What are your opinions on PSUs with zero-rpm fan features?

[Zach_01]

Power supplies are engineered specifically to be used with a fan by formally educated electrical, computer, and thermal engineers, designers, manufacturers, and software developers.

Those same educated engineers (and not our groceries salesman) thought that when its not really needed the fan can stop. So the "specifically" in your sentence is simple your opinion and not the reality.

10hours of typical and some idle operation at 25C room temp. Do I need to start the fan? Is the PSU going to burn at 45C or even wear out?
Is the 15W avg (Input minus output power) or even the peak 20W heat going to heat up the rest of the system?

Same time and same environment for the GPU.
I guess 40-45C is too much... for something that that has a Tjmax close to 100C

FYI the same GPU under the same operating and environment conditions dumps the same amount of heat into the case with its fan spinning or with it stopped.

 

[Bill_Bright]

How so?

Let's take a 200g block of aluminum and heat it by say 20°C

How so? Come on Andy! We've been through this many times before. You cannot pick out of thin air some arbitrary, one-off example, then pretend it applies across the board and nullifies an entire point!

If you want to play that game then "let's take" a smaller block of aluminum. Or how about a HSF that is not mounted properly? Or even a bigger copper block where the user failed to apply a proper layer of TIM? Would you want your cooling fan to take it's sweet time to ramp up? I sure would not.

Yes Bill, I said trap it. You read it, and then even managed to "quote" me correctly. Attaboy

Yes I did - to illustrate if you have heat being trapped and not moving, then it is YOU, maxfly, YOU who have failed to set up your case cooling properly. And it is YOU who has failed to understand that zero fan does not mean "zero" all the time. And instead, it simply means the fan stays off until needed.

And as an aside...
Power supplies are engineered specifically to be used with a fan by formally educated electrical, computer, and thermal engineers, designers, manufacturers, and software developers. Huh? What? Whodathunk? Blowin minds, it's what I does. Hahaha!

Hahaha! Unless they are not! Lots and lots of power supplies are engineered specifically to NOT be used with a fan. Blows your mind huh? Unless you bothered to educate yourself on the topic.

 

[maxfly]

Those same educated engineers (and not our groceries salesman) thought that when its not really needed the fan can stop. So the "specifically" in your sentence is simple your opinion and not the reality.

10hours of typical and some idle operation at 25C room temp. Do I need to start the fan? Is the PSU going to burn at 45C or even wear out?
Is the 15W avg (Input minus output power) or even the peak 20W heat going to heat up the rest of the system?

View attachment 264351

Same time and same environment for the GPU.
I guess 40-45C is too much... for something that that has a Tjmax close to 100C

View attachment 264352

FYI the same GPU under the same operating and environment conditions dumps the same amount of heat into the case with its fan spinning or with it stopped.

Hahaha, oh boy.
Is it simple my opinion or is your opinion simple your opinion? Hmmmm.
Do you need to start the fan up? Do you feel like your PSU is going to burn at 45c or even wear out? Hmmmm.
Is the 15W avg (Input minus output power) or even the peak 20W heat going to heat up the rest of the system? Hmmmmm?

Zach. What gave you the misplaced impression that I care one iota about your gpu? I don't. But ty, ty so very much for sharing

I tried to make it clear in my response to Bill. Obviously the clarity slipped by you. Sigh, I'll try again.
I don't care how you run your rig. Period. End of story.
YOU
DO
YOU
Mkay?

 

[Zach_01]

Hahaha, oh boy.
Is it simple my opinion or is your opinion simple your opinion? Hmmmm.
Do you need to start the fan up? Do you feel like your PSU is going to burn at 45c or even wear out? Hmmmm.
Is the 15W avg (Input minus output power) or even the peak 20W heat going to heat up the rest of the system? Hmmmmm?

Zach. What gave you the misplaced impression that I care one iota about your gpu? I don't. But ty, ty so very much for sharing

I tried to make it clear in my response to Bill. Obviously the clarity slipped by you. Sigh, I'll try again.
I don't care how you run your rig. Period. End of story.
YOU
DO
YOU
Mkay?

You are not in a private conversation with @Bill_Bright. Others can share their opinions or make their points.
And who do you really think "invented" the stop-fan operation if not the people who design the PSU or any other PC component?

And this thread is not owned by you or anyone else. If you cant make a civilized conversation try not to answer with types of comments that can trigger flames.
Also try to finish please your words and sentences so your point is clear. Not everyone here can understand mumbling.

