X. Apple has made their hardware such a black box that no one really notices that the hardware is generally several steps above the PC realm in terms of performance (though you wouldn't always know it). Microsoft is moving in a similar direction, though I'm sure that even thouse of us with integrated intel graphics cards will have a reasonable experience.

    The funny thing is Mac users have had these hardware requirements (and cost) for over 4 years now.

    • There have been a number of posts in recent weeks that have been all /cry /moan /sob about Vista's requirements.

      High computing requirements are a fact of life when you have an operating system that has a fully abstracted graphics layer (OS X comes to mind). No doubt Vista will be "borrowing" the quartz architecture. From Apple's site "Quartz Extreme functionality is supported by the following video GPUs: NVIDIA GeForce2 MX and later, or any AGP-based ATI RADEON GPU. A minimum of 16MB VRAM is required."

      • "And to try to make this post somewhat on-topic, my PowerBook does Quartz 2D Extreme with not only 64MB of VRAM, but also only uses a 65W power supply. And that drives the video display as well."

        Right. But you just somehow know that Vista will need 500W for that display card. That's funny, because I thought the RAM wasn't what used a ton of power on VGA cards. I'm pretty sure you could get a 256 MB 9250 or 5200. And here's the fun part: a 5200 doesn't need more power in a PC than it needs in a Mac.

        Add a 25W

      • Re:This is lame. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Zebra_X ( 13249 )
        "Am I high?" No.

        http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry360.html [daniweb.com]

        Have a read. 256 is "ideal". 128 is "better" which would indicate that 64 is not out of the running as a minimum. the ati radeon 9600, a near univeral chip ships at 128 (in your beloved G5 no less LOL) and 256 . You can also get the 256 model for 75 bucks. What's the problem? If you had to ask apple what the "ideal" GPU requirements for the OS were, what do you think they would say? There is also no way of knowing how well it will perform until it's
    • Apple has made their hardware such a black box that no one really notices that the hardware is generally several steps above the PC realm in terms of performance (though you wouldn't always know it).

      You seem to have the bass-ackwards. Apple is typically several steps *below* the PC realm in terms of hardware specifications and performance (carefully scripted photoshop benchmarks aside and occasional brief periods of time after the introduction of brand new hardware excepted) - and that's ignoring the situ

  • Newegg (Score:3, Informative)

    by DavidLeeRoth ( 865433 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @01:57AM (#13673747)
    For all you guys jumpin' to get this, the detailed specs of it are located here, as well as a place to buy it. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16817103926#DetailSpecs [newegg.com]
  • The human brain uses 50 watts.

  • Lousy review, and about 5 months late (Score:4, Informative)

    by freidog ( 706941 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @02:22AM (#13673824)
    Silent PC Review [silentpcreview.com] did a review of the Phaton 500 back in May; and did a far better job of actually putting it through its paces.

    This is a typical PSU review, that is to say worthless. The problem is to do a good PSU reivew you actually need quite a bit of hardware, most little online sites lack even the most basic testing tools (a good multimeter and a controllable load). They make no mention of how they measured the voltages (software, or voltmeter, and from where, pigtail, ATX connector, somewhere else), they put a system that probably doesn't draw 125W DC at load to test out a 500W PSU, they have no real PSU temperature or efficency information. Typical of a site who's reviewing expertiese consists soley of swaping out parts, running 3D Mark and reporting the difference.

    Silent PC Review does half way decent reviews, and over the last year or so XBit Labs has starting doing very good PSU reviews. Beyond that there aren't too many places that consistantly hit the mark.

