Average Noise
The average noise output is on the high side, still notably lower than the Thermaltake GF3 unit and close enough to the NZXT C1200, both using the same platform.
Fan Noise & Speed Maps @ 28-32 °C
The unit operates without its fan spinning at up to 600W loads at 12V, with minimal load on the minor rails, under normal operating temperatures. With a full load on the minor rails, the fan starts to spin at around 550W load at 12V. The 30 dBA mark is passed at 900W at 12V, and with more than 1050W on the same rail, the PSU enters the 40-45 dBA zone. Lastly, with 1130W and higher loads at 12V, noise exceeds 45 dBA.
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My unit has coil whine (more like intermittent chirping) at low loads. As soon as I launch a game or put a 50 – 100w+ load on the system it’s dead silent.
I’ve managed to ‘fix’ it by disabling Intel c6 and c7 states (c1e enabled) and increasing idle GPU clocks from 210/400 to 300/810 MHz using nvidia-smi. If I disable all the c states including c1e I can keep the GPU at stock idle speeds, but I don’t want my CPU at maximum voltage all the time.
The reason this works is because, for whatever reason, the chirping seems to be caused by very low loads on the +12v rail. I’m guessing the PSU is trying to retain gold efficiency across the entire load range on the +12v rail and it struggles at very low loads.
When idling and light browsing at stock settings my CPU consumes 2 – 5w and the GPU consumes 30w. With c6/7 states disabled and higher GPU clocks the CPU consumes 5 – 15w and the GPU consumes 40w. That’s a 20w increase and it’s 100% worth it because the chirping is unbearable without headphones.
specs:
i7 13700k
32GB DDR5 6400MHz
Palit Gamerock RTX 3090 Ti
The resonant tank is usually the culprit at light loads.
I’ve owned many power supplies and this is the first one that exhibits this behavior. There have been reports of it happening on other CWT CSZ based PSUs (TT GF3, NZXT C1200), but it doesn’t seem to be a widespread problem. It’s probably just a bad batch or a small percentage of defective units.
Fortunately it’s easy to fix by slightly increasing idle power consumption.
My unit has also coil whine at low loads and it is so annoying.
Unfortunately coil whine is an issue for most LLC resonant converters, used in modern PSUs.