Tagen 380, 480 or Thermaltake 480?

[BenW]

Well, i have a jeantech 300W at the moment and it makes more noise than a jet engine!

These are my system specs:
2.26Ghz 533Mhz
1024MB PC3200 DDR RAM Running at DDR266 Speeds
40GB 5400 RPM Western Digital
ATI Radeon 9800PRO 128MB 256bit
Sound Blaster Live 5.1
DVD/CDRW Combo

I am looking at the following PSUs:

Tagen 380W ~ £55
Tagen 480W ~ £70
Thermaltake 480W ~ £55

The most important thing is noise and the 300W i have at the moment is fine in terms of power.

Which is the best PSU for me?

Thanks
Ben

[mr_anderson187]

Thermaltake 480W ~ £55

all the way

[silentphoenix]

Tagan 480Watter for silence. You could also go for a CWT one from scan, but im not sure how quiet these are. The FSP silent PSU is also meant to be really good (even the 350W ones).

TT are also pretty good, but not as silent as the Tagan.

[Agent]

Thermaltake are praticaly silent.
To give you an idea : I have to put my ear next to the fan grille on the back to know its on. Strongly recomended.
Id have to disagree with silentphoenix here and say that ive found Thermaltakes to be quieter than Tagan's when under load. Still, there is hardly anything in it. Your not going to go wrong with either.

[SilentDeath]

Not another psu thread PLEASSEEEE!!!!

Mods can one of the prev threads be made a sticky, maybe a full hardware guide even??? there is a thread on this every day, look back through the last two pages there is atleast 5.


You system is the same as most. It doesnt need that much power - your using a 300w psu at the moment arnt you

you wouldnt notice the difference between ANY decent psu, apart from niose.

Really you should go for the cheapest, and the quietist.

I recommend the CWT 550wADP from scan. Its exactly the same design as Antec truepower 550w but for £60 instead of £90. Its silent and is techincally is better than the psus you mention above, not that you would notice the difference on that system
I think it was renamed to meridian 550w or something on the scan site, the company seems to have two names, the box on mine said both

If you get a cwt550w you will notice a few things however:

voltage rails may seem slightly low - this is NOT a meausre of psu performace. People asssume it is, and say a psu is crap becuase of it.
the rails can be boosted quite easly too. If another psu has higher rails it can even be the result of lower quality cables (more resistance on vsense = higher rails)
For psu performance you should look at the ripple and how stable the outputs are when under max continous load. Ive never seen a review site acctually look at ripple... not that anyone should expect a review site to own a £300 ossiloscope just for testing psu's....

The ATX connector has 4 more pins than usuall. There is an adaptor cable to convert to 20 pins. The 4 more pins are for future compatability with the BTX standard.

The four molex cables are quite long and have more connectors than you will ever need.

There is an rpm monitoring cable to let your mobo measure the fan speed.

[Apex]

CWT 550 from scan

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...roductID=59492

[Oakey]

I have a Tagan, whilst it's good it doesn't do very well at removing the heat and gets very hot

[BenW]

So thats 2 for the TT, 2 for CWT/Meridian and 1 for Tagen

The most important thing for me is silence so which one is the most silent one?

Thanks in advance
Ben

[Flash]

Thermaltake

[BenW]

So was that saying thermaltake is the best there of the quietest there?

[VashUK]

I have heard of people having trouble with tagan 480w PSU's which make annoying ticking noises, I would go with an Antec True 430 which you can pick up for £60.40 and that includes free postage.

[BenW]

i thought that Antecs wern't as quiet as tagens or thermaltakes and yes, i have heard of the ticking noise but forgot!

I think to be honest that i like the look of the Thermaltake 480W Butterfly with the braided cables.

[VashUK]

I think the cheaper Antec's can be noisy but the true version comes with "Antec Low Noise Technology achieves the optimum balance between noise reduction and necessary cooling" which is supposed to make it one of the quietest.

[BenW]

well, thanks for the help, i'll have a look at some reviews

[SilentDeath]

CWT = ANTEC. Do not buy an antec, your just wasting money, they cost about 30% more for the same product.

The A series of CWT (same as truepower antecs)are silent. Has no ticking nioses either.

[BenW]

ok thanks SilentDeath, i will look at all the reviews and try to make a decision!