You may not care for anything but your opinion but the OP might

 

[maxfly]

Yes I did - to illustrate if you have heat being trapped and not moving, then it is YOU, maxfly, YOU who have failed to set up your case cooling properly. And it is YOU who has failed to understand that zero fan does not mean "zero" all the time. And instead, it simply means the fan stays off until needed.


Hahaha! Unless they are not! Lots and lots of power supplies are engineered specifically to NOT be used with a fan. Blows your mind huh? Unless you bothered to educate yourself on the topic.

Sigh, now Bills trying to be clever. Please don't. Your not, your only embarrassing yourself with silly shit like that man.

Lots and lots eh? You mean the whopping, oh lets be generous and say 4 maybe 5% of passive units... TOPs? Hahaha!
Yuuuup that sure do sounds like lotsa lotsa powur sippliers dudnt it.

That's just weak Bill.

You are not in a private conversation with @Bill_Bright. Others can share their opinions or make their points.
And who do you really think "invented" the stop-fan operation if not the people who design the PSU or any other PC component?

And this thread is not owned by you or anyone else. If you cant make a civilized conversation try not to answer with types of comments that can trigger flames.
Also try to finish please your words and sentences so your point is clear. Not everyone here can understand mumbling.

You may not care for anything but your opinion but the OP might

Of course! Let your opinions flow away Zachie my man! If my responses hurt your feelings. Don't quote me. Shrug
Nuh uh, are you cereal?! They made that for real!? Wow, I never woulda guessed.
Ooooh, our man Zach is touchy touchy now your kinda thin skinned eh? Gotta learn how to interpret jokes.

Yeah, Zach that was done purposely. I'll try really, really hard not mince my words just for you, k?
I will run my rig my way.
You? Well, obviously you are free to do with your rig what ever pleases ya
Clear enough?

 

[Shrek]

If you want to play that game

Way tired of such games

Overheating is NOT going to happen in nano seconds (clock cycles)

However, a CPU or GPU, for example, can go from cool to over-heated in just a few clock cycles.

10J in 10^-9s is 10,000 MegaWatts, which is comparable to the largest power station ever built

You cannot pick out of thin air some arbitrary, one-off example, then pretend it applies across the board and nullifies an entire point!

Sure, I might be out by a factor of 10 this way or that...

Just picked up an aluminum CPU heatsink that I use for decoration on a desk: 223g

 

[Ahhzz]

Members. Act like adults. Actual adults, not pretend adults. State your opinion politely. Provide counter-arguments with supporting data. Agree to disagree. Move on. The world does not have to stop because "Someone is Wrong on the Internets!!"

 

[Zach_01]

@maxfly
"You? Well, obviously you are free to do with your rig what ever pleases ya
Clear enough?"

-------------------------

It is well established for years now that all here and everywhere around the world can run their systems they way the want.
No doubt... you dont have to keep saying it. You can though.

OP has asked a specific question.

We are not here hopefully to try to change your opinion about zero rpm function of fans.

What is totally irrelevant IMHO is your comment about the educated engineers who designed the components to operate with a fan 100% of time.
And I can ask again... who do you think programed the zero-rpm function if not the educated engineer who designed the PSU or the whatever else component?

Can you answer this simple question? And maybe make and discussion (not required though) about it?
Or are you going to start diverging the subject to personal preferences? again...

-------------------------------------------------

I remember reading a Techpowerup review where the reviewer said he did not like those types of PSUs at all, I don't quite remember why...

My reason for the question is:
I have a low power GT1030 with a passive heatsink (I despise any type of fan noise). I bought a high end Corsair platinum PSU 750W that I know from reviews has zero-rpm fan below 400W power draw. So my system was operating noise free for 5 years until the PSU suddenly died.

I am wondering if it died because it operated without the aid of the cooling fan...(I checked and found not a spec of dust inside PSU)
However I sent it to Corsair for RMA and they sent me a new one within days (10 year warranty)

Thoughts?

Fans are designed to take away the excess heat to avoid overheating as we all know. No science here...
But if the temperature is low... why cant the fan be stopped and start when really needed?
Its a simple function.

99.9% the dying had nothing to do with zero-rpm. PSUs are dying within warranty even with their fan operating 100% of time. It happens and you shouldn't be afraid of a PSU that its made with all the safeties to protect the rest of the system on its dying time.

Can I ask what exact model this PSU is? If its HX750i like mine you can monitor all its metrics from iCUE to witness if any high temp is going on in there, or maybe there is away you can just install the Corsair Link driver so you can monitor even more parameters through HWiNFO64, like the screenshot I posted on #28, if you dont want iCUE on your system that is.

 

[cvaldes]

What is totally irrelevant IMHO is your comment about the educated engineers who designed the components to operate with a fan 100% of time.
And I can ask again... who do you think programed the zero-rpm function if not the educated engineer who designed the PSU or the whatever else component?

