There are other benefits of a big psu thats loaded light, they tend to have long warranties, last a long time anyway and suit any if not all reasonable or not scenarios.
This is all true - though lasting a long time is not a result - assuming the demand on the PSU is not above its capacity. A "quality" PSU can run at near capacity for just as long - as long as it is properly cooled.
Your first point is an irritant for me that we see on all sorts of products. That is the bigger models have more features and often better warranties.
I just saw this with snow blowers - as a silly but applicable example. Go for a big 28" wide two-stage model and you can find them with multiple speeds forward and 2 or 3 speeds in reverse (or even variable speeds both ways). You can get them with lights, remote chute turners, even hand warmers and more. But try to find all those nice to have features on a 22" wide two-stage (that will fit next to my truck in my narrow garage) and you are lucky to get 2 speeds forward and that's it. And it is not that there is not room on the handles or the motor is too weak.
Regardless, assuming the same "quality" of parts, as long as the amount of snow does not exceed the 22" blower's capacity, there is nothing to suggest the 28" blower would have a longer life expectancy.
For 98% of use cases a 50-75 watt headroom gap is advisable to prolong life expectency and allow the occasional crazey power spikes that can occasionally happen, IMHO.
Pretty sure no one is recommending users buy a PSU that exactly matches the demand. I typically recommend an extra 100W to allow for future
unforeseen upgrades and perhaps quieter operation, and I feel that makes sense. What I don't see making sense is buying a 1.2KW supply when a 600W supply is more than enough.
Sadly, with budget factory computer builds, we often see included PSUs that are barely adequate for the hardware they come with. Simply adding another hard drive may cause one to consider a bigger PSU. Upgrading the graphics solution - even from integrated to a modest card - likely would require a bigger supply.
The change in kinetic energy for the entire system is zero, so no work.
No. You could say that with each rest state between each clock cycle. Kinetic energy is not the only requirement for "work" in digital electronics.
Kinetic energy - which is the energy stored in a "moving" object. Part of the work done was the flipping of the gates, not the energy stored in the moving gate. But work is also done in simply "crunching the data". It takes "work" just to refresh a static display - even if that involved verifying nothing changed.
You are suggesting the lighting of lightbulb filament involves no "work" because there is no stored kinetic energy. By your definition, a CPU would still be doing no work even if it was rendering a rotating, transparent 3D image of the USS Gerald R. Ford.
And I am not talking about a single electron. I am talking about billions of electrons in 64-bit wide chunks, billions of times a second.
And I note a CPU is really never doing nothing - unless powered off.
You convert average electrical wattage to BTU dissipation which is a result of poor effeciency.
This is true, when you are talking about HVAC systems. We are not. You are right that heat (BTU) "generation" (not dissipation, BTW - that's another subject) is the result of poor efficiency. But heat from a CPU is a "by-product". And it is created by just a small percentage of the total wattage consumed.
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Getting back on-topic - limiting power consumption in desktop builds starts before you buy your components. If the desire is to limit consumption, you wouldn't be buying a i9-9900K, or Ryzen 7 1800X with a 1080 Ti graphics card. There are many less hungry solutions out there. Careful and thorough homework will get you more efficient PSUs, motherboards, drives, fans, and monitors too. Using headphones instead of power speakers can help.
But frankly, if I am building a gaming rig - something for entertainment - I'm looking for the most bang for my (or the client's) money. Energy efficiency is not something I worry about except in the PSU. And even then, I'm generally happy with "Gold". This is the same for systems used for primarily for CAD/CAE or graphics editing work. If the best card or CPU for the money is a power hog, oh well.
On the other hand, if building an "office" computer for a SOHO client, a computer to be used for Word, Excel and PowerPoint, email, updating Facebook and the occasional game of solitaire, saving energy may be a higher priority in selecting each component.
s*hit you are right... Yeah, the situation is pretty comical
