Passively cooled Silverstone 500W PSU released…questionable price tag?
Ryan Martin / 13 years ago
The Silverstone Nightjar 500W power supply is based on a totally passive design, no fans, no noise. The ST50NF is a 500W fan-less passive 80Plus Gold certified power supply. It is non-modular so cable management may be a problem in smaller PC cases. The cooling design is based on lots of small aluminium heat sinks absorbing heat in the PSU main chamber and then a larger heat sink on top to draw that heat upwards and outwards. The sides are made from perforated aluminium to allow for greater airflow inside.
500 Watts of continuous power is provided and it is ATX 12 V2.3 & EPS 12V compliant. All the power is based through a single 12V rail which many will argue provides much better stability than a dual rail especially if running an energy intensive graphics card unit. Crossfire isn’t natively supported here as there are not enough cables for two cards that have two power connectors. Mean time between failures is 50,000 hours. The worst part of this all is the price tag of 129/£110/$190. Can only a 500W passive power supply really justify such a high price tag especially given the fact it isn’t even modular?
