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Silverstone ST85F

G

Grimmwor

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 3, 2007
Messages
69
Is there anyone here that has a Silverstone ST85F and can comment on the airflow and noise? Anyone that would be able to compair airflow and noise of ST85F to ST60F. First hand experience only, please...
 
I just found these reviews:

http://www.techaddicts.net/reviews/ss_st85f/ss_st85f.html

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews.php?type=3&id=157&page=1

The TechAddicts review has this to say about the noise:

The ST85F features a single large 135mm fan on the bottom of the PSU. This fan features eleven blades, which is unusual for a power supply fan. During testing, the fan starts at full speed during the first few seconds of booting, but quickly goes to idle speeds. At idle speeds, it is fairly quiet, but whiny. I did not like the whining of the fan, as it could be heard even when the test computer's case was closed. When a CPU / GPU intensive load was put on the power supply, the fan quickly switched to medium speed and rarely a high speed. At that point, a lot of exhaust air resistance noise can be heard; though it is not loud enough to be annoying.
Click to expand...

hmmm...not very encouraging. I would still like to hear from anyone that owns, uses, or has otherwise tested one of these fans and what their thoughts are on the airflow and noise.
 
I was reading that review the other day. I wouldn't have thought that a 135mm fan like that would be too whiny, but i guess i could be wrong. Any owners of the ST85F like to share their thoughts?
 
Hmmm...It seems like the TechAddicts review has been updated with a sound file on the second page. I can hear a little bit of whining.;)
 
Well, I went ahead and ordered the ST85F from Performance PC's. I am very pleased to report that it is SIGNIFICANTLY quieter than the ST60F AND has way better airflow. With a fragbox case and NT06 cooler, both my temps and the noise is down.

At full load I am reading the following voltages:

+3.3V: 3.04V
+5V: 5.00V
+12V: 11.98V

Observing readings for about 2 minutes shows a fluctuation of about +/- 0.05V.

Idle temp on my FX-60 is ~38C; load is 56C. If you want a future proof psu that has plenty of power, is modular, quiet AND has great air flow, I strongly recommend the Silverstone ST85F Strider. Oh, and I can't hear any whining from the fan at all...
 
Yes all of the cables are sleeved very nicely, however I am using the PP03 short cable kit (also nicely sleeved).

Unfortunately, I have some bad news to report. After about 30 minutes of gaming (BF2142 and HL2 Ep1) my pc shut down. No error no nothing, it just turned off. This has never happened before with the hardware that I have and the ST85F psu is the only new component.

To be sure that the ST85F was the culprit, I carefully monitored the temps on my cpu and video card, and they were acceptable. Once again, I played some BF2142 and after about 20 minutes the pc shut off.

I swapped out the ST85F and put the ST60F back in and played BF2142 for nearly 3 hours; not one shut down.

So I have to conclude that while working in conjunction with the NT06 heatsink, the ST85F was getting too hot and shutting down as a safety precaution. Hopefully I will be able to return the ST85F to Performance PC's; that's an expensive PSU to have sitting on my spare parts shelf!

That sucks, the ST60F is pretty loud. Is there anyone else that has a SG01 or Fragbox case with an NT06 cooler and an FX-60 cpu? What power supply are you using? Any other advice or suggestions?
 
Well, that sucks. I was hoping to get that PSU for a new rig. I guess i will have to get the Zues equivilent, instead- pitty it's not modular. Anyway, thank you for telling me.
 
Heat isn't the only reason a psu would shut down. It could be going into OCP, could be a short in the case, could just be faulty period.
 
Sorry, what is OCP?

Yes, there may be another cause. I just finished playing BF2142 for about 3 hours straight, no problems at all. Then (I guess this is kind of funny), just as I started reading cantankerous' post, my system spontaneously rebooted. <sigh> what a total drag. I guess it's a little different than before, when it was just turn off, instead of reboot, but there is definitely something wrong. Anyone have any ideas? Although I won't rule it out, it's kind of hard for me to believe that it is a short...
 
Do you have any way of checking your PSU temps, and see if there's any correlation between them and the, seemingly, 'random' reboots etc.?
 
As I posted in another thread somewhere around here, Silverstone QC seems to have taken a turn for the worse recently, just take a look at some of the newegg reviews. Helped a friend spec a new PC and I picked the Strider, the NVIDIA driver kept complaining about low power to the 8800 GTX and no combination of the four PCI-E cables would satisfy it. Put in a different PSU and it was fine.
He got his PCP&C 750 silencer installed today and couldn't be happier.
 
