Tuesday, May 8th 2007
Humongous Power Supplies and what you Really Need
Manufacturers are nowadays bound to their respective marketing gurus resulting in ridiculously exaggerated trends which the usual customer tends to overlook. Let us talk about power supplies for instance. With 1000 Watt power supplies available from many companies and 2000 Watt power supplies just around the corner one can come quickly to the conclusion that you really need that much power.
But you don't! Mostly every website out there who puts PC hardware states the electric power consumption or gives a rough figure about it. If you then add those numbers together for every component you have you might be surprised about the result. For Example, the guys from Legion Hardware put together a dead fast machine consisting of a quad-core Intel CPU, two GeForce 8800GTX cards, a feature-packed ASUS Striker Extreme motherboard and four 1GB DDR2 memory modules. Additionally the system had four Seagate 320GB hard drives and six 120mm case fans and let's not forget the water-cooling system. Now reckon what wattage the power supply they used to power that beast was rated at!
550 Watt - They took a Thermaltake Purepower 550w and it works like a charm for more than two months now.
Source:
Legion Hardware
But you don't! Mostly every website out there who puts PC hardware states the electric power consumption or gives a rough figure about it. If you then add those numbers together for every component you have you might be surprised about the result. For Example, the guys from Legion Hardware put together a dead fast machine consisting of a quad-core Intel CPU, two GeForce 8800GTX cards, a feature-packed ASUS Striker Extreme motherboard and four 1GB DDR2 memory modules. Additionally the system had four Seagate 320GB hard drives and six 120mm case fans and let's not forget the water-cooling system. Now reckon what wattage the power supply they used to power that beast was rated at!
550 Watt - They took a Thermaltake Purepower 550w and it works like a charm for more than two months now.
Power supply output ratings are actually quite inaccurate and can be very misleading. This is why it is very important to purchase a trusted and respected brand name.If you came this far I would suggest you reading that article, it's well written and outlines every aspect of what to have in mind when purchasing a decent power supply.
45 Comments on Humongous Power Supplies and what you Really Need
No telling what I'm going to put in my computer later on down the road. This is why I get quality power supplies 550watts+.
The last PSU I used was an Antec NeoHE 550, I think I'm going to buy one again. It has 3 12v rails, 18amps a peice for a total of 54amps on the 12v rail.
It's specs are really nice.
I am kinda curious what my whole system uses..
226w TEC
2 water pumps
3 120mm Fans
1 200mm Fan
2 4" cold Cathode Tubes
OC'd e6600 to 3.5
8800 GTS
SATA HDD
IDE Light Scribe DVD-RW
any guesses?
So a 600W Maximum output might not be enough.
I mean, who doesnt cook steak with their usb cookers?
Now...whose was the medium rare?
I tend to stick to the Antec PSUs as they are fairly good build quality IMO, and ive never had PSU issues...
img215.imageshack.us/img215/6479/psucc0.jpg
@Above: sometimes you do get lucky, but more often, you just get burned in the end... literally and figuratively. My friend prefers the cheap 20 dollar supplies himself; one blew out a cap, another outright caught on fire, his current one is still alive... for now. IMHO, they're a danger to one's safety. (these supplies were all over the course of a year)
Its all about efficiency and amperage, not watts.
My PSU has about 95% efficiency according to my meter, generics i've tried have been around 60% - so my system would draw upto 450W from a generic no name PSU, *IF* the rails held up under the load.
Amperage is the main one, it wont help if your systems main draw is on 12V, and 300W of your 430W PSU is on the 5V line - thats why the antec truepower (1.0) series got replaced so suddenly, as they had tons of 5V balls but very little 12V.
Oh and another good thing, having a 600W PSU in a 310W system just means the PSU runs nice and cool, and a hot day (australian summers... bad) wont cause it to overheat and die on me.
Enermax, PCP&C, Antec, Corsair, OCZ make some of the best most stable PSUs on the planet (Seasonic is included and FSP and Epower (Somewhat) as these are OEM builders too).
Im using a Cooler Master eXtreme power 600W and Im sure its not continuous 600w, but my continuous should be around 550 or so.
Oh look, a dual core using less than 100W at load ;)
It is something like older PCI-ex boards - each slot will provide 16x but not when both are in use.