Bunch of PSU's quick review - audibility & noise [cracking, whistle, hiss, whine...]

Hi guys,

 

In past 14 days, I've had quite a lot PSU's at home to test. And I must say, the overall quality of PSU's has gone really down, no matter what brand You pick, or what model You pick. It's like all PSU's went down on price, some by half, and also by quality.

 

Here's a short review:

 

- I purchased tens to hundreds of RM/HX's in my life, all were super, quiet, reliable, etc. Simply flawless.

- latey I purchased a few new power supplies, here are my observations

- my paragon is gonna be HX 850 which I own, and RM 750 which I own. HX 850 is like 3 years old, RM 750 is two years old, maybe one and a half

 

- HX 850 - absolutely stunning PSU. Total silence, You can't hear a single buzz, hiss, noise, squeak, anything from it. It's the state of art PSU for me

- RM 750 - my piece is super quiet. He has a very, nearly inaudible electric cracking in him, but You need to have Your ear on back side, and You need to focus to hear it, and be in a very quiet environment [>15dba]

 

And now for the newbies:

 

- Purchased 4 x Ax860i alltogether. All suffered from high-pitched whistle, not sure whether coil, or capacitor, or transformator in general. One of them suffered from very bad fan, and burned on RMA, when they tried to test him. [he did batman car flame from the 80's out of him]

- Purchased 1 x Ax860. This one suffered from slight hiss, but was still audible in room. Wasn't satisfied. Otherwise, he was very good for the little while I had him.

- Purchased 2 x Seasonic P 760 + 1 x Seasonic P 660. All of these Seasonic's suffer from the strange noise. It's more audible compared to the hiss of Ax860, but much better compared to Ax860i. Official reseller of Seasonic's told me that all the P XP/XP2 suffer from this hiss.

- Today I purchased RM 550 for my server. Holy moly, that was a disaster. He was like a waterfall [very loud hiss] :/

- I also purchased RM 850i, for my computer, but decided to keep him for my server. I will have low effeciency, but it will be quiet. He is like 20-30% more audible, compared to my 2013/2014 RM 750W, which I consider to be a great quality, audibility/noise wise.

Does the HXi series have "stand by" circuitry as the mentioned, "Seasonic XP/XP2/XP3 models like the P760, P860, AX760 and AX860 have a slight hiss that comes from the standby circuit" ~jonnyguru ?

Salutations jonnyguru,

 

I know that RM 550 was a bad unit. It was just hard to return it. I wasn't getting stuff from my default reseller [alza.sk/.cz/alzashop.com], but from an alternative reseller, who has slightly worse RMA policy.

 

RM 850i-wise. The electricity cracking noise is 20-30% more audible compared to RM 750 Watt. Even RM 750 Watt has a slight electric cracking noise, but it's so weak, that there's no chance You can hear it 5-10 cm from the unit. Whilst with RM 850i, You can hear it pretty well up to 20-30 cm from the unit. Which is also - superb.

 

The thing is, I'm not a very rich person. Though, I buy high-end stuff what about cellphones and computers, I live in a small two-room flat. And I sleep with my computer in one room, and I don't want to turn off the main power switch, just to have "silence" during night, so I'm building myself a computer, that will have silent PSU in standby mode [btw. thx for heads up on that stand by circuit! very helpful! really!] and server, that will be inaudible in idle/standby mode. Which is kind of a challenge, since he's gonna have 4 WD Red Pro 4TB HDD's in himself, and one Pro class SSD from intel. But I will manage somehow.