Silent PSU, 160mm deep

[bjohansen]

Hi there. Thanks to the help from this forum I went ahead and ordered an i5 4670k and a gigabyte motherboard, but now it's time for the PSU to get swapped out.

I need some help to find the best unit for the price, with these criterias:

• Silent, no coilwhine, low fan noise
• 160mm deep due to case (Sugo SG10)
• Modular
• Good quality/brand
• Works with i5 4670k
• Be able to run high-end graphics card (only 1 card tho)
• Budget: I don't really have a budget, but I'd like to stay below 160$. If there's a good reason to spend more, then I'll consider it.

 

[lehtv]

Seasonic G550 $86 ($66 AR)

2x 6+2 pin PCIe connectors - supports any single GPU card. The only fixed cables are the main ATX and CPU cables which you will use anyway; the rest are flat ribbon style cables that take little space. Review by JonnyGuru: 9.6/10

I have the G650 and can confirm it is practically silent. I have yet to actually ever hear the unit, and the rest of my build is also practically silent (140mm fans at 400 RPM when idle).

 

[bjohansen]

The G550 costs 150$+shipping in Norway, for that price I could step up to a platinum unit from Seasonic (190-200$)

 

[lehtv]

So your budget is not in $, it's in NOK? Why didn't you say so

What shops are you buying from?

 

[bjohansen]

So your budget is not in $, it's in NOK? Why didn't you say so

What shops are you buying from?

Sorry about that, hehe.

I'm buying from:
www.komplett.no
www.dustinhome.no

preferably below 1000nok, but as said earlier I can go up if there's a significant difference in quality.

Edit: Oh, and the G550 is not available from those shops. It's 150$(920nok) at cdon.no, but I've never purchased anything from there.
If the G550 is a good unit for the price, I'll mark it as an option.

 

[lehtv]

Hm. All the sub 1000nok units with Gold or Platinum efficiency are sub par in one way or another... some are actually not silent in idle, others use mediocre capacitors to save cost.

There's a nice Cooler Master V700 for 1099 NOK but it's 170mm. I would recommend getting the Seasonic Platinum 660W unit. FWIW it's the cheapest one with 7 years of warranty

 

[bjohansen]

Is there a big difference between the Seasonic G-550, the platinum 660W and the X-650 when it comes to noise and performance?

 

[lehtv]

No difference in performance, but obviously the latter are 100W more powerful.

The X-650 and Platinum 660W can be run passively (fan RPM 0) up until a few hundred watts load, but based on my experience with the G650, I can't head the unit over my near-silent build anyway. Using the G650 sounds exactly the same as using the X-660 I used to own.

When approaching full capacity load, I would expect the Platinum 660W to be marginally quieter than X-650 due to the marginally higher efficiency. Your build won't reach such load levels, but if you're planning to use a 250 watt card like 290X and overclock it too, you may reach a high enough load that the G550 becomes noisy - I don't know. I have no knowledge of how noisy the G series units are when properly pushed. In any case, the graphics card will probably make more noise than the GPU at all times, although PSU noise can add to overall noise at load.

The X-650 and Platinum 660W are fully modular instead of semi-modular but this is irrelevant. They have more PCIe connectors for dual card setups which also doesn't matter for your purposes.

One more difference: the Platinum 660W is covered by 7 year warranty compared to 5 for the gold units.