[ubuntu-uk] [OT] ATX power supply seems to have lost it's X-factor

[Roger Lancefield]

>
> On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 9:10 PM, Rob Beard <rob at esdelle.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >> I'm swinging towards an Xilence 480W PSU [1] from aria for £26, but
> >> not sure if it's (a) worth the extra money for a quieter PSU, and (b)
> >> if 480W will be sufficient for stability?
>
> 480W is way over-powered to keep that lot working to be honest.
>
> Do go for something quiet - nothing worse than a cheap PSU whining away.
>


After a no-brand PSU burned out on me, and then after receiving two bad
(i.e. dead on arrival) Xilence PSU units from QuietPC* a year and a half or
so back, I decided to start devoting a bit more resource to my machines'
power supply units. By the way, talking about Xilence, I also took delivery
of one of their case fans that had bad bearings. I'm not very impressed with
the quality of that company's products and now avoid them like the plague.
(*QuietPC, on the other hand, were very good, initially swapping the units
and then giving me a full refund without any hassle. They also sent a
courier to collect the duff units).

I suspect that my main desktop is a little more power hungry than yours,
although not a great deal so, and it's all humming (actually, very little
"humming") along beautifully using a Nesteq "Semi-fanless" 450Watt PSU.
Nesteq are expensive compared to the generic, Chinese-made units, but the
build quality is superb, and the modular cabling is a welcome relief after
those multi-tentacled, brightly-coloured looms resembling David Seaman's
ponytail on a bad hair day. My unit is also very quiet indeed (in fact
inaudible over the case fans and CPU cooler, despite all of these being good
quality "quiet" items).

The QuietPC technician claimed that Nesteq's units have a significantly more
stable and reliable supply than the typical no-brand, £15-£20 jobbies and
thus can be used in setups that would normally require higher-rated, cheaper
units. I have no way of accurately verifying such claims, but my 450W Nesteq
has run my (home-assembled) main desktop with its dual-head NVidia 7600, 2GB
RAM, dual-core CPU, single HD and DVD writer, 1 x 120mm and 1 x 92mm case
fans, large Zalman CPU cooler, etc. absolutely fine. No mysterious lock ups
or shutdowns, or any other apparent electrical anomalies.

You do have an extra hard-disk, and my Nvidia card is passively cooled, so
I'm not really sure how our machines' respective power requirements compare.
But anyway, if you're interested:

http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/products/powersupplies

Cheers
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