Posted by
Hemos
on from the lets'-get-'em-together dept.
CainX writes "A comparison of five power supply units was posted recently. Anandtech has done a more complete review and examined 18 of the newest models in the plus 300 watt range." Power supplies tend to be one of those forgotten, but ever so important parts of machine construction.
What's the deal on the Antec 330W and P4?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The dude writes that the 204W at 12V isn't enough for a P4 for he writes that ONLY for the Antec 330 and its 204W is more than most of the other PSes put out on that rail. It's crap like that that make the WHOLE thing suspect.
.
Not wanting to put a downer on things...
by
WIAKywbfatw
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
...but it strikes me that these reviews of PSUs aren't as accurate as they should be. I'm not wanting to run the guys at AnandTech or elsewhere down (because, most of the time, they do a great job) but it strikes me that, when you look at PSUs (as opposed to CPUs, graphics cards or HDDs) then perhaps testing just one sample of each product is flawed.
After all, some of the measurements taken to distinguish good from bad were to the fifth significant figure. It strikes me that if you have to be that precise to differentiate between the winners and the also-rans then you've got to test more than one of each PSU - three would be a minimum, five or more would be better - and average out the test results to give you figures that are more representative of the quality of these products.
After all, not every Zalman ZM400A-APF is going to have a 12V min/max fluctuation of only 0.005V, and not every Enermax EG651P-VE FMA 550W is going to have a fluctuaction of 0.65V. Who knows, perhaps this was just a particularly good Zalman and a particularly bad Enermax? Testing more units means accurate results, which is a good thing.
I appreciate that testing three (or five, or however many) of each PSU means more work - you have to get x many more of each unit, test x many more times, process x much more data before averaging out your results - but, sometimes, I think it's warranted. Without wanting to get down on anyone, I'd like to suggest that, where called for, they try to source more units and test more thoroughly.
And, before people start flaming me for not knowing what I'm talking about, how much work is involved, etc, let me just say that I've run a review lab and I do know what I'm talking about, how much work is involved, etc. It's not a trivial amount but, sometimes, it is worth it.
(No doubt that's just a cue for half a dozen people to tell me where I'm wrong. I welcome objective criticisms but you can keep any childish flames.)
--
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Who, among home users, just buys the cheapest PSU they can find with enough power? Or is it just me? Some good reasons:
On my machine the CPU fan drowns out the noise of any PSU
With the way things are going, I'll need to buy a different PSU next time (ATX may die out, or everything will need 450W)
You can't see them, so they're not sexy
They make no difference to performance
Most of them last a reasonable time. I've been running different PCs for an aggregate of 11 years, and I've had one dead PSU in that time, costing 30UKP to swap out.
You could argue that people running servers should care even less, because they normally have redundant PSUs.
/me dons asbestos pants
-- When I am king, you will be first against
the wall.
Alternative power supplies.
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
Are there any power supplies running with alternative energy sources that might be used by someone looking for something unique? I often thought about making a PC or perhaps just a server run completely on solar energy, even if it required a large array of panels. Perhaps a fuel cell type setup as well. These would obviously have to run a lot external to a machine, but getting the technology out and about among hobbyists is surely a good way to help debug it and perhaps bring its usefulness all the closer. Are there any other types of small alternative power supplies anyone can suggest?
No dB ratings?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I'd expect anyone reviewing power supplies to have provided some analysis of the noise generated by them. Since that isn't the case here, I'll stick with the original source material (read "manufacturer's promotional literature") instead of Anandtech's promotional review.
Less clicking, at any rate.
As a requisite disclaimer for the "It's Just Fine For Me" folks: While it may be true that certain electronic components are being engineered to be quieter, it's still the case that manufacturers rarely advertise/publish noise levels. The fact that there is a booming cottage industry devoted to quieter replacement components is evidence enough that manufacturers haven't yet fully addressed the needs of computer owners who are starting to discover that their nagging headaches and frequent innability to concentrate is due in large part to that box under their desks.
Re:No dB ratings?
by
richie2000
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I'd expect anyone reviewing power supplies to have provided some analysis of the noise generated by them.
As we said last time...
by
Rogerborg
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
Who cares? More to the point, who cares about articles that decide reliability based on a sample size of one?
Are we just killing time while we wait for the next SCO rant?
-- If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Re:External supplies
by
plcurechax
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
When wiring up electrical systems, it is important to remember that your long runs should always be done with high voltage cable. For instance, from the wall to the power supply is 120V AC. Once the voltage is reduced, the runs need to be kept as short as possible, since every foot of cable loses substantially more power at the increased current required.
Well, you have to also factor in that AC travels much better than DC. That debate goes back to Edison and Telsa, and Telsa got it right. That's why your mains power (that comes out of your wall socket) is high voltage AC and not DC.
A minor reason is that I suspect that switching power supplies with long DC leads would act as unintential radiators (i.e. accidential antennas) at LF, 20-40kHz typically I believe in most computer power supplies. Thus they would be unable to get FCC approval due to the RF noise.