LOL, the same engineers who design PSUs with the always on fans also design the models that have the zero rpm feature.

Some people on these PC discussion forums never seem to understand this.

And yes, they probably tested a bunch of variants during the design phase. They programmed the fan to come on at a certain temperature. At a certain speed. And wrote fan curves to compensate for increased heat, whether it be from the PSU components or ambient surroundings.

And yet PC Q&A forum participants seem to have superior knowledge about such matters compared to the experienced engineers (many with advanced degrees from top technical programs around the globe). Armchair EE Ph.D. knows more about PSU design than the people who earn a living doing it.

Makes total sense. Another forum participant recently posted the same observation. This only happens in the PC world, nowhere else do rank amateurs truly believe that they have superior knowledge about a subject.

Should I question my dentist what she's doing? A cattle rancher? A cheesemaker? A mason? An opera singer?

Fans are designed to take away the excess heat to avoid overheating as we all know. No science here...
But if the temperature is low... why cant the fan be stopped and start when really needed?
Its a simple function.

I find it curious that PC hardware is super exotic yet the same situation in a human's real life is completely ignored.

I have a box fan in my bedroom. There's a fan in the range hood above my stove. There's also a fan in my car. In most cases, I don't need to run any of them. I only run them when ordinary convection isn't enough.

Hell, here in the USA, many homes have a thermostatically governed climate control system. Gets too cold, heater starts and warm air is pumped into house. Gets too hot, air conditioning unit starts and cool air is pumped into house.

But PC hardware is snowflake material. The laws of physics and common sense operational policies don't really apply to PC hardware apparently. Yes, strange but true.

Right.



I love this site! People here are so smart and so generous in protecting us from idiocy churned out by the ton from the simpletons who run NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Seasonic, etc.

THANK YOU!!!!!

 

[Ferrum Master]

LOL, the same engineers who design PSUs with the always on fans also design the models that have the zero rpm feature.

Yes also most doesn't work in RMA field servicing and witnessing the creation the engineers made with fixes made by the PR and gimping team as making them saints. There are more cases like Gigabyte supplies had, but just nobody spun PR through the whole internet about it, yet failures like that happen.

There's only one goal. To sell. As much and cheap possible. It fails? Buy a new one. It is BY DESIGN, nothing is designed to last forever. The life span of each certain product is the reason for debate here. Nobody asked to bring up some ideologic stuff derailing the discussion about what and why.

It all depends on specific usage scenario. If it is a passive design, it doesn't mean you can use it like in any place despite how it is advertised... like using your shoes for hitting nails, well heck - why not?

 

[64K]

Fan noise doesn't bother me at all. Somehow I'm able to block it out. I have 7 fans in my case. 3 case fans, 2 GPU fans, a CPU fan and the PSU fan. I would rather have a fan on my PSU running when the PSU was getting hot than to have a fan on the PSU not running when it was needed.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

Yes also most doesn't work in RMA field servicing and witnessing the creation the engineers made with fixes made by the PR and gimping team as making them saints. There are more cases like Gigabyte supplies had, but just nobody spun PR through the whole internet about it, yet failures like that happen.

There's only one goal. To sell. As much and cheap possible. It fails? Buy a new one. It is BY DESIGN, nothing is designed to last forever. The life span of each certain product is the reason for debate here. Nobody asked to bring up some ideologic stuff derailing the discussion about what and why.

It all depends on specific usage scenario. If it is a passive design, it doesn't mean you can use it like in any place despite how it is advertised... like using your shoes for hitting nails, well heck - why not?

Then why do companies provide long warranties on such PSUs and honor them, unless it's clear user error (and in some cases even then)?

Clearly in such case it's beneficial to engineer the product to last at least as long (or technically exactly as long) as warranty period. If such PSU has 10 years warranty, what would make one think it has to fail when operated in actual fanless mode before 10 years lol? That would make no sense for company.

And before you say "But it would last longer if ran with fan all the time!!!111!!1111!!!!!!!!!" - maybe. Maybe not. You cannot prove that either way. You'd need a time machine and run the same sample (not just another unit of same series!) from brand new until failure in both modes, then compare how long each failure mode took.

 

[Bones]

Can only speak for myself but I do prefer a fan in my units.
Doesn't have to be a high CFM fan but at the same time I do like the fact a fan will be moving air for cooling.

Same goes for GPU's and all else as my preference - Again it doesn't have to be a high CFM unit maikng a bit of noise, just have a little air moving for cooling and that's it.

