It’s been a long time since I’ve had the opportunity to geek with a bit of new hardware, and this didn’t really look like this was going to provide much of an opportunity at first. The back story is that the power supply in the Media Center has been breaking down slowly and emitting a nasty whistling noise which has been driving me up the wall, let alone anyone with more acute hearing than me.
I set about hunting down a quiet power supply to replace it with, one that didn’t whistle and didn’t emit a huge amount of fan noise. I settled on the Arctic Cooling Fusion 550R as it promises silent operation and has an airflow path compatible with the narrow HTPC case that I’m using.
Now the thing that caught my attention and is the real reason that I’m writing this is that it claims to be high efficiency energy saving unit. Now normally I ignore the bold claims made on packaging, however this one has piqued my curiosity and was worthy of experiment.
The web site says:
High Efficiency = Less Power Loss = Quiet Cooling
With an efficiency of at least 82 to 86%, less heat is generated inside the PSU. As a result of this a single 80-mm-fan is enough to cool the PSU. The rubber-mounted fan is spinning in a range between 700 and 2000 RPM making it virtually silent. Additionally to this the PSU comes along with two external fan-connectors giving the possibility to control the case ventilation based on load and temperature and thus lowers the noise level of the complete system to an absolute minimum.
Effective energy-use preserves nature and saves money
By making appreciated use of natural resources, especially energy you can contribute to lower CO2-Emissions. Additionally you save electricity cost of about 100 €, so the Fusion 550R is a true Payment Saving Unit*.
* In 4 years, 200 d/y with 4 h/d full load at 0,15€/kWh
Ok, understood. I used my power meter to measure the power the Media Center uses using it’s old power supply (an old Q-Technology 400W unit, circa ~2003).
87.8W at idle at desktop, and 5.1W when off. This stunned me, that’s not on standby, that’s 5W been consumed when OFF – proper off. I’m amazed at the phantom load that a switched off PC creates, I’ll not mock my Grandmother for switching her electronics of at the mains overnight ever again!
I swapped out the QTechnology PSU with the new Arctic Cooling PSU, and repeated the test:
Well I’ll be damned. Not that I doubted the advertising you understand.
Let’s verify their maths. 4 years, 200 days/year with 4 hours/day. So that’s a 4 x 200 x 4 = 3,200 hours of operation during the four year sample. Based on my readings I’m saving 22.9W, which means I’ll save 1KWh every 43.6 hours of operation. So, 3200 / 43.6 = 73.3 KWh saved.
And 73.3 KWh costs the princely sum of £8.80 (at £0.12/KWh). So I’m not sure about the €100 claim that they make, however I’m happy - the unit is silent in operation which was the goal, I’m using at least 25% less power (without changing any other components!) which can’t be bad, and it’ll pay for a takeaway curry over the course of it’s life.
Nice.