Interest in Seasonic modular, fanless/semi-fanless SFX PSU? are you buying NCASE y/n?

Interest in Seasonic modular, fanless/semi-fanless SFX PSU? are you buying NCASE y/n?

  • I intend to buy NCASE M1 and I would buy a high end Seasonic SFX

    Votes: 132 62.3%

  • I intend to buy NCASE M1, but I would NOT buy a Seasonic SFX

    Votes: 13 6.1%

  • I do not plan to buy NCASE M1, but I love SFF and would buy a high end Seasonic SFX

    Votes: 62 29.2%

  • I use SFF, but neither Seasonic SFX or NCASE M1 interest me

    Votes: 5 2.4%
  • Total voters
    212
I

IanM

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 20, 2007
Messages
1,289
The objective of this poll is to try and extrapolate from the NCASE M1 popularity how much interest there would be in a premium quality SFX PSU if it were manufactured and sold by Seasonic. If it were an equivalent quality to Seasonic's ATX Platinum, Platinum Fanless or X-Series I think it would be safe to assume that the retail price would be very high for SFX, maybe even in the $150+ range (>€100+tax, >£90+tax) so please bear that in mind if you decide to vote! I think something like this would need to be:

  • 400W-450W
  • modular
  • fanless, or at least semi-fanless (like Seasonic's premium ATX PSUs)
Please say in the thread if the spec sounds about right but you have a maximum price you'd be willing to pay.

N.B. I'm not planning on a Kickstarter or anything, I just would like to see how many people are frustrated by the lack of a top quality SFX PSU.



EDIT on 15th March: it's been over one week since the poll was posted, so I decided to note the 83 votes so far:
54 votes [65.06%] for M1 yes, Seasonic yes
06 votes [23.00%] for M1 yes, Seasonic no
19 votes [22.89%] for M1 no, Seasonic yes
04 votes [04.82%] for M1 no, Seasonic no
​
Interesting so far, much more positive in favour than I expected, but it's easy to say yes on a poll and then not commit for whatever reason when the time comes to commit and pay real money. For comparison, on the Ncase thread there are 226 unique posters, 137 of whom have two or more posts, and 99 have three or more posts.
 
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If its not alot better than the ST45SF-G...I dont see any point to pay $50-60 more
 
Wow, I am pretty sad to see a poll like this exist. We busted our asses making the best SFX PSU ever created with the ST45SF-G and we are not even being considered at all... We know that ST45SF-G isn't perfect for everyone, but it (and to some degrees the ST45SF) still far exceeded any effort put forth by other PSU makers.
 
Tony Ou said:
Wow, I am pretty sad to see a poll like this exist. We busted our asses making the best SFX PSU ever created with the ST45SF-G and we are not even being considered at all... We know that ST45SF-G isn't perfect for everyone, but it (and to some degrees the ST45SF) still far exceeded any effort put forth by other PSU makers.
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Replace the fan, release as rev 2, and we'll buy your unit.
 
Tony Ou said:
Wow, I am pretty sad to see a poll like this exist...
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Sorry Tony! I do like Silverstone (I'm really looking forward to seeing the final version of FT04/RV04.) I also think your a good guy and am constantly impressed by your interaction with the community. It certainly wasn't my intention for anyone to interpret this poll as a slight against yourself or Silverstone.

That said, your gold SFX may be excellent: however I believe the fan is always on? also I see recommendations to buy the bronze or something else for users looking for genuinely silent or ultra-quiet solutions. I don't think this poll does anything to diminish ST45SF-G, I anticipated that one possible result is that a majority say "not needed, the Silverstone is good enough already." Note also that I pointed out anyone voting for should expect that something better than your product will cost more, potentially even 50%-100% more.

In truth I think asking for pure fanless is wishful thinking, but semi passive seems like a realistic goal e.g. Bluray playback could be fanless and truly silent, the fan would only be needed for gaming.
 
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Dephcon said:
Replace the fan, release as rev 2, and we'll buy your unit.
Click to expand...

