by rights pc enthusiasts shouldn't need to use something like this as the graphics card manufacturers really should be looking at ways of reducing power consumption in the same way the cpu vendors have but in the meantime these devices will come in handy.

It probably looks cool installed. But yeah, we shouldn't need this.

"The new Power Express will come in both a 450W version along with a more powerful 650W"

"Both power supplies will have a maximum load of 30 amps on each of the two 12 volt rails"

The maximum amperage that each +12v rail can sustain is meaningless. Only the overall wattage can determain the amperage. The 650w should deliver around 50A.

well I have found these types of units to be very useful, more often than not in prebuilt systems from name brands (dell, emachine, hp, etc) that use non standard power supplies or in small form factor boxes that use SFF power supplies that simply dont often scale beyond 250-300w units. Using your standard power supply to run the majority of your system and then these dedicated units to power your graphics card(s) really comes in handy.

So even if these things were designed for enthusiasts, Ive found em much more useful for lower end or SFF boxes where upgrading the system psu is not an option. 450w and 650w are a bit much, but given the tripple and quad video card options coming from ATI/Nvidia I guess it makes some sense, but the current 200-350w units are more than enough to power a single or dual gpu solution most of the time.

i have seen this thing before but i dont know where??:confused::confused:

but wy doesnt video cards get an external power supply like that old asus dual gpu 7800/7900

I can only see these being useful in SLI/Crossfire systems, where enthusiasts wont have to buy an entirely new PSU for the system..that is of course if these are priced correctly.