I can’t tell you how long I have been waiting for a good 0dB power supply to be on the market. I remember thinking to myself years and years ago, “why hasn’t anyone made a 0dB PSU?” Well recently companies have been doing just that and I hope it continues. This power supply which is model W0029 is 350w of silence and by some it could be called small compared to many of the heavy duty 500+w units on the market. However while this power supply may lack in brute force power it more than makes up in its silence. This power supply also has a good number of electrical features that include: thermal overload, short circuit, current overload, and over voltage-protection.
The first thing I noted about the box was the fact that is much larger than your “typical” power supply. Because of the heatpipe design this PSU uses the unit is larger and so is the box. Both the front and back of the box provide information on specifications and features that the power supply has. The box also has a handle on it so you can easily carry the power supply.
Within the box the power supply is heavily padded with thick foam around the entire unit. Also packed into the box is a power cord, four screws, and a manual. The manual is small but does provide a lot of good information on what everything is, does, and how to install it.
This power supply definitely looks unique in design and is a first in the computer industry. There are only a handful of passive power supplies on the market right now and this is the only one I have seen that uses technology like this. The cables of the power supply are sleeved and color coded for each type of connector used. Doing this will keep everything more tidy within your case and allow for better airflow. Having the cables color coded is also nice to easily pick out the type of connector you need. Not only is the organization of the cabling great but it has a lot of connections. The following connectors on this power supply are as follows: (1) 20-pin ATX, (1) 4-pin 12v, (9) 4-pin Molex, (2) 4-pin floppy, and (2) 4-pin SATA. With SATA starting to be used more heavily and eventually phasing out IDE it’s nice to see native SATA power connectors on this power supply.
The power supply is quite heavy as it should be because of the amount of passive cooling used. There are a lot of techniques used on this power supply to cool it since there is no fan involved. Two heatpipes run through the power supply and transfer heat to 8 copper fins on the front of the power supply. The heatpipes also work with the housing of the power supply that made of aluminum rather than steel to dissipate heat better. This aluminum housing also has air vents all over the unit to allow air to flow through it.
On the back of the power supply are 26 more copper fins connected to the two heatpipes running through the unit. These copper fins will dissipate heat to the outside of the case to keep the internal air temperature as low as possible. This section of copper fins is protected by an aluminum mask that is connected to the body of the power supply to also help with convection of heat to the outside of the case.
By removing a few screws from the aluminum housing I opened up this passive power supply. There are two very large aluminum heatsinks that are connected to the two heatpipes that lead to the outside of the power supply. You can get a better view of the heatpipe running through the power supply from the second picture below. There were no design or production flaws that I found on the inside or outside of the unit which is what I expected from Thermaltake.
Installation of this power supply was just like any other power supply. If you have a blowhole fan mounted on the inside of your case the front fins may get in the way but I did not have that problem with this particular case which is a Thermaltake aluminum XaserV WinGo V8000A case. With the power supply installed its simply a matter of connecting all of the necessary plugs and hiding the rest. You will also need about two inches behind your case for the external fins to protrude from the back of the case.
Testing
With the power supply installed its time for testing. I will be testing the idle and load voltages of this power supply as well as two others. I pitted this 350w PSU against two others with similar wattages, a 300w AGI 1125BTA and Enermax EG351P-VE. I opted to do the testing in a mid level system rather than a top of the line one since the 350w this PSU does not provide enough wattage for newer hardware such as the nVidia 6800 that likes to have a beefier power supply. In all testing idle voltages were taken while idling in Windows XP and the load voltages were obtained by running Prime95 to get the processors to 100% utilization. Voltage results were obtained with Hardware Monitor Pro.
Testbed
- Albatron KM18G Pro
- AMD Athlon XP 1700+
- PMI 512MB PC3200 Dual Channel kit
- Plextor PX-504A
- 40GB Seagate hard drive
Power supplies tested
- Thermaltake PurePower 350w (passive)
- Enermax EG351P-VE 330w (active)
- AGI 1125BTA 300w (active)
When I switched on the computer the power supply was indeed silent, which was great. I was able to feel air flowing through the aluminum housing of the unit through the vents which is a great design. After running the system for a while I tested the temperature of the power supply and it was only a few degrees hotter than any other power supply. Nothing on the power supply was hot to the touch so I don’t think anything was even close to overheating.
I tested the 5v, 12v, and 3.3v lines of all three power supplies to get a good comparison. With the 5v and 12v testing the Thermaltake power supply did better than the other two however with the 3.3v testing it fell behind both. During idle testing the 3.3v line stayed right at 3.3v where it needed to be but pushing the system to 100% load it dropped to 3.23 which isn’t too bad but could have been higher. I did not encounter any stability or overheating problems with this Thermaltake power supply and it was a joy to not have noise coming from it.
Conclusion
As you should know by now if you have read other articles by me I love a quiet system. Computer noise today in my opinion is unnecessary. While you can go out and buy the biggest baddest fan for your heatsink and video card the benefits of doing so are not enough in my opinion. In most cases the same overclock that you would get from the loud air cooling can be achieved with quiet or silent alternatives such as lower RPM fans or watercooling.
The fact that this power supply is silent makes it perfect for anyone who desires a silent system and would be an ideal candidate for a HTPC or home server. The wattage of this unit it is more than enough for your mid to high end system, however if you are running say a Nvidia 6800 along with other high end hardware you will need more power.
Hopefully Thermalatake and other manufacturers will start making higher wattage PSUs that are 0dB so everyone can take advantage of this silence. The color coded cable sleeving not only looks great but also makes the inside of your case much neater and helps with air flow. In addition to all of this two native SATA connectors are included so you don’t have to use any adapters for your SATA drives.
There is nothing that I found negative in this product and hope to see higher wattage models in the future. Overall I am giving this power supply a 10/10 and awarding it the OCmodshop Seal of Approval. I would like to thank Thermaltake for making this review possible, you will want to buy one of these if you are looking for silence.
Pros
- Completely silent
- Color coded cable sleeves
- Dual heatpipes and copper fins
- Vented aluminum housing
- 2 native SATA plugs
- Excellent passive cooling design
- Strong 5v and 12v lines
Cons
- None