Fanless PSU Mod Help

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Some of the fanless PSU mods I've read on here are many years old, but here's hoping there are still some members here with the knowledge and experience. I know its kind of pointless these days modding as you can buy fanless PSU's off the shelf but with this project i'm limited to 1U size PSU.

I'm using the Seasonic SS-5001LU semi passive 500w PSU. It is to go into the Zalman TNN-500AF PC case that SPCR did a review on many years ago. The current 400w PSU is pretty much useless these days so looking to use this SeaSonic unit as a upgrade / modernization.

I want to transplant the Seasonic PSU into the shell of the old Zalman unit. It should work and cool fine as the old Zalman units managed fine and they were fairly crap and inefficient, whilst this Seasonic is a 90+ gold unit by the best PSU maker on the planet and also being a industrial PSU is rated for higher tolerances. So should only have to dissipate a little waste heat when compared to the Zalman unit.

The shell is essentially a case with a large aluminium plate on one side which passes heat to the case door (which is simply a huge heatsink)

The internals of the Zalman are similar, internal heatsinks which connect to the large aluminium plate. The seasnoic also has internal heatsink which can be attached to the alu plate and then to the case working in a similar fashion.

Now the problem I have is the primary side heatsinks (2 of them) are live. the secondary side isn't. So cant simply connect all three heatsink to the aluminium plate as would short and possibly kill me.

The primary side heatsinks are approx. 5mm shorter than the secondary side heatsink. Would simply using a thick 6mm non conductive thermal pad suffice as a insulator? So the secondary side heatsink would be pressed against the aluminium plate using regular thermal paste, and then the primary side heatsink using the thick 6mm thermal pads.

Is this a safe and viable solution?

Here is a pic of the Seasonic PSU and the old Zalman PSU.



And heres the Zalman PSU, one side is just a large aluminium plate, the internal heatsink simply make contact with thermal paste to this plate. I assume the internal heatsink of the Zalman psu are all not live hence they can make contact unlike the seasonic psu which has 2 live primary side heatsink carrying a lot of voltage.



Here how the original zalman PSU attaches to the case side door (which is simply a huge heatsink)

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Would simply using a thick 6mm non conductive thermal pad suffice as a insulator? So the secondary side heatsink would be pressed against the aluminium plate using regular thermal paste, and then the primary side heatsink using the thick 6mm thermal pads.

Is this a safe and viable solution?

I can't help, but you might ask on jonnyguru.com forum, it's much more versed into PSU technique.