For XOC, all bets are off related to how much CFM's my fans will be pushing and you know it will be pushing a few CFM to say the least of it.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Then why do companies provide long warranties on such PSUs and honor them, unless it's clear user error (and in some cases even then)?

It is done only because of the competition. As X company does we also must have it without thinking much further... There is no guarantee the unit was ordered to perform in such mode and the decision to make it happen only stems from marketing point of view, there were cases that warranty was extended as gratis on existing products, just competitor Joe did the same, you got the idea right? You cannot imagine how many problems like that exist in the world. It doesn't apply only to Bethesda releasing games, pushing deploy in live environment... it also happens in all consumer products.

I would give you an example of one manufacturer that is bigger than all PSU makers and their OEM's together. They claim their product is water proof, but utterly it is not. The only difference is warranty, you will get your unit replaced in case of water damage, they don't care about the small percentage of irresponsible bunch of people who actually try out swimming in pool with the device. They calculated that deviance from the RMA bathtub curve doesn't deviate that much either way as other failures still occur. I cannot explain more details because of my contracts and NDA, but it takes sometimes 5 tries for those engineers in open consumer beta test to make some component like simple FPC connecting two boards right, why? Competition, terms, lack of time... you have to flood the marker with products of the same.

So as I said before... the warranty is the only key point, you can do it as you wish, but on some circumstances you may actually bring the device out of order as nothing is perfect. The unit actually may not be designed to be that rigid you imagine. The buffer of RMA keeps in check those people who abuse their devices to maximum... the better after years they would receive a different model, that may have improved. Most of people doesn't even approach half of the danger line and doesn't cause problems, the claim is valid and it counts... For those who break the unit all the time, just return money and piss off.

I actually took my own PSU apart last year after around 8 years of service. And remeasured all caps. They were all in check capacity(loss of 10% = normal) and ESR wise. I didn't test ripple suppression capability anymore, as that parameter is the most prone one and a stat with most less working hours. Basically your unit works, but your ripple on rails raised, it may be within ATX specs, but some things like OC stability may hurt actually because of that. Well I replaced them either way, also fixed inherited bulk cap deficiency... there is a thing about using a PSU for 10 years in the first place... you measure your rails? Yea it works, but you see tests done on OLD psu's?

Also there was a point that IT crowd is somehow special about arguing and complaining, that's utter BS, as you are more acknowledged any community has similar issues and discussions, you name it - food, fashion, arts, architecture, gardening... they all have competition and various products also with very large variety to pick from. That variety of indigents and their quality also is discussed everywhere.

 

[Regeneration]

The problem with zero RPM fan is if you don't stress the system on a regular basis, the rotor collects dust and hair and the fan dies MUCH faster.

There is some machine oil on the rotor as well that dries up faster if the fan doesn't move often. Bottom line: its better to keep the fan spinning.

 

[Keullo-e]

Nothing bad to say against semi-passive PSUs. My older Seasonic has that feature and I use that mode.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

It is done only because of the competition. As X company does we also must have it without thinking much further... There is no guarantee the unit was ordered to perform in such mode and the decision to make it happen only stems from marketing point of view, there were cases that warranty was extended as gratis on existing products, just competitor Joe did the same, you got the idea right? You cannot imagine how many problems like that exist in the world. It doesn't apply only to Bethesda releasing games, pushing deploy in live environment... it also happens in all consumer products.

I would give you an example of one manufacturer that is bigger than all PSU makers and their OEM's together. They claim their product is water proof, but utterly it is not. The only difference is warranty, you will get your unit replaced in case of water damage, they don't care about the small percentage of irresponsible bunch of people who actually try out swimming in pool with the device. They calculated that deviance from the RMA bathtub curve doesn't deviate that much either way as other failures still occur. I cannot explain more details because of my contracts and NDA, but it takes sometimes 5 tries for those engineers in open consumer beta test to make some component like simple FPC connecting two boards right, why? Competition, terms, lack of time... you have to flood the marker with products of the same.

So as I said before... the warranty is the only key point, you can do it as you wish, but on some circumstances you may actually bring the device out of order as nothing is perfect. The unit actually may not be designed to be that rigid you imagine. The buffer of RMA keeps in check those people who abuse their devices to maximum... the better after years they would receive a different model, that may have improved. Most of people doesn't even approach half of the danger line and doesn't cause problems, the claim is valid and it counts... For those who break the unit all the time, just return money and piss off.

