proSilence Fanless PSU - Page 1 - proSilence introduction

Right people, and now something completely different .. a power supply review. A while ago I was reading this review on a site I can't even remember anymore about a fanless Power Supply Unit (PSU), I was so intrigued by the idea of a silent PSU that I immediately wrote the company who distributed them. Luckily for me they have their office in Germany and since I live in the Netherlands, that speeded up things a lot.

So what's this thing about a more silent pc you ask ? Well, I remember a few years ago that PC's did not need so much aggressive cooling, Think about it, a few years ago PC's where much more silent then they are now. That's what intrigues me .. a more silent PC. What we are about to test today is a fanless PSU from SilentMaxx. It's called the proSilence Fanless PSU which can handle 350 Watt and is manufactured by Silent Systems.

The proSilence 350 Watt was delivered in a box .. a very heavy box. It immediately became clear to me why these PSU's are so expensive .. this is really solid material, the heatsinks are huge and heavy. I mean the PSU weighs something like a kilo or two. In the box we find a power cable and a small manual.

When we look at the specifications on the PSU we'll notice the following:

When we do a rough calculation this info would bring us towards ~350 Watt.

3,3v*14A = 46.2W + 5v * 25A =125 W + 12v *14A =168 W + 12v * 0.5A= 6 W + 5v * 0.5A= 2.5W + 5v * 2.5A= 12.5W =360,2 Watts

The most important aspect of a power supply nowadays is the amount of power it can deliver, at minimum you should always choose for 300 Watts, 350 is recommended, 400 is awesome and there are even 460 and 550 Watt power Supply's. You do not need them though.

Let's see what your average PC nowadays uses .. take a Pentium 4 2.6 GHz with Radeon 9600, one HD, a DVD-ROM and CD Writer. When windows boots it'll use up no more than like 120-130 Watts. The minute when the processor, graphics card, HD and optical drives all are actually 100% used your wattage will rise to about 220 Watt. That's still leaves plenty of room to play around. However .. for every additional HD or optical drive you need to add 10 Watts and that's where the problem nowadays is. Do you have a dual CPU based rig ? .. that'll cost you about an extra 80 Watts including additional cooling. Therefore always choose a PSU with plenty of 'breathing' space for future upgrades and devices. At this time and age I suggest you get at least 300 Watt and actually recommend 350 Watt. With a lot of HD's and extra's like active fans, case-mods with lights thus a high-end rig .. go for something even higher like 400 Watt.

The proSilence 350 - a heavy piece of machinery

That being said, let's take a look at some more photo's.