I am not supposed to say anything right now on this (so please don't ask), but hopefully we'll see an open box post from you in a few months. ;)
 
So is the ST45SF-G not "high-end" enough or something? And at what price?

I would like to see a 550W SFX Modular PSU.
 
Tony Ou said:
Wow, I am pretty sad to see a poll like this exist. We busted our asses making the best SFX PSU ever created with the ST45SF-G and we are not even being considered at all... We know that ST45SF-G isn't perfect for everyone, but it (and to some degrees the ST45SF) still far exceeded any effort put forth by other PSU makers.
Click to expand...

I love the PSU, I bought two ST45SF-Gs and, on all the forums I am active in, I defended the noise of the fan to the hilt.

But...

When I replaced the stock fan with a Noiseblocker PC-P 80x15, only then did I finally really feel satisfied about having this PSU in my builds.
 
Tony Ou said:
Wow, I am pretty sad to see a poll like this exist. We busted our asses making the best SFX PSU ever created with the ST45SF-G and we are not even being considered at all... We know that ST45SF-G isn't perfect for everyone, but it (and to some degrees the ST45SF) still far exceeded any effort put forth by other PSU makers.
Click to expand...

I own your 450W modular SFX supply, but I would buy another quality SFX if it were 500W+.

Overclocked CPU and overclocked GPU is pushing 450W. I've ran OCCT and Furmark w/ a 2500K @ 4.5GHz and either my 7950 or Titan, and it was pushing over that on the AC side. I know it's less on the DC side, but it's still pushing it. Will feel safer with a little more power available. Not that I ever stress my CPU and GPU to max in real life situation.

Like WiSK, I also replaced the fan in the ST45SF-G with the Noiseblocker PC-P 80x15, and it makes a huge difference! No more hairdryer sounds :)
 
I feel bad now, like a spoiled child lol

Silverstone is awesome, and a real pioneer especially in SFF. Thankyou for all your hard work.

I think the main reason Seasonic is being brought up is their fan quality and fan control on their Gold units. Passive for idle and low-power use, with the fan kicking in for games and heavy use.

Would that be possible with this unit? That would be ideal, but I will still reconsider purchasing one if there is a new revision with fan swap.
 
Tony Ou said:
I am not supposed to say anything right now on this (so please don't ask), but hopefully we'll see an open box post from you in a few months. ;)
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While we're busy talking about nothing, I think the majority of purchasers of stuff would be more than happy to pay extra for a short cable set in the box of said non-existent something. ;)
 
You will need volume to motivate Seasonic or one of the bigger PSU companies to R&D.

If you can get 600-1000 people at $130-$150 a person, your wish might come true.

I think the following features are just about to be possible:
600W+
80+ Gold
Modular
120mm fan, fanless mode at low loads
64x125x125mm (deeper than SFX)
 
WiSK said:
I love the PSU, I bought two ST45SF-Gs and, on all the forums I am active in, I defended the noise of the fan to the hilt.

But...

When I replaced the stock fan with a Noiseblocker PC-P 80x15, only then did I finally really feel satisfied about having this PSU in my builds.
Click to expand...

Wasn't there also some other issue with the orientation of the connections you brought up a while ago?
 
medeyer said:
Wasn't there also some other issue with the orientation of the connections you brought up a while ago?
Click to expand...

Yes, but slowly I started to understand what the reason is: Silverstone must keep compatibility with previous pinouts so that all their modular connectors work with all the modular PSUs.

So while I would like the pinout to be different, I also understand that Silverstone cannot go back to 2008 to undo the choice they made then.
 
I've purchased several Silverstone 450w ssf units and can say I'd be very interested in a passive equivalent.
 
i would like to have an sfx full modular with 500W/600W .. that would be great^^... also looking forward to a quiet system
 
Tony Ou said:
Wow, I am pretty sad to see a poll like this exist. We busted our asses making the best SFX PSU ever created with the ST45SF-G and we are not even being considered at all... We know that ST45SF-G isn't perfect for everyone, but it (and to some degrees the ST45SF) still far exceeded any effort put forth by other PSU makers.
Click to expand...

curious, how does one bust their ass when the psu is made by another company and you put your label on it?
not trying to be rude, its honest question.