I actually took my own PSU apart last year after around 8 years of service. And remeasured all caps. They were all in check capacity(loss of 10% = normal) and ESR wise. I didn't test ripple suppression capability anymore, as that parameter is the most prone one and a stat with most less working hours. Basically your unit works, but your ripple on rails raised, it may be within ATX specs, but some things like OC stability may hurt actually because of that. Well I replaced them either way, also fixed inherited bulk cap deficiency... there is a thing about using a PSU for 10 years in the first place... you measure your rails? Yea it works, but you see tests done on OLD psu's?

Also there was a point that IT crowd is somehow special about arguing and complaining, that's utter BS, as you are more acknowledged any community has similar issues and discussions, you name it - food, fashion, arts, architecture, gardening... they all have competition and various products also with very large variety to pick from. That variety of indigents and their quality also is discussed everywhere.

Except competition won't make companies do things that are not economically viable.

If product is advertised as capable of fanless mode, but it fails prematurely, it is clearly faulty and to be returned, as long as covered by warranty period - that's induces a cost a company would rather avoid, with potential negative publicity on top of that. If that period was very short, that should have raised red flag in the first place.

Except it's not the case for actual semi-fanless units, which are typically premium ones and are 5 years MINIMUM, more often 7 or 10.

Basically your unit works, but your ripple on rails raised, it may be within ATX specs, but some things like OC stability may hurt actually because of that

That's not relevant unless you can prove the difference in ripple between unit ran with fanless mode off vs on is meaningful to actually do so.

Except you'd need two untis of same series, measure their initial ripple and OC results (they may vary on per-unit basis as well!), run them both for x years in same conditions except for fanless mode, then redo the measurements for both units.

 

[Ferrum Master]

That's not relevant

Dude, aren't going a bit overbroad?

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

I just know that to prove causality in an experiment you need to isolate confounding variables.

And in hypothetical scenario you presented you had multiple.

 

[Mussels]

I only buy zero RPM models. I dont want to hear it at idle.

All you need is positive airflow pressure in your case, which you should have anyway for dust reduction and tada - it's passively cooled

 

[Zach_01]

All you need is positive airflow pressure in your case, which you should have anyway for dust reduction and tada - it's passively cooled

I agree

Of course there are situations that differ from that, like some cases having separate compartments (bottom of case) for the PSU at least. Even those can be passively cooled through physical circulation/movement of warm-er air, as long as orientation is proper.

 

[damric]

The idle fan is a worse problem when the PSU is mounted fan side down at the bottom of a case, especially on the PSUs which use the cheaper caps. I'm sure the old timers here remember the original Corsair RM which had such a high failure rate for this very reason.

 

[dirtyferret]

It is BY DESIGN, nothing is designed to last forever.

I beg to differ

The idle fan is a worse problem when the PSU is mounted fan side down at the bottom of a case, especially on the PSUs which use the cheaper caps. I'm sure the old timers here remember the original Corsair RM which had such a high failure rate for this very reason.

I don't recall ever hearing those units having a "high failure rate" from any viable source.

All you need is positive airflow pressure in your case, which you should have anyway for dust reduction and tada - it's passively cooled

All you need is airflow in an efficient manner
It is through empirical testing and the implementation of the scientific method that we can finally lay to rest one of the oldest debates in the computing community, at least for this chassis and configuration. While these results are for this specific chassis and configurations we would expect similar results from other cases as well. Whether you use more intake than exhaust, around the same, or more exhaust than intake, so long as all other variables are the same, they will all allow approximately the same amount of dust into the PC case. Whether you normally fight with small particulate house dust, the heavier sawdust, or sand from the arid western United States, the results will all be the same. This myth is busted.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

The idle fan is a worse problem when the PSU is mounted fan side down at the bottom of a case, especially on the PSUs which use the cheaper caps. I'm sure the old timers here remember the original Corsair RM which had such a high failure rate for this very reason.

Actually, no.

They had high failure rate because OTP was not configured properly.

Potential thermal issue with RM750 and RM850

The Corsair RM series power supplies are designed to run without active cooling for up to 40% load at typical room temperatures (25°C, or 77°F) and are capable of continuously outputting 100% of output capability at ambient temperatures of up to 40°C (104°F). We have found that our power supplies...

forum.corsair.com

 

[Bill_Bright]

@dirtyferret

Excellent point about the fruit cake! LOL

The air flow and dust "myth" example, however, IMO is not busted because that article is flawed in its presumptions - at least in how I recommend case cooling be set up. And that is with "slight" over-pressure. They used 3 x 140mm intake fans and only 1 in back (with no help in back from a PSU). They also powered the fans directly from a PSU to ensure the fans ran full speed.

That would create considerably more than a slight overpressure and certainly does not represent a real-world configuration.

Still, I agree the results of that test were surprising and the main take away - for me anyway - was to always use a filtered case. But that's been my norm for almost 20 years.