The SilverStone NightJar NJ700 Passive PSU Review: Silent Excellence

Power Supply Quality

As part of our testing, we also check output parameters are within specifications, as well as voltage ripple and line noise.

The power quality figures that we received while testing the SilverStone NJ700 inside our hotbox were astounding. We recorded a maximum voltage ripple of 12 mV on the 12V line at 100% load, an incredible power quality figure by any comparison. Voltage regulation also is very tight on the 12V line, staying lower than 0.6% across the nominal output range. The secondary 3.3V and 5V rails are a bit less well filtered, with the voltage ripple reaching 16 mV on both rails under maximum load. Otherwise, the secondary lines are just as tightly regulated, at around 0.5% for both the 3.3V and 5V rails.

Conclusion

SilverStone is greatly focused on the development of high-performance living room entertainment PCs, which goes in tandem with the marketing of ultra-quiet PSUs. The Nightjar NJ700 is a statement product designed both to lure in enthusiasts that will not mind the hefty price tag and to outdo the company’s main competitors.

The OEM behind the Nightjar NJ700 is SeaSonic, perhaps the most reputable top-tier PC PSU OEM. On top of that, the NJ700 is based on what is currently SeaSonic’s best platform. We found only top-tier components inside the Nightjar NJ700, ranging from critical parts down to insignificant filtering capacitors. The developer of this PSU spared no expense and that showed during our testing, when the Nightjar NJ700, a PSU that lacks any form of active cooling, was operating unaffected inside our hotbox and with virtually no change in its performance. SilverStone covers the Nightjar NJ700 with a five-year warranty, which is sufficient, yet strange when the OEM markets the same platform with a 12-year warranty.

Although the platform that the Nightjar NJ700 is analog and relatively basic by today’s standards, the designer of this PSU managed to get ridiculous performance figures out of it. The Nightjar NJ700 comes with an 80Plus Titanium certification tag and it honors it, delivering exceptionally high energy conversion efficiency even when the load is very low. Efficiency is not the only thing that the NJ700 excels on, as its power quality figures also are astounding. Despite its lack of active cooling, heat has practically no effect on the unit’s electrical performance either. All in all, the overall performance of the Nightjar NJ700 is world-class.

With all of that said, when using a passively cooled PSU, there are certain implications that need to be considered. The major point that is the fact that the thermal losses of the PSU will be released inside the system itself, whereas typical, active-cooled PSUs would exhaust most of that thermal energy to the outside of the case. This means that the system itself will get hotter and may require better cooling in order to sustain its overall performance. In this case, the high power output of the NJ700 translates to significant thermal losses when the unit is heavily loaded – regardless of its very high efficiency, there will be more than 35 Watts of thermal energy released to the environment. This will probably not be a problem with modern systems that are built with efficiency in mind, but the specifics of this must be considered and weighted by the system’s builder. After all, it would not make any sense to use a passively cooled PSU only to replace it by another noise source, such as additional case fans.

SilverStone’s choice to market the Nightjar NJ700 could not have been easy. On one hand, the nature of the product aligns with the company profile and their efforts to develop top-performance living room gaming systems. On the other hand, SilverStone has to compete with the OEM of the NJ700, the legendary SeaSonic, as they also market the same platform under their own brand. Practically no other company offers direct competition to the passively cooled NJ700 right now, meaning that its success largely depends on how well its $308 retail price and overall availability fare in comparison to SeaSonic’s Prime Fanless TX-700. That, in conjunction with the strangely significantly shorter warranty length, can be a very complicated subject for SilverStone’s marketing department.