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Features
The
30NF is probably the most solid power supply I’ve ever picked up…and it
should be considering the heatsink-like design! The whole thing weighs
almost twice as much as the Orion 400W that came with the Guardian case, and
a little more than the large Super Flower 350W power supplies we reviewed a
while back. The finish is very nice, with a Silverstone logo right up on the
side that would be visible through a case window. The 30NF has surprisingly
little ventilation, relying instead on airflow around the outside of the
casing to provide the cooling effect. The most telling sign of how quiet
this power supply will be is the addition of indicator LEDs on the back of
the unit. One is for power, and the other for temperature. The second LED
lights up when it gets really hot and you’re not supposed to touch it with
your bare hands.
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The
30NF also comes with a partial sleeve and heatshrink job. Now, this is a
great touch, don’t get me wrong. But I didn’t like the way the 6 pin
auxiliary and 4 pin Intel connectors were done. Most people never use the
six pin, and with this setup it makes it harder to stash out of sight. Now,
another downer is that this is only a 300W power supply. But on the positive
side, Silverstone did not skimp on the connectors. 7 standard 4 pin Molex
connectors and two SATA connectors round out the usual array of ATX plugs.
Installation & Testing
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I
wanted to test this unit in the worst possible scenario, to provide a good
indication of how well the cooling solution on the 30NF will work. I
installed it in our recently reviewed Enermax CS-A666TA, a case with only
one 80mm fan to shuffle the air. The rest of the test system was as follows
–
• AMD Athlon XP Barton 2500+ / Stock Cooler
• Abit NF7-S rev 2
• Corsair XMS 2700 RAM
• Lite ON 52X CD-ROM drive
• Asus V9280S Video Card
• Western Digital 160 gig 7200rpm Hard Drive
• Cooler Master Musketeer II
I first just booted the system and let it sit for a few hours, just to get
some idea of what a “normal” temperature for a giant heatsink power supply
looked like. After that, I hit it with an hour each of Prime95 and Burnin
Pro 4. The power rails all stayed within a 5% tolerance during the testing.
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Teperatures |
| Ambient Temp: |
27°C (+/- 1°C) |
| Idle Temp: |
44.9°C |
| Load (Prime95): |
50.1°C |
| Load (Burnin Pro): |
51.1°C |
I was surprised that I was actually unable to get the temp LED to turn on,
but that’s a good thing! The design works very well and although you may not
see this type of design coming to a 450W PSU near you, it is a great to have
on many other systems that do not need that much power. The chassis of the
30NF did get pretty hot during the testing…although not hot enough to burn.
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