I currently have an ST85F that will not deliver enough power to my 8800GTX, I have an RMA in with NewEgg.
 
yeah, I'm starting to think this psu really sucks. It's hard for me to imagine that it's not supplying enough power to my system (see sig), but my system was definitely shutting down while using it and it's not with my ST60F. The only conclusion I can come to is that it's either defective or it's getting too hot.

I am going to give it one more try before I return it, only with a slight modification. I noticed that it has two exhaust vents, the big honeycomb one in the back and then on the opposite side (the side with the modular cable sockets) there is a long slender exhaust. I can feel that the volume of air coming out of the vent on the cable side (and blowing inside the case) is greater than what is being exhausted out the back. I am wondering if that hot ass air blowing into my case and recycling right back through the NT06 cooler and into the ST85F could be contrubuting to heat build up.

I am going to try blocking that rear vent that blows inside the case and see if that makes a difference...
 
Okay, i will be interested to hear your findings. It's funny, since both of those PSUs are from Silverstone's Strider range, so, i imagine, that their build quality etc. are the same; only the 850w has more juice.

The heat thing may well be the problem. I'm not sure, but the PSU may have some sort of fail-safe, causing it to shutdown when it gets too hot. Or, you have just have a defective PSU, since it should be able to handle everything that the ST60F can, only more.
 
Ok, I just spoke with Joel @ Silverstone. He stated that there is a known issue with the ST85F and all 680i chipsets. It seems that after bootup the the 680i chipset+5v rail draw drops to nill, this causes the powersupply to enter an "efficiency" state and lowers available power across all rails. They have a new revision that addresses this. still an RMA though.
 
Ozmodius, thanks good info.

Question: Is a reading of 3.04v on the +3.3v rail unusual?
 
My ST85F has three little stickers on it...one of them says "v 1"...I assume that stands for version 1. One says "Rev. 3". The last one says B. I just bought it from Performance PCs last week. I don't have a 680i chipset, so I don't know about that, but I do see that my 3.3v rail looks low (it's stable at about 3.0v +/- .05v). I have been trying to stress test the system it after my duct tape mod described above and so far I've not had any shut downs or reboots. I won't be completely satisfied until I have a 4 hour BF2142 fragfest with no problems. My 7900GTX is getting up to a smokin' 82C after about 30 minutes of gameplay...my FX-60 gets up to 54C and my system temp gets up to 46C. I am using nView Monitor to create a trace file with temps, showing temps every 4 seconds during game play. I am comfortable with my cpu and system temps...I think I am a little nervous about my gpu temp, but I am not sure what is max safe temp for the 7900gtx.
 
well, it seems to be working ok right now...but read the rest of the posts in this thread for a little bit more history. First of all, I have a small form factor case and the power supply is pulling double duty, working to cool my cpu as well, using a Silverstone NT06 heatsink. As I described above, there is a vent on the ST85F that was blowing alot of hot air into the inside of my case and I think that was causing some heat buildup issues becuase the psu was recycling alot of the same hot air through the cpu heatsink. Before I blocked off that vent with some duct tape, my system was rebooting and powering down under load...my gut feeling was heat related issues, especially when it just shut down...completely powered off. To me, that sounds like a power supply that is too hot. But now I have that vent taped off...and so far it looks like it has made a big difference. I will continue to try to stress test it and report back in a few hours...
 
I'm not sure that NewEgg has recycled their inventory, as I just bought this on the 9th. I would'nt make a purchase untill they've run out of stock at least once. Other than the issue i've run into, I really like the PSU.
 
FYI, guys... No RMA is needed. They're sending a new 20+4 pin cable that should fix the issue.
 
So there's just a problem with the cable then... odd. Does your motherboard use a 20-pin female connector, or 24-pin?
 
Well, that's it, I give up on this thing. System is completely stable with my ST60F. Swap it out with the ST85F and i have shutdowns and reboots, even after blocking the 'inside' vent on the psu. Admittedly, due to the nature of my setup (fragbox case w/NT06 cooler), all of my components do get about 3C to 5C hotter with the ST85F, but it shouldn't be causing the problems I am having.

What a disappointment...

I will try to RMA it.
 
Sorry for posting late on this topic. I recently bought a brand new Silverstone ST85F from Newegg and yup, it's defective. After about one week I started seeing artifacts onscreen right after booting up the computer. I tried several remedies; switched out cables, switched to 12V2, tried different wall outlets in the house - all to no avail. I don't possess a power tester, so I was unable to confirm whether or not the 12V rails were providing enough power to the card, so I started digging for info on various forums. Sure enough, lots of folks are having the same problems. Come to find out that there is a high RMA (over 80%) rate for this particular PSU. It seems Silverstone's quality control folks were out to lunch when this unit went through the production line.

