Silverstone Nightjar 450W Fanless Silent Computer Power Supply Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
1,507 words · ~7 min read
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this is a very old product but it's actually a very cool product as well
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this is a silverstone power supply it's only a 450 watt power supply so
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uh how is this relevant Linus well the reason it's relevant is this is their
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night jar 450 watt zero decibel power
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supply this is a fanless power supply it produces zero noise it's an 80 plus
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power supply and it better be if it's not going to have a fan in it because
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the less efficiency the more waste heat output there is so if you have an
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efficient power supply you're far more likely to be able to build it without an
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active fan taking away heat it has single pci express 8 pin and dual PCIe 6
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pin support for high-end gpus all right that's pretty cool 450 watts of
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continuous output with 500 watt peak although you better not use this outside
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of its spec for very long because i mean it is fanless it doesn't have a way to
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just sort of ramp up the fan to make up for any additional additional heat
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output there is nothing on the back of the box oh here we go here's the uh
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overall wow this thing is actually really heavy
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i'm actually i'm like having a hard time holding it up while i talk about it uh
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okay so this is a single 12 volt rail at 35 amps or 40 amps peak and so that can
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provide up to 420 watts of the total 450
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watts that this power supply is rated for so i'm gonna go ahead and put this
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down here i have never actually seen this power supply before although i've
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been curious about it and i've wanted to see it for a little while so we are
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having a voyage of discovery today that's for
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sure so the first thing we'll find inside the box is the silverstone
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optimum okay some kind of manual okay so this
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tells you a little bit about your power supply it tells you the physical characteristics and whatever okay that
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seems really pointless okay then we will find the okay we'll find
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another document that is completely unlabeled aha this is the manual so this
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shows you how to install the power supply how to connect it to all of the
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relevant parts of your computer that's pretty useful actually thanks guys
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okay next we will find a little accessory
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box that has a power cable in it
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okay so there's wow that's actually a pretty nice pretty beefy uh thick power
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cable it's d if i could just find it yeah i can't
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find what it's rated for but it doesn't really matter and then next inside we
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will find more stuff oh you don't normally have a whole lot that comes
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with a power supply but it looks like they've gone the whole nine yards here and they
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have included some oh they've included some plastic
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zip ties as well as some screws for mounting it they've also included some
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some velcro tie straps for managing your cables okay that's pretty cool i'm not
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okay i have to confess i am completely stumped i have no idea what this is for
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it's some kind of bracket so okay so they've included both thumb
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screws and regular screws depending on how you
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want to mount it in your case maybe your case doesn't have room for thumb screws at the back maybe there's something
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blocking it so they've given you all the different options there which is very
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cool okay and then we're pretty much left with the
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power supply itself i suspect so that
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has a very unique looking finish to it let me just
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get this open here and i'll get the plastic off it i mean this is the kind
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of power supply that is perfect for a
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media build or for a small form factor build because the reality of it is
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most computers are not using more than
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450 watts 400 watts of power even gaming
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machines and a big part of the reason that many users use overpowered power
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supplies for their systems is because they want to keep the noise down because
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an overpowered power supply isn't going to have the fan working as hard so it
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won't be as loud so i mean if you just go with a 450 watt power supply in the
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first place that doesn't have a fan well then win win right i guess the one
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disadvantage is this power supply is quite expensive so why don't we have a
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look at the unit itself and then we'll move on to the cables man this thing is
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heavy okay so there we go see we've got pretty much
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another um another outline of what we
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saw on the front so the rails on the side this thing is all about the about
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the ventilation holes so you can see this side of the power supply is
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completely honeycomb mesh the top is a
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thick aluminum heatsink that is also
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vented so you can actually see right down into the power supply but if you
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look at it from the side this whole structure is all heatsink okay so this
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is screwed on with a couple of screws here dab around to the other side of the
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power supply we have more honeycomb mesh at the back of the power supply we have
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more honeycomb mesh and then we have our power switch as well as our plug okay so
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then at the front of the power supply we have guess what more honeycomb mesh so
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this is all about as much passive airflow as possible and i want you to
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try and try and look inside there you see those huge heat sinks right here and
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right here that is what is going to be cooling this power supply so those
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appear to be connected to the top and this is going to be the majority of the
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cooling surface of the power supply so if you are using a unit like this or
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this one in particular you want to make sure that you're providing at least a
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little bit of airflow to it where it's doing most of its cooling you don't want to jam this in a little box with like
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zero fans because then you're just asking for trouble so in terms of
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connectors on this power supply we have a 20 plus four pin power connector okay
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so that plugs into your motherboard that's terrific you would pretty much
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expect any power supply to have that and in terms of pci express connectors we
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have oh wow they've given you a whole lot of
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options for pci express connectors this is oh no they haven't never mind this is
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a four plus four pin power connector so that's for your CPU
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okay i'm just going to adjust this a little bit so that i can hold it more comfortably there you go so that can
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come apart if you're using just a four pin motherboard which the odds are
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pretty good you would be doing if you're using like a media oriented motherboard or a small form factor motherboard then
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you have a six plus two pin and another six pin so this i mean i i
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really like these cables the ones that are like this because the reality of it is most people are using one GPU so if
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you have one GPU even if it has two six pin connectors or an eight plus six pin
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connector you run just one wire to it perfect love that okay then in terms of
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SATA connectors you've got a whole lot of them so imagine that imagine like a
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media oriented power supply needing lots of hard drives wow go figure so there
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you go you got six data connections three on each one of these cables i'm
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gonna give you sort of some some perspective for the length here so this
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is the power supply itself so these are quite long so pretty much whatever case
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you're using you're gonna be able to reach your hard drives just fine and then you have a bunch more molex
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connectors so we have two more cables again here's your power supply here's
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the length of the cables very long so one two three on each of those and then
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two floppy connectors at either end thank you for checking out my extremely
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heavy unboxing of the silverstone night jar 450 watt power supply