Etasis EFN-300 fanless PSU - Tried Zalman, SilenX and Akasa power

[fluffuser]

This is my first post as Hexus, so I thought I'd mention about the ultra quiet system I'm evolving, without resorting to water cooling.

I'm running a Etasis EFN-300 fanless power supply (£63+vat from Scan, lower if on todayonly) in my HTPC.

I have previously tried three ultra quiet PSU's:
-Zalman 300A-APF 300W (£47+vat)
-SilenX iXtrema Pro SX-3014PB aPFC 300W "<14 dBA" (&#163;51+vat Ref: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article81-page1.html)
-Akasa Ultra Quiet aPFC single 120mm fan 460W (&#163;56+vat Ref: http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/r...60w-PSU_1.html)

My 3.2GHz Pentium4 (northwood) HTPC includes an X-card and holo3d faroudja PCI card, in addition to the usual 2x 128MB DDR400 and m-audio 2496 soundcard.

I have the usual quiet pc parts:
- Arctic Freezer 4-heatpipe cpu cooler, tuned for quietness with a Zalman fanmate.
- Panflo 80mm case-fan, tuned for quietness with a Zalman fanmate (often <&#163;3 from scan)
- Radeon 9700 Pro, fanless with a Zalman HP80 heatpipe vga cooler.
- Gigabyte motherboard with fanless northbridge heatsink.
- Maxtor DiamondMax10 300GB sata fluid bearing hard disk (almost as quiet as the Samsung P120' 250GB's).

Although initially quiet, after a few hours running TheaterTek (just hardware accelerated dvxa, I don't use ffdshow post-processing) all three PSU's had ramped up their fan speed to quite noticeable levels.

Why?
I think the x-card and holo3d and Radeon 9700 Pro are pulling quite a bit more 12V power than my initially more basic Radeon 9500 based HTPC, underlclocking and undervolting the Pentium4 down to 2.4GHz didn't make much difference to the PSU. The Radeon 9500 at the time didn't seem to handle 1080i HDTV playback, although with TheaterTek and Nvidia decoder enhancements, this might now be fine on the 9500, but I'm reticent to change the Zalman HP80 back between the cards as it's very fiddly.

Etasis fanless PSU...
With the Etasis in, at start-up, the combination of Zalman Fanmate slowed 80mm Panaflo extraction fan, Zalman Fanmate slowed Arctic Freezer 4 cpu heatsink/fan, fanless Zalman heatpiped Radeon 9700 Pro and Maxtor hard disk were so noticeably quiet, even with the DIGN 3e case lid off.

Still, the case lid has to stay on otherwise my Tag processor above it in the rack will get hot and bothered, so I decided to try the etasis EFN-300 heatpipe/fanless power supply.

With no psu fan to pull air out the enclosed case, things were left to the 80mm panafo on a 60mm adapter to push all hot air out the 60mm back hole.

Too Hot
The Radeon heatsink temp went from about 48 degrees up to 59degrees, measured with a lian-li wired thermal lcd. More significantly, SpeedFan revealed that the hard disk was now 60degrees, which I think is 5 degrees over the usual hard disk spec limit.

Clearly the Panaflo which is rated at 21dBA@24CFM flow (rather good for a 80mm fan) when at full speed can't pull the heat out by itself, plus it will be creating a vacume in the case, causing hot air to be pulled on to the system from the Etasis PSU.

Although the system seems stable with our current relatively mild UK weather, I don't think 60degree case temperatures is very good for motherboard capacitors or hard disk longevity.

Possible Solutions
1. Leaving the front edge of the steel top and sides lid open slightly prevents the vacume and allows hot air an escape up and out the front, I noticed the CPU and hard drive were down at 39degrees with the Arctic freezer slowed as low as it would go with the fanmate, plus the Radeon was a good few degrees cooler.

2. Seal off the Etasis PSU from the rest of the HTPC insides. I doubt it would cope, but I have noticed it's heatsink gets less hot than the hard disk did! i.e. way under 55degrees, at which apparently it's warning light goes yellow.