Dephcon said:
Replace the fan, release as rev 2, and we'll buy your unit.
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i think this would be a more realistic hope. it should not be too difficult to put a better/quieter fan in there.
 
illli said:
curious, how does one bust their ass when the psu is made by another company and you put your label on it?
not trying to be rude, its honest question.
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Silverstone developed and designed it, Enhance only fabricates it.
 
illli said:
curious, how does one bust their ass when the psu is made by another company and you put your label on it?
not trying to be rude, its honest question.
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If it's anything like similar inter-company operations in the field that I'm in, that PSU likely went back and forth a hundred times between the two companies as revisions and designs were changed and updated. If you're going to pay another company a large sum of money to make a product, you aren't very like going to "here's a dufflebag full of unmarked bills, see you in two years!"
 
I am planning to buy at least one Ncase M1. I also plan to buy a Silverstone 450w psu. Now if anyone, and I do mean anyone, builds/makes a SFF 500w+ quality psu then I would buy it. It would have to be at least bronze quality though. The only people that make one that I know of is the people who make the 500w unit for Shuttle however so I dont see it happening.

To Tony Ou: Silverstone makes a great product but if they made a SFF 500w-550w unit it would sell well I'm thinking. There is a demand for it on the consumer level.
 
@ Tony:

I have to say that SS has put out a great unit, and I've installed the ST45SF-G in 4 FT03mini builds since the fall. It's a great PSU, but as noted, the fan can be an issue.
 
Maybe SS has 500W+ in the works?


You should also try Antec Taiwan. Antec Sales Rep: "1000 units, 500W+, SFX".


Hands full, otherwise would help.
 
I don't need more than 450W in a mITX build... but I can't stand noisy fans. So, for me its a PITA to pay a premium for a product and then have to void its warranty by replacing the fan.
 
prava said:
I don't need more than 450W in a mITX build... but I can't stand noisy fans. So, for me its a PITA to pay a premium for a product and then have to void its warranty by replacing the fan.
Click to expand...

A higher watt PSU allows for fanless mode at lower loads.
 
wahaha360 said:
A higher watt PSU allows for fanless mode at lower loads.
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That's more a function of higher capacity PSUs being larger, so having components more spaced out. Easier able to let the heat convect out naturally. SFX units are less than half the size of the smallest ATX units. With components packed together they keep each other warm and there's very few channels that air will flow if it's not forced by a fan. There's not even half a finger of free space anywhere in the ST45SF-G, although the bronze model does have a relatively roomy area behind the cable bundle.

The only way forward for cooler SFX units is higher efficiency, and perhaps a clever way of moving heat away from temperature sensitive components.
 
Would be looking at paying upwards of $200 for a high quality, quiet (silent at idle) PSU with a 450W->600W range. Silence though would be my top priority followed by the Wattage (which is why the current SilverStone is just outside of my considerations at the moment).
 
WiSK said:
That's more a function of higher capacity PSUs being larger, so having components more spaced out. Easier able to let the heat convect out naturally. SFX units are less than half the size of the smallest ATX units. With components packed together they keep each other warm and there's very few channels that air will flow if it's not forced by a fan. There's not even half a finger of free space anywhere in the ST45SF-G, although the bronze model does have a relatively roomy area behind the cable bundle.

The only way forward for cooler SFX units is higher efficiency, and perhaps a clever way of moving heat away from temperature sensitive components.
Click to expand...

This. At a given efficiency and load, the heat production is the same, even if the max load is higher.

Now going for the most efficient PSU possible would be good. I wonder if you could shotgun rectifier bricks and build a pico-esque high capacity power supply at very high efficiencies? How big is the DC/DC unit on those alienware style systems?
 
wahaha360 said:
A higher watt PSU allows for fanless mode at lower loads.
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A bigger psu yes, but not a higher wat ;) At the end of the day all psu's dump heat, in proportion of the heat they are outputting.


