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Five Power Supplies Compared
EconolineCrush writes "Tech Report has done up a comparison of five high-end power supplies that looks at actual voltage levels and AC ripple content. The article also takes a look at environmental factors like noise levels and each power supply's impact on system temperatures. Think power supplies with like wattages are created equal? Think again."
I seriously tire of "tech" reviews on stuff like power supplies, roll out keyboard drawers, cd holders, etc... This is the third "tech" article about power supplies I've seen here in a year.
Here's all you need to know:
Pick up two of the same rating, different brands. The heavier one is better - more windings on the coils and better components.
The end.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Indeed, I was disappointed that their testing regime didn't include any disk seek stress tests; a test which forced two disks (or more) to simultaneously seek from track 0 to track N would would exercise the PSUs' transient capacity really well.
Many years ago, a development system I was using had a cabinet with four disks in it. Every once in a while, during parallel makes, all four disks would spin down simultaneously. Eventually, we discovered that if all four drives were told to seek simultaneously (easy to do on a SCSI bus), the resultant load on the 12V line would pull it out of spec, the power supply would shut down, and the disks would spin down (releasing the overload and allowing the power supply to come back up, hiding the evidence). Since this box was a kludge, we "solved" it with a big, fat capacitor on the 12V line (next to the drives) to handle transients. (Which probably reduced the power supply's lifetime due to power up transients, but who powers down development systems?)
Modern disks do draw less transient current during seeks, so this isn't quite the issue it used to be, but it is still a source of stress they ought to have checked.