3. Add an inlet case fan in the front left corner of the DIGN case and run it as an inlet fan to pull air in the front, like some of the later HTPC cases do. I have a SilenX 120mm 14dBA@64CFM flow arriving soon to try this. This should at least offset the vacume created by the case extraction fan, both helping it extract more and stopping the hot air from the fanless Etasis being pulled in.

4. Replace the Panflo 21dBA@24CFM with a SilenX 14dBA@28CFM flow fan. I have one arriving for another pc, so I might see if the extra 4CFM or 7dBA specs are of any real benefit, but I suspec an inlet fan will give much better airflow results.

Your thoughts appreciated.

cheers,
fluffuser.

[fluffuser]

A quick update from last night...
5. [update] The 120mm 14dbA fan only just fit in the from corner of my DIGN case and was not as quiet as the 80mm 14dbA one(!), so I made a foam baffle to fit the 80mm fan in within the front left case corner to seal off an inlet area.

With the 80mm fan running full speed off the motherboard connectorand the Panaflo extractor running off the fanmate at full speed:
SilenX 80mm inlet (full speed 2033RPM)
Panaflo 80mm to 60mm case extract (a fanmate at fastest speed)
Arctic Freezer CPU fan(a fanmate at lowest speed 1372RPM)

hard disk 35C, Radeon 9700 Pro 40C, cpu 31C (TheaterTek idle screensaver)

Pretty much as cool as with the lid off, but the inlet fan at full speed is just about noticeable, so that will be tuned down soon!

One advantage is I can just feel some hot air being pushed out through the fanless Etasis PSU.
regards,
fluffuser.

[Dark Horse]

It might be worth investing in a fan controller, it would cut down noise a fair bit.

I'm surprised your psu's have been so loud, I've never ever heard my Hiper!

[ExceededGoku]

you should go for a really powerful PSU, they generally don't get loud as they can take it. My enermax 620W is the quietest thing in my system and I havea maxtor 10 like you

[fluffuser]

The Zalman fanmate's are little fan controllers.

I'm also running a Pyramid5 thermal controller on the SilenX 80mm inlet fan, but either way now the Maxtor10 that can be heard, with the HD and CPU stable at 32C idle, rising to <40C running TheaterTek (which it does from startup) with the Radeon heatsink around 55C.

So the cooling noise floor is now under the Maxtor 10 and reasonable temps with the case lid back on!

I think it's a combination of Radeon 9700 Pro and holo3d card (an entire faroudja based video processor on a PCI card) both of which use lots of 12 volt power, plus the DIGN 3e HTPC case has just a pair of 60mm extraction holes, one of which I have an 80mm adaptor on, and case is a desktop orientation design so airflow is about as bad as possible, plus the heat has nowhere to go upwards, like a tower case does, hence the PSU extraction fans don't work as efficiently as in an upright design.

The SilenX PSU is now in my Athlon64 3800+/Geforce 6600GT/2x 512MB DDR400 Maxtor 10 mid-case system and is indeed pretty much silent.

I'm tempted to try a Seagate P120 hard disk to see how much quieter than the Maxtor 10 it is in reality (-1.7dBA Ref: http://www.storagereview.com/article...01/250_7.html), as the 300GB Maxtor10 could be moved in to my media server.

cheers,
fluffuser

[Dark Horse]

I think you mean the samsung spinpoint p120, they're acknowledged as some of the quieter drives around these days.

[fluffuser]

Yes, sorry I ment the Samsung P120.

cheers,
Rob.

[davidstone28]

In case anyone's wondering, the Etasis PSU is the same as the Silverstone ST30NF 300W passive PSU, the only difference being the design of the rear heatsink. Both PSUs are supposedly rated up to 500W with server level parts being used etc. Both are excellent PSUs IMO - I've been using the Silverstone version 24/7 in a server/gaming rig for the last 18 months or so without problem, although I run a fan behind it at 5v to err on the side of caution.

The Samsung P120, to my ears anyway, is a bit disappointing. Its louder both at idle and when seeking that the previous P80 Spinpoint which was superb in terms of low noise levels. Not sure how noisy the DM10 is, but I have a DM9 and although I think its quiet when idling, when the heads are seeking/writing is make a noise likely muffled ripping velcro.