WiSK said:
The only way forward for cooler SFX units is higher efficiency, and perhaps a clever way of moving heat away from temperature sensitive components.
Click to expand...

We will agree that using a high end fan on a high-end psu would be a wise idea ;) I don't understand how companies over state such important aspects of their top of the line products: for starters, the SFX gold psu from Silverstone could be more expensive since its the almost the only one on the market for its size but, at least, they could have cared for the fan.

It worries me that the previous unit, which is a lot worse in all regards, was better in the noise aspect :rolleyes:
 
prava said:
It worries me that the previous unit, which is a lot worse in all regards, was better in the noise aspect :rolleyes:
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Above 350W the bronze unit ramps up, eventually much higher rpms and louder than the gold unit. (Because it's only bronze so at 450W it needs to move more heat/air away.) But most people aren't using 350W in an mITX, e.g. Ivy Bridge i7 and GTX 680 is less than that.

The fan used in the bronze model goes from 1200 rpm to 4000 rpm, in a curve which keeps it quiet mostly at 1200. In the gold model it's from 1800 rpm to 3000 rpm, but there is no curve, it ramps directly. So the trick with replacing with the fan with the Noiseblocker PC-P, is not so much about the quality of the fan being better, but it makes it quiet by moving the range of rpms to 600 - 2500, at the same range of volts.
 
Tony Ou said:
I am not supposed to say anything right now on this (so please don't ask), but hopefully we'll see an open box post from you in a few months. ;)
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Fix what the community has criticized on the ST45SF-G and you will have an insta-buy on my behalf Tony.
 
WiSK said:
Above 350W the bronze unit ramps up, eventually much higher rpms and louder than the gold unit. (Because it's only bronze so at 450W it needs to move more heat/air away.) But most people aren't using 350W in an mITX, e.g. Ivy Bridge i7 and GTX 680 is less than that.

The fan used in the bronze model goes from 1200 rpm to 4000 rpm, in a curve which keeps it quiet mostly at 1200. In the gold model it's from 1800 rpm to 3000 rpm, but there is no curve, it ramps directly. So the trick with replacing with the fan with the Noiseblocker PC-P, is not so much about the quality of the fan being better, but it makes it quiet by moving the range of rpms to 600 - 2500, at the same range of volts.
Click to expand...

Well, I don't think anybody will complain that the psu gets loud when heavily loaded... at the end of the day, if you are loading your computer It's a safe assumption it will be prettt loud, specially if you have any sort of high-end videocard in there (or a power hungry one).

It makes me wonder how they tune their psu's when we want them silent WHILE THE COMPUTER IS IDLING, or with a very modest load. We don't care if at full load they are more silent...
 
prava said:
Well, I don't think anybody will complain that the psu gets loud when heavily loaded... at the end of the day, if you are loading your computer It's a safe assumption it will be prettt loud, specially if you have any sort of high-end videocard in there (or a power hungry one).
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The reason why I did the Noiseblocker swap in the end (after defending it for months) was because I was testing which are the best fans for my radiator. I couldn't do an proper test because even at full load of CPU+GPU the PSU was still the loudest noise.
 
Tony Ou said:
Wow, I am pretty sad to see a poll like this exist. We busted our asses making the best SFX PSU ever created with the ST45SF-G and we are not even being considered at all... We know that ST45SF-G isn't perfect for everyone, but it (and to some degrees the ST45SF) still far exceeded any effort put forth by other PSU makers.
Click to expand...

IanM are you now part of the Ncase team, or simply inspired by their work? It might be a good thing to clarify at the beginning of your post. I ask because the approach you have taken is a bit different from that of Necere/Wahaha (Who I will refer to as Ncase). Ncase was originally interested in producing a case by Lian Li, but they did also contact Tony/Silverstone for due diligence.

When I read Tony's comment: "we are not even being considered at all." What I wondered was who he thought wasn't "considering" the ST45SF-G. If you are part of Ncase, it's worth talking to Tony/Silverstone about design/bulk orders/modifications of their sfx PSUs. You never said you were part of Ncase, so if you aren't, it may be worth just saying that explicitly.

