Fanless Power Supplies

[bloodandsoil]

I'm researching building a PC that has no moving parts. I'm asking for recommendations for fanless zero decibal power supplies that have enough watts to support a low-end video card (like an Radeon 4850), an SSD storage drive, ATX motherboard. That's about it.

 

[theAnimal]

Silverstone Nightjar 450W

 

[imported_Scoop]

Originally posted by: theAnimal
Silverstone Nightjar 450W

This man speaks the truth! It's not cheap though

SilverStone SST-ST30NF-GM could be an option as well. It's an older 300W model with a PCI-E connector. I'm not sure if the earlier revisions had a PCI-E connector, there's a mention of a V3.0 on the Silverstone's GPU support list pdf.

Looking through their site they seem to have a new 400W 80+ bronze model as well 'SST-ST40NF'. I haven't seen anything about it, so I'm not sure if it's already for sale or not. Comes with 6-pin PCI-E and 6/8-pin PCI-E, but I don't think there's any fanless GPUs of that caliber.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Scoop
I don't think there's any fanless GPUs of that caliber.

I think one of the fastest available stock fanless card is the BFG 9800 GT passive (it comes with a Thermalright heatsink). It CANNOT run with no airflow as it depends on case fans moving at least a little bit of air.

I used to run an 8800 GT with an Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 and it also CANNOT run with no airflow.

Both can run with no fan on the cooler, but both need case fans.

Radeon 4850 can run with the Accelero S1 if there is airflow.

Originally posted by: bloodandsoil
I'm researching building a PC that has no moving parts. I'm asking for recommendations for fanless zero decibal power supplies that have enough watts to support a low-end video card (like an Radeon 4850), an SSD storage drive, ATX motherboard. That's about it.

G'luck on that. It is reasonably easy to build a "quiet" system, but exceedingly difficult to build a "silent" system. You can put the biggest heatsink that will fit on your CPU and GPU, and if your case is closed and you don't have any fans in the case then if you are running a Radeon 4850 and your E6600 you will experience overheating issues.

Oh yeah, once you get rid of fan/motor noises, you'll start to hear humming and whining from the PSU, graphics card and motherboard (if ambient noises are low enough and your hearing good enough).

My personal best effort was having a PSU fan and one undervolted 120mm case fan. I have a passive Antec Phantom 350W PSU in my garage. It is now dead, likely from a combination of bad caps and heat.

Directron has a whole section dedicated to fanless/noiseless PSUs.

 

[Modelworks]

I don't recommend this approach for everyone as it can be very dangerous if you don't know what you are doing. I know of one person who built a HTPC that uses a large 12" square AC fan at very low rpm on the side of the case. Inside he removed the cover off the regular PSU so that it is completely exposed on one side. He removed all other fans from PSU, video card and CPU. It is very quiet, but you really have to be careful doing something like this. If that PSU were to come in contact with other cables you could have a fire.