Here are my system specs:

AMD Athlon 64 4600+ (overclocked @ 2.604Ghz)
MSI DIamond Plus nForce4 X16 SLI motherboard
2GB (2 x 1GB) OCZ EL PC4000 DDR SDRAM
7900GTX 512MB GDDR3 (waiting for 8900 series to be released)
2 x WD 74GB SATA Raptor HDDs in RAID 0 (XP operating system)
1 x Seagate 320GB SATA II w/NCQ HDD (Vista operating system)
2 x WD 500GB SATA II w/NCQ HDDs in JBOD (Back-up storage)
Creative Soundblaster X-FI Fatal1ty sound card w/bay control panel
Danger Den 12V magpump for watercooled system (CPU & GPU)
4 x 120mm fans, 1 x 90mm fan

The sad part is I upgraded from a SIlverstone ST60F 600 watt power supply which I never had a problem when running two 7900GTXs :confused: Yet, their 850 watt version can't run one 7900GTX?? I upgraded because I am prepping for the release of the next-gen graphics cards in May. Needless to say, I am RMAing this PSU. I had already sold the ST60F along with one 7900GTX, so I went out yesterday and bought a new Thermaltake Toughpower 850 modular power supply (Quad SLI certified) and am back up and running. No error messages and no artifacts whatsoever - system is 100% stable again. THANK YOU THERMALTAKE!! I will never buy Silverstone again :rolleyes:

I just hope Thermaltake releases modular cables for sale separately that will allow me to use this PSU with the new 8-pin PCI-E power connectors. Their new 1000 watt Toughpower PSU comes with
3 x 6-pin PCI-E and 3 x 8-pin PCI-E power connector cables. Unfortunately, this PSU is not yet available for sale....
 
The reason Silverstone's Strider range aren't as high quality as their others is because they're made by Enhance. Never buying from Silverstone again seems a little... harsh. I'd just be dubious about their Enhance-made power supplies, that's all.

Volvo Racer, that new Thermaltake power supply of yours, does it have 4 native 6-pin PCI-e connectors?
 
Mansize_tissue said:
The reason Silverstone's Strider range aren't as high quality as their others is because they're made by Enhance. Never buying from Silverstone again seems a little... harsh. I'd just be dubious about their Enhance-made power supplies, that's all.

Volvo Racer, that new Thermaltake power supply of yours, does it have 4 native 6-pin PCI-e connectors?
Click to expand...

Check out this review of the Thermaltake 850w power supply:
http://www.techaddicts.net/reviews/tt_tpower850w/tt_tpower850.html
 
I've been hearing a lot of bad things regarding the ST85F's for this reason I purchased the ST85ZF (along with an evga8800gtx 768mb), and I'm sooo glad I did! My system runs like a champ.
 
I am late to the party to but the power supply worked great till I plugged in a 8800GTX. I called Silverstone and the rep I talked to said there was a huge problem with the first rev and they pulled the rev.1's of the market as fast as they could. I did ask him about the new 24 pin cable and he said thats not the route to go with to send the PS back and they would replace it with the new rev and that there will be no more problems with it. I haven't recieved it back yet but I will post back on the details. I did see where people had the rev. 2 and that they ran 8800GTX's in SLI fine with Raid 0 and so on.
 
mullet said:
I am late to the party to but the power supply worked great till I plugged in a 8800GTX. I called Silverstone and the rep I talked to said there was a huge problem with the first rev and they pulled the rev.1's of the market as fast as they could. I did ask him about the new 24 pin cable and he said thats not the route to go with to send the PS back and they would replace it with the new rev and that there will be no more problems with it. I haven't recieved it back yet but I will post back on the details. I did see where people had the rev. 2 and that they ran 8800GTX's in SLI fine with Raid 0 and so on.
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear it, dude. So, did your system just not power up?
 
Mansize_tissue said:
Sorry to hear it, dude. So, did your system just not power up?
Click to expand...

It booted with the Nvidia low power error from the 8800GTX I just installed. From what I hear all the issues have been fixed, I will have to see when I get the new one back. I will post how it does and all my spec's.
 
Any news on this yet Mullet?

I'm speccing up a new machine and the specs of the ST85F are very appealing, so I am keen to see how you progressed.

Also, how can you tell if it is a Rev 2 unit? I have a vendor here in Sydney, Australia who stocks these, and I want to make sure it is the right revision before I commit to a purchase.
 
After using the Seasonic M12 700W modular on my latest build, I cannot recommend the ST85F...the Seasonic, on the other hand, is awesome.

Now, if you are using for a SFF build and need the airflow, the Seasonic may not be a good choice...but it's definitely more quite than the ST60F, ST75F or ST85F.
 
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