craig5320

FSP Zen 400W Fanless Review
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FSP (also known as Fortron-Source) are one of the most experienced computer PSU manufacturers on the planet. Even though they usually keep a low profile and aren't particularly aggressive in the retail market, FSP recently released a very wide range of self-branded retail products. Today we will have a look at one of the most interesting products they released, the Zen 400W Passive PSU.

Passive units are very popular among HTPC enthusiasts who are trying to build capable but entirely silent running computers. We will see if the Zen can deliver performance capable of appeasing HTPC enthusiasts in this review.

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Mac Daddy

Nice review Grace and the efficiency was surprising to me as well.

May be a dumb question but are there models available / upcoming with higher power ratings? .. 400W is pretty low in today's standards.

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"My mom said the only reason men are alive is for lawn care and vehicle maintenance." - Tim Allen

kris23

i doubt it but possibly, this thing is built for HTPC and low power applications.

its only good for a stock CPU with a set of RAM and a modest GPU

there are super silent PSUs like ones made by zalman that employ heatsinks that are higher powered but technically theyre not fanless....

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Mac Daddy

True Kris but looking at the efficiency and temperature numbers on this unit I don't see a 500 or 600 Watt unit out of range.

Thanks for the feedback

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"My mom said the only reason men are alive is for lawn care and vehicle maintenance." - Tim Allen

kris23

one thing you should know is that most PSUs are not well suited to run above 50C the life-span may decrease. this is due to the fact that certain capacitors don't run as well above their temperature limits and the most common is 50C

i dont really know the ratings on the caps in here but it all depends on the components heat ratings...

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Mac Daddy

Yes I am quite aware of that Kris graduated Electronics Engineering Technology in 1988

At the temperatures noted I am sure the semiconductors were running much hotter than the capacitors that's why they have heatsinks. At the noted temps I doubt the caps saw 30C.

Thanks for the feedback Kris nice to have a discussion here on the review section

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"My mom said the only reason men are alive is for lawn care and vehicle maintenance." - Tim Allen

kris23

nice to know! was it difficult to understand?

but i dont see a fanless PSU with ratings much higher than this, not one that can easily be produced anyway....

silverstone has a 450w but thats it...

remember, its not just about the heatsinks, the heat has to dissipate somewhere and in an enclosed system with no active air circulation and just a few vent holes, the components around begin taking that heat in and it just builds up from there.... after 500w i think that they would have to go with some pretty exotic designs or include a quiet fan to help circulate after the internal temps go past a point.... antec did that once...

its possible to go bigger with no fans but just doesnt sound practical for mass production... but hey, that never stopped some companies from doing stuff...

Newegg.com - ZALMAN ZM750-HP 750W Continuous @ 45°C (Maximum Continuous Peak: 850W) ATX12V V2.2 / EPS12V V2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Modular LED Heatpipe-Cooled SLI Power

zalmans PSUs use heatpipes and smaller heatsinks to help keep PSUs silent yet go up to 1Kw, just thought you might want to see it

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Mac Daddy

On the Electronics hard to understand? Yes it was tough luckily I am strong in math lol

On the PSU I do see your point and it is a device transferring power and dissipating heat in a case ... inside another case that is trying to dissipate heat.

On the Zalman PSU with the heatpipes thanks for the link Kris cool stuff

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"My mom said the only reason men are alive is for lawn care and vehicle maintenance." - Tim Allen

Grace

Actually it wouldn't be impossible at all to see fanless units with (much) higher outputs. That however would require parts (specialized heatsinks, topologies and components with very low resistance which would increase the overall effiency of the unit, etc) which are very expensive. Even today the 400W fanless models costs as much as 700-1000W products. Plus that a high output fanless PSU would power a lot of power hungry components with (possibly) noisy cooling solutions, meaning that it would be a very expensive noise-less product for a system in need of heavy cooling. There is no market for such a unit right now.

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Mac Daddy

True Grace it's amazing just to see the technology reach this point ... thanks for the reply was just curious

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"My mom said the only reason men are alive is for lawn care and vehicle maintenance." - Tim Allen