be quiet! 350w SFX Power PSU
Cables, Connectors & Internal Components
Published: 22nd September 2009 | Source: be quiet! | Price: £44.99 |
Cables, Connectors & Internal Components
While the normal rule for an ATX PSU is more connectors = better, builders of small form factor PC's will undoubtedly be wanting just the right amount of cables required to do the job. After all, with SFF PC's being...well small, space is at a premium and having a big bundle of unused cables will only hinder airflow. At first glance, the SFX Power 350w does seem to have a fairly balanced number of connectors, but let's pull off the elastic band and find out for sure!
| be quiet! SFX Power 350w Connectors | ||
| ATX Connector | Native | 20+4 Pin |
| EPS-12v / P4-12v Connector(s) | Native | 1x 4 Pin |
| Molex Connectors | Native | 3x |
| Floppy Disk Connectors | Native | 1x |
| SATA Connectors | Native | 2x |
| PCI-E Connectors | Native | 1x 6 Pin |
With 3x Molex and 2x SATA connectors, the SFX Power should suit most peoples needs for a basic system setup. However, since the cost of high capcity storage has plummeted over the past year there has been a growing trend for people to use small form factor PC's as cheap NAS boxes. For this reason alone I dont think it would have hurt too much for be quiet to bump up the number of SATA connectors to around 4. Just in case.
Everything else is pretty much as you'd expect. You get a 20-Pin ATX connector that can be bumped up to the newer 24-Pin version by means of attaching a small connector block, a single 4-Pin P4-12v motherboard connector and a 6-Pin PCI-E connector. As far as I'm aware, there aren't any graphics cards out on the market at the moment which require a single 8-Pin PCI-E connector, so providing you're not intending on cramming a GTX285 inside your SFF PC, this should be perfectly adequate.
Moving on to the internals, it goes without saying that everything is tightly packed. Interestingly though, the SFX Power does not have any heatsinks strapped to its mosfets and instead uses only thin pieces of metal much like heatspreaders to dissipate the heat. This is most likely due to the low profile height of the unit making it near impossible to install any kind of finned heatsink without blocking airflow from the fan.
A small amount of EMI filtering is provided on the the mains inlet with the live/neutral wires being wrapped around a ferrite choke. This may not be quite as effective as the full EMI/RF filtering circuits used on some PSU's, but should still help to keep any internally generated noise from the MOSFET's and other components contained within the device, while also preventing external AC line noise from entering the PSU.
Going in for a close look at the main capacitor over on the primary (high-voltage) side of the unit, the small little logo printed just to the side of the white stripe in the picture above-right tell us that this is a Japanese part manufactured by Hitachi. Furthermore the 105°c specification also indicates that be quiet! haven't cheaped out on components for this PSU either.
Finally, the only part of the whole unit that gets me worried is the 80mm fan. Not only is it an 80mm fan, but it is also a 12mm deep version which means that there really isn't much room to optimise the blades for maximum airflow at low speeds. Unfortunately searching for the model number (MGA8012ZR) on the web turned up no results, nor did looking at Protecnic Electric's abysmal website. So we'll just have to wait and see how this performs over on the next page...
Most Recent Comments
My initial thoughts were that they've done really well to get it so small, but it's a shame about the noise. Then exactly like Peter I wondered how likely it is for a HTPC system to hit full load.
Depends on if you use it for Bluray playback (thus a beefy CPU) or not I guess.Quote
Depends on if you use it for Bluray playback (thus a beefy CPU) or not I guess.Quote
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Originally Posted by name='zak4994'
Perfect timing.
Need a HTPC PSU as my relative's HTPC PSU just busted! Gotta love OC3D. |
@Peter/VB, yeah I doubt in most systems it will come close to 350w so the high load noise won't really be too much of an issue. But on the other hand I do have a Q6600 HTPC with a HD4850 and 3x1TB HDD's, so I might give it a slightly hard time
QuoteJust wanna make sure before I order, will this fit in an HP Slimline PC?
Don't wanna thread hijack. lolQuote
Don't wanna thread hijack. lolQuote
CSS Valid
Shame it's noisy at full load, but for the applications it's aimed at, will it ever reach full load?Quote