My point for discussing this is that a design company like Ncase needs to be careful about maintaining a good relationship with their manufacturers. They've done things surprisingly well so far, but I think that is because they have had an open mind throughout the whole process.

And, I apologize if I am 100% off the mark, but I thought that it would be better to be speak and be wrong, then stay quiet and let there be possible confusion.
 
before we didn't even have high-end mATX motherboards and now we have high-end ITX, and did you see the new short Asus GTX 670? I'm sure we'll see high-end SFX PSU's soon. ATX PSU's needs to die, its the worst part in the desktop PC in terms of size and weight imo.
 
jamaicanpi said:
IanM are you now part of the Ncase team, or simply inspired by their work? It might be a good thing to clarify at the beginning of your post. I ask because the approach you have taken is a bit different from that of Necere/Wahaha (Who I will refer to as Ncase).
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We have no relationship with IanM. It's still just the two of us (with some help from M4rk setting up the IGG campaign). Neither of us was contacted regarding this poll prior to its posting.
 
jamaicanpi said:
IanM are you now part of the Ncase team...
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NCASE is all Necere and Wahaha. I've participated a lot in the NCASE thread, that's all (I hope I've been able to offer constructive comments that helped them make some difficult decisions)

I posted this thread simply because I think most SFX PSUs are garbage, either because of noise or because of low efficiency. As a result SFX PSUs are one of the the biggest barriers to making the kind of SFF build that I could be totally satisfied with. Silence and ultra quietness are always top priority on any system I build, be it for myself or anyone else.

For my ideal gaming system I want 400W and silence at least up to 200W, but probably 250W. However my dream build will still not be possible even if the PSU issue is solved, either I need a decent DTX board to I can add a Titanium HD, or I need an external soundcard with a proper X-Fi DSP (I want this for the positional audio effects, even if it's only for older games)

Actually for other systems I also want a 150W-175W totally fanless SFX PSU. I believe 150W or 200W fanless exist in TFX (FSP Fortron?) albeit with crap efficiency, so I think that is certainly achievable.

As for Seasonic: I've used other brand PSUs, and seen some of such bad quality that they force ADSL disconnection due to the high level of interference (lovely absurd irony of a PC that prevents Internet access just by being switched on) I'm not convinced that anything else measures up to Seasonic in terms of electrical performance and the semi-passive approach combined with high efficiency. I know there have been some good fanless ATX PSUs from other brands, but mostly they haven't been efficient enough either. Hence I would like to see a Seasonic make some better SFX PSUs, applying the principles that make their ATX PSUs such a good compromise. However Seasonic appear to have dismissed SFX, at least in the 'enthusiast' class, as a niche they aren't interested in. I hoped that the popularity NCASE might highlight the increasing demand for small, high performance systems, and that there is a niche waiting to be filled.

This poll is a small step, I think it won't be enough on it's own to make a business case to Seasonic (aside from anything the nature of this poll will skew the results in favour of the yes vote) but hopefully it will be contribute to figuring out what the next questions are.
 
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IanM said:
For my ideal gaming system I want 400W and silence at least up to 200W, but probably 250W.
...

Actually for other systems I also want a 150W-175W totally fanless SFX PSU. I believe 150W or 200W fanless exist in TFX (FSP Fortron?) albeit with crap efficiency, so I think that is certainly achievable.
Click to expand...

Seasonic has an 80 plus gold TFX PSU that keeps the fan off at low loads. Not that there are many cases that are designed for TFX, but at least it shows it's possible to do in a small form factor (the PSU uses the same fan size as in the Silverstone SFX - 80x15mm). Still not quiet at loads >250W, but that's how it goes.
 
IanM said:
Hopefully [the poll will] contribute to figuring out what the next questions are.
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Well I will ask a few questions, with the idea that Silverstone's platform may the right place to start. My main concern is with the idle fan speed.

Would Silverstone consider a limited edition run of their SFX Power supply units with an alternative fan? If so, how would a warranty work? Would a limited edition power supply just be replaced with just the ST45SF-G (Current revision) and would people be okay with that.
 
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