SPCR

I'll be installing it tonight. God it's heavy.....if weight still means anything when judging PSUs, this thing is first class. The manual contains almost nothing.....so I guess you're on your own if you have any difficulty. The large aluminum heatsink which covers one side, is vented much better than the photos indicate. Sure hope I don't have any booting problems.....the setup this is going in, uses laptop drive(s). I'll find out shortly. It's a beautiful blue...

Bluefront wrote:It's a beautiful blue...

...front?

Heh.....booted with no sweat. This system for now uses only one WD laptop drive. It's sitting in a heavily modded Antec 4400 case. There is one 220mm intake fan blowing inward......and no exhaust fans. The one YL visible in the photo turns on about 50C (rarely). Most of the exhaust from the intake fan, exits over the top of the Zen. Since I just got it running, I cannot comment further.....but right now the top heatsink of the Zen measures 33.5C at 24C ambient.

Link to more photos of this setup

Looks like it's got high efficiency: http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6276&page=8


Maybe not mindblowing though as this i 220V (UK).

I'm tempted to get one and hope Spcr can review it soon. I hope it has the same good efficiency at lower outputs as the Zen 300W. If so I will probably get one.

I've had a chance to test this setup. It idled overnight at about 24C ambient....the top heatsink measured about 36C. The ambient went up this afternoon to about 27C. After a long period of benchmarking, I measure about 40C on the heatsink. You can see the location of the sensor in this photo.....it's in the lower left corner of the heatsink.



The PSU wires are exactly the right length for this case....just long enough to route out of the airflow. In a normal case, I suppose you would mount this Zen with the heatsink facing down. How that would affect temps remains to be tested by somebody else. This positive pressure case is just perfect for this Zen. I'm happy so far. Absolutely no coil noise either.....

spookmineer wrote:

Bluefront wrote:It's a beautiful blue...

...front?

I believe it mounts in the back.

Bluefront wrote:Absolutely no coil noise either.....

Good stuff Bluefront. I guess you can always trust FSP with quality, the ones I've had have all been good. All my antecs and my new seasonics on the other hand all have some amount of coil noise. My Corsair is freaking loud and will be sent back as rma.


I guess this is my next buy. I'm eagerly awaiting the EU release!

OK.....some bad news. I've experienced a no-boot situation two times now. Flipping the PSU switch on/off fixed that problem. I'm going to experiment with more load on the 12V rail......maybe a small light bulb somewhere. This apparently is a common problem with high-efficiency PSUs. More to come....

Bluefront,

Do you reckon the ATX and P4 cables to be long enough for it to be used in the P180?

Well I have never owned a p180.....but from the pictures I'd say probably not. And particularly so if you wanted to route the ATX wires nicely, out of the airflow. Of course a lot depends on the location of the ATX connection on the MB. A location in the upper right corner of the board would be a tight squeeze.

I changed the fan controller on my setup, and the boot problem has not occurred again.....got my fingers crossed. This setup I'm using has a lightly loaded 12V rail. YMMV

Thanks. Too bad... Guess I have to wait for a Spcr review to be sure.

Felger Carbon wrote:

spookmineer wrote:

Bluefront wrote:It's a beautiful blue...

...front?

I believe it mounts in the back.

It was a pun...