quiet PSU for PC?

getting a bit fed up of the noise of my computer. i can only assume its the psu now- the case fans are on a fan controller and set to minimum and the standard Intel CPU fan is supposed to be silent. The psu is a hiperpower 450w thing.

Now i'm aware that theres loads of ultra quiet psu's on the market, but this one was labelled ultra quiet too, and it blatantly isn't!!

The only special thing i need from a psu is a SATA power connection for my WDD Raptor HDD. The mobo is a Abit IS7-V. Any suggestions?

 

This would be the quietest - http://www.quietpc.com/uk/psu.php#silentmaxx Otherwise the quietest ones seem to be the ones that have a single, large 120mm fan.

or if you are cheap like me and don't care how the PC looks..

Thats just a spare CPU heat sink I had sitting on top of the internal heatsinks of the PSU with a bit of heat transfer compound between them. It works great. I orginally cut that great big hole to mount a fan on top, but tried this later. Now I know it woks I would probably do it so the heatsink is going out the back like on the 'Silentmaxx' one, but I think you would have to unsolder the transistors to mount them on the heatsink at the back.

The stock heatsink and fan for the latest P4's are anything but quiet. Quieter than the uber high speed fan ones you get if you are a flashing light, lots of fans crazed gamer but still very loud. I recently did a custom dedicated audio PC for someone and the silent CPU fan took a wile to arrive so during that time I installed the stock one. The customer was not very happy with the noise level with the intel one even though the case was soundproofed and with the silent one he was very happy. The CPU heatsink I used here was a Scythe Kamakiri which is also on quiet PC.

You can go one further though as I have and get a Zalman Resorator. This is a self-contained, fanless, water cooling system which is very very quiet. It is also very good at heat dissipation, I have overclocked my 2.8Ghz P4 Prescott to 3.5Ghz and its only the memory that stops it going higher.

 

Oh I have another suggestion

Ready for this?

http://www.markusleonhardt.de/en/oelbilder.html

 

I have an Akasa Paxpower 460 which is quieter than my previous one.

Otherwise there are some fanless psus but be aware that they have large heatsinks on the back which will stick out of the machine. Try these: http://www.quietpc.com/uk/psu.php#silentmaxx

 

Any PSU with a fan will be hopelessly noisy no matter how many times it says silent on the box.

Check here http://www.silentpcreview.com/ for reviews of fanless models and quiet stuff in general. The site has some good tips for silencing disk drives too.

Edited to add: when using a fanless PSU, note that it is not extracting hot air from your case so you will need a case fan. At least with a case fan you can control the fan speed.

 

or a radiator in your games room

 

I've just ordered one of these to hopefully solve my computer trouble, so I shall be able to give my opinion when it arrives, hopefully later on this week.

 

Though I think the £2K radiator is fantastic, I found the best thing to do was get the box out of the room on a KVM.