be quiet! Pure Power 10 600W Power Supply Review
Peter Donnell / 8 years ago
Fan Speed
When testing in a power supply laboratory it is difficult to take fan noise readings as the noise from the Sunmoon test equipment and air conditioning corrupts everything. The next best thing in our circumstances was reading off the fan speed with a tachometer to get an idea for the noise. The ambient temperature during testing held constant at 22 degrees, with 1 degree of variation. Each power supply had a consistent time period of 5 minutes to stabilise between each load scenario.
In my experience the following general relationships apply between noise levels and fan speeds, though it can vary greatly between the type of fan used.
- Below 800 RPM – Inaudible/Silent
- 800 to 1000 RPM – Barely audible
- 1000 – 1200 RPM – Audible but still quiet
- 1200 – 1400 RPM – Moderately noisy
- 1400 – 1800 RPM – Noisy
- 1800 RPM or higher – Intolerable
While it looks like the fan speed was all over the place here, it really only ran between 538 and 555RPM, which is pretty darn slow and was virtually silent. We did report that the fan can operate up to 1800RPM, but I imagine it would have to pretty much be in a burning building before it needed to work that hard to cool the PSU.