    For a silent PSU (not sure why this is that big of a deal, I have a TruePower 330W and can't hear it over the HDD, but I guess some people will always pay for that last dB quieter), there's of course the Phantom 300, the SilverStone 'NF' series, a 300 and a 400W version, the Fortron Source Zen 300; recently reviewed on XBitLabs [xbitlabs.com] and Silent PC Review [silentpcreview.com], with just rock solid voltages across the spectrum. And of course the SeaSonic S12 line while not fanless is known to be extremely quiet and highly efficient

  • Is the PS now the biggest heat producer in an PC? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dr. Spork ( 142693 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @03:08AM (#13673949)
    I had just built a new computer with a 90nm Athlon64 and a 500W power supply. This is mainly for work, so no hot/fancy GPU. The CPU heatsink is absolutely cold to the touch. The air blown from inside the case feels exactly the same temperature as background. But, the air that comes out of the power supply is noticably warm. It really seems like the power supply is the only thing that is actually producing any heat. Is this typical of modern systems? How much more difficult is it to make efficient power supplies? Somehow I feel even worse about all the power I waste on power supply inefficiency than the power I waste with my CPU.
    • Look, you are probably correct. But please humour me and take that case cover off, and double... no tripple check your heatsink is actually touching the CPU. Check it is secured down tight. Check you have used thermal material.

      Basically there is no way that heat sink should be cold. The heat must be going somewhere. If your heatsink is not seated correctly, the heat is going back through the CPU pins to the motherboard, which will go bang some time in the near future.

      I know you are probably very skil

    • I second checking how well the heat sink is attached. The heat sink should be moderately warm to the touch during operation and shortly after shutdown. Definitely shouldn't be *hot*, but it should be noticeably above room temperature. Of course, if you have some insane fan or water cooling system attached to the heat sink, you might manage to achieve "cold", but thats far outside a normal system.

      As for the warmest air being that exiting the power supply, thats normal. In addition to the power supplies o

  • Phantom Blows... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mungeh ( 663492 )
    My phantom 500w lasted about 5 days before it ceased to function in any computer I tried it in. Took the surge protector with it now.

    A good test of this PSU will be to see how the manafacturer deals with my problem.
  • I have a relatively mild system, still power hungry, but not overly and it runs on a 250 Watt Sparkle PSU. Has been doing so for about 6 months, I though I needed a huge over the top PSU and I bought one, and it proceeded to take out one of my main HDD's, and it wasn't a bargain basement one either. That 250 watt psu runs a Asus A7V400 MB, 2 200gig SATA HDD's, 2 ATA 133 HDD's, DVD-ROM and DVD-RW, AMD XP 2700+ and a GeForce5200 Ultra, never a burp or complaint. I just don't understand why in the world you
  • maybe when the patent on zenion-air effect (used in the ionic breeze air purifier) expires, they could use it for computer fans.

    Zenion-air effect is a way of inducing an airflow without using fans or moving parts so it's vewy vewy quiet.
  • I was just thinking, wouldn't mineral oil submersion solutions like this [slashdot.org] and this [markusleonhardt.de] be a solution to noise? Would it not be possible to somehow seal the entire PSU, fill it with mineral oil and have some kind of heat exchanger system? If powered the exchanger with natural convection instead of a pump (ie allow the warm oil to rise into the exchanger at the top of the supply, cool and then drain back in to the bottom), it could be extremely quiet. You might need a small fan to encourage circulation in really h
  • I hate to burst everyone's bubble... but the Phantom is not silent.... merely very quiet... I work for Voodoo PC and we've started using the Phantom 500 in machines that need help in the noise department.... they only have one fan, and a good design with tons of surface area to bleed the heat... the problems are it needs to have room to dissipate that heat, probably at least an inch clearance on every side unless you want to have another fan aimed at the PSU....

    the only really silent power supplies that I'v

  • Software Fan (Score:3, Funny)

    by Rick.C ( 626083 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @08:52AM (#13675004)
    Considering the processing demands of something like, *cough* Windows Vista...

    Windows Vista will include a feature, code-named WinFan, that will deal with power supply heat dissipation in software.

    Microsoft is rumored to be working on WinPSU, a software-implemented power supply for the next Windows version after Vista.

    For those who prefer the noise of a fan, WinFan will generate white noise through your sound card. There is already a rumor of a virus that replaces the white noise .wav file with the sound of a fan with failing bearings.

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