It seems to me that there is a trend going about for high wattage PSUs. Don't most systems (even high end Athlon XP's) idle at something like 150w with a hard drive and cdrom, and video card in?
Don't these systems peak at something like 200-250w (with 3d card suckin juice, and 100% cpu usage, etc).
Why the hell would you pay $150 or so for a 450 or 500w (or more!) system? Unless you're running multiple CPUs or some sort of file server with a whole bunch of drives... I just don't see the point, it's just gonna run up your electric bill and add more heat (and therefore fan noise) to the system.
-- no comment
Be careful with "cheap" power supplies
by
m33p
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
While you may never see any problems running PCs with cheap power supplies on a daily basis, they often suffer catostrophic failure after six months or more of use. I had one machine that ran flawlessly as my home server for over a year but one day when I was re-running power cables (exterior to the case) the power supply literally exploded when I powered the machien back up, destroying ever single component inside! Since I've started talking about this, I have found that something similar has happened to quite a number of people. And ever since, I have used nothing but higher quality power supplies.
BTW, the worst case was a guy who had build a large IDE raid box. He figured he didn't need backups because he had RAID and the likelyhood of losing two drives at the same time was pretty low -- or so he thought. When his PS blew, it took *all* of the drives (and all of his data) with it.
Can you say suck-o-rama? I knew you could...
-p.
Re:How much power is drawn from the wall?
by
evilviper
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
how much power is typically drawn from the wall in a pretty basic machine with a 400w power supply?
I have no idea, it could be from 1-400watts depending on the system.
A friend of mine is constantly being taken offline by his parents because they only let him use the computer for 2 hours a day due to power usage, and they're going on the wattage of the PSU in the machine he built.
Your friend's parents are idiots. Even if it was drawing 400watts, that could be recouped by just shutting a handful of lights off. 400 watts mean 4x100watt lightbulbs, or 7x60watt lightbulbs.
Better yet, they should try unplugging any devices that they aren't using, since most devices that are turned-off are still drawing 2-4 watts a piece 24 hours a day. Unplug 4 devices would recoup your friend's 2 hours of 'computer time'.
I think his machine (I think it's an 1800+ with one 7200RPM drive and a cd burner) would barely be using a third of that power.
Good guess. I happen to have tested my XP 2000+ (with a "Kill a Watt"), and it's drawing almost exactly 100watts.
Although, in addition to the computer, my 19" CRT monitor uses just under 60watts, so things begin to add-up. Maybe your friend can use power usage as an excuse to get a LCD, or even better, a notebook, which would use up about 25-35watts.
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The dude writes that the 204W at 12V isn't enough for a P4 for he writes that ONLY for the Antec 330 and its 204W is more than most of the other PSes put out on that rail. It's crap like that that make the WHOLE thing suspect.
.
...but it strikes me that these reviews of PSUs aren't as accurate as they should be. I'm not wanting to run the guys at AnandTech or elsewhere down (because, most of the time, they do a great job) but it strikes me that, when you look at PSUs (as opposed to CPUs, graphics cards or HDDs) then perhaps testing just one sample of each product is flawed.
After all, some of the measurements taken to distinguish good from bad were to the fifth significant figure. It strikes me that if you have to be that precise to differentiate between the winners and the also-rans then you've got to test more than one of each PSU - three would be a minimum, five or more would be better - and average out the test results to give you figures that are more representative of the quality of these products.
After all, not every Zalman ZM400A-APF is going to have a 12V min/max fluctuation of only 0.005V, and not every Enermax EG651P-VE FMA 550W is going to have a fluctuaction of 0.65V. Who knows, perhaps this was just a particularly good Zalman and a particularly bad Enermax? Testing more units means accurate results, which is a good thing.
I appreciate that testing three (or five, or however many) of each PSU means more work - you have to get x many more of each unit, test x many more times, process x much more data before averaging out your results - but, sometimes, I think it's warranted. Without wanting to get down on anyone, I'd like to suggest that, where called for, they try to source more units and test more thoroughly.
And, before people start flaming me for not knowing what I'm talking about, how much work is involved, etc, let me just say that I've run a review lab and I do know what I'm talking about, how much work is involved, etc. It's not a trivial amount but, sometimes, it is worth it.
(No doubt that's just a cue for half a dozen people to tell me where I'm wrong. I welcome objective criticisms but you can keep any childish flames.)
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
You could argue that people running servers should care even less, because they normally have redundant PSUs.
/me dons asbestos pants
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Are there any power supplies running with alternative energy sources that might be used by someone looking for something unique? I often thought about making a PC or perhaps just a server run completely on solar energy, even if it required a large array of panels. Perhaps a fuel cell type setup as well. These would obviously have to run a lot external to a machine, but getting the technology out and about among hobbyists is surely a good way to help debug it and perhaps bring its usefulness all the closer. Are there any other types of small alternative power supplies anyone can suggest?
:) )
( here is a possibility
I'd expect anyone reviewing power supplies to have provided some analysis of the noise generated by them. Since that isn't the case here, I'll stick with the original source material (read "manufacturer's promotional literature") instead of