ZALMAN ZM400A-APF 400w Review

Intro

Zalman is known for their quiet products.  They have quiet heat sinks, passive heat sinks, quiet power supplies, and quiet case fans.  Noisy computers in my room annoy me, and because of that, I often turn my computer off when I go to sleep.  And I am sure a lot of people out there are in the same boat as me.  So if you're looking to take the noise from your power supply out of the picture, then Zalman may have the product for you!

Features

This power supply has one good thing about it.  It is dead silent!  Sure it delivers power as it should, but the main reason that this power supply was created was to kill noise and it does that job wonderfully!  The first test that I wanted to do was find out if the fan got loud, as it automatically adjusts itself, when it gets hot.  So, in order to heat things up I put a couple of splitters on the molex connectors, and I plugged every single plug up with five hard drives, four fans, a 9800 pro, and two optical drives.  I then overclocked the processor, I turned the voltage on the CPU, MEM, VDD, and AGP to the max, and I ran 3DMark2001  for 3 or 4  hours.  I then put my ear up to the fan, and really all I could hear was a slight noise from the air hitting the fan grille!  I will elaborate on how they did that later on.

Build Quality, Cooling, and Power

The build quality of this power supply is very impressive!  Now I don't know all the parts of a power supply, but I can tell you, that if you compare the inside of this to an Antec or Enermax, you're going to see a difference.  The Zalman just looks to have more guts, and it has THE LARGEST heat sink I have ever seen in a power supply!  This thing is a behemoth!  I'm not sure why other companies haven't taken this approach as Zalman has done, but they should!  With a massive heat sink and a quiet fan, you've got a perfect combo!  The enclosure that the ZM400A is in is high quality metal, and it is black as you can see, so if you've got a black case and you don't want a grey power supply this would be a nice choice.

I was a little worried that this power supply was going to get hot as it only has one fan, and not that powerful of a fan at that, but after opening up the casing, I found that it doesn't need three fans because of the humungous heat sink inside.  Temperatures never reached a dangerous level, and the casing of the power supply was always cool to the touch.  I was very impressed by how well it cooled as it was so quiet.  Usually having both of those things is difficult!

Now, the last bit... power.  The ZM400A isn't the most powerful power supply on the planet, and it isn't meant to be.  It's meant to be super quiet and offer a good amount of power.  As I had said, I got it super hot and put it under as much load as I could, and it ran without any problem.  The +5V gave me a nice and solid 5.01V when hooked up to a multimeter, and in the bios I was getting a reading of 4.94V.  It seems that usually what you see in the bios is lower than what's on the multimeter, so I would say that voltage is fine.  The +3.3V gave me 3.32V in the bios, which is of course great.  And lastly, we have the +12V.  I was a little disappointed to see 11.60 - 11.65V in the bios, and on the multimeter I was getting around 11.7V.  That is slightly low, but as I had said, it didn't seem to affect what I was doing.  More power info can be found on the label.

Pictures

Angle shot	The innards!	Another Inside Shot	Label	The power cables	Accessories

Conclusion

Going from the PCP&P Turbo Cool 510w to this in my bedroom is like night and day.  This thing is dead silent, and previously the power supply fan was the noisiest part in my bedroom computer.  Now with this, leaving the computer on at night isn't a problem.  Mission successful!  Some may not like the lower +12V rail, but other than this power supply is wonderful.  It's well built, it's cool, quiet, and great looking!

Questions / Comments?  Send me an E-Mail!