Fanless PSU Torture Test Roundup
Silence is definitely golden in your home theater pc, so a power supply is one place where many people look to quiet. Honestly though, I wasn’t even aware there were even this many fanless power supplies still being made. With 120mm PSU’s dominating the market while being very quiet and helping cool, the demand for 100% silent really has diminished.
The question was the genesis of a two-week project that culminates with this
article. It is a roundup review of fanless power supplies, in a test setting
that can only be described as torturous. Admittedly, the test is not representative
of practical usage; few users would push their PSUs to steady-state maximum
load for 15 hours in red-hot conditions. The reality is that most people who
buy and use a fanless power supply are not looking to push the power or thermal
envelope of their PC — usually they’re looking to build a silent computer,
most often with less-than ultra-power-hungry components. The issue this roundup
addresses is just how close to the rated power of a fanless PSU you can run
before the cooling requirements of the PSU itself makes the system noisier than
just running a good fan-equipped PSU.