Its loud compared to the manufacturer's claim of silence. There are plenty of PSU's that are silent. They should have called it the "CoolerMaster Nearly Silent Pro"

My experience with fans is 20dB is just audible in a quiet room. 22dB(80% load) is clearly audible so it cant claim to be silent.

You also have to remember that different frequencies of sound are perceived differently to the human ear. There can be some very annoying quiet sounds (high frequency can be horrible), while some loud sounds (especially low frequency) can't even be perceived. Take your home theater sub; below about 15-20Hz can no longer be heard, but can be physically felt.

When calibrating my SVS PV-10 with a single tone drop from 150-0Hz it got to a point where I heard nothing but the walls were shaking. Really creepy and cool at the same time. I'm kind of shocked more horror movies don't put some odd inaudible noises in just to make your house moan. :)

You're just not going to find a 300w quality supply. 400-500 yes and that is where I normally shop, but everything does tend now to be above that range.

And as for your second statement, quality OEM PSU's? Thanks for the laugh.....:)

Actually, this PSU wouldn't work for hex-core quad SLI. Oh, there might be 4 SLI capable video cards that it could power, but I highly doubt it.

There really is use for the high end PSUs. Consider the person who installs 2 Geforce 480s in SLI. That person needs 42A for each card for a total of 84A, which automatically makes this PSU unsuitable, because it is rated to supply a maximum of 80A @ 12V, and that's not including anything else that runs on 12V. A person considering 2 480s in SLI needs to consider a 1200W PSU, and needs to pay close attention to the rails on the one he/she buys, so that each the cards don't try to draw more power from a rail than it is rated to supply.

The fact is, Anandtech rates lower power PSUs on as regular a basis as much as they do the higher end units. True, I haven't seen them rate any 300W PSUs in quite awhile, but it takes very little these days to need more than that, considering modern CPUs and video cards (the CPU alone would take up 1/3 to 1/2 the power). Anandtech was started as and I think still is primarily a site for enthusiasts, and there aren't many people who are going to build with a 300W PSU.

Maybe there's some apps for them though; HTPC? Still, it seems to me that a suggestion could be made in a positive tone rather than one that bashes people for being interested in the high end market.

Consider too, that review sites often tell us about the products that manufacturers send them for evaluation, and manufacturers send flagship models. What the manufacturer tends to think is if you read a good review about their top end PSU, you'll buy a lower end unit thinking it's built with the same care. Unfortunately, that's often not the case, especially with PSUs, so your point is quite valid, they should be tested on their own.

You clearly have no Idea what you are taking about in regards to the GTX 480's in SLI. The maximum powerdraw of a single GTX 480 is 250 watts / 12V rail = 21A not 42A. Now Two GTX 480's in SLI would use a Total Max of 42A there by saturating slightly more than 50% of the 12V Rail.

Now if you look the CPU side even the power hungry Hexa Core i7-990X is rated at 130 Watt TDP. Doing some simple match 130W / 12V = 10.8 A.

So in total without overclocking we only just used up 63 A out of the available 80A leaving 17A more headroom to play around with overclocking as you need it. And that's only if everything is working at 100% load which isn't a likely scenario unless you are running multiple benchmarks at a time.

Sry, you're right. Fixed!

I agree with cactusdog. Of course we have seen worse results. But in this case, the manufacturer is using the word "Silent" in his name. So it shouldn't be louder than the smaller Silent Pro, which are very quiet.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2613/8

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