A few weeks ago I took a look at what was then the quietest PSU I had ever tested, the Zalman ZM400A-APF. Just recently I got in a 350 watt Ahanix “SilenX” PSU from ExoticPC, and I decided to test the two of them together and see who is really the quietest PSU around. Can the SilenX dethrone quiet king Zalman?
When I first received the SilenX in the mail, I thought to myself, “Hey, that looks an awful lot like the Zalman.” As it turns out, it does more than just look like the Zalman. The two of them are based on the same Fortron Source chassis. The only difference between the two, (aside from the Zalman being black and the SilenX being gray) is that the SilenX I received for review is the 350W version, which has the traditional 115\230 volt switch instead of automatic active PFC like the 400W Zalman. The 400W version of the SilenX has the active PFC. The Zalman and SilenX also do use different fans.
Both PSU’s have a single vent opposite the fan, and standard 20-pin ATX connector, a 4-pin Pentium 4 ATX connector, a 6-pin AUX connecter, 7 large 4-pin peripheral connectors (hard drives and CD-ROMs), and 2 mini 4-pin connectors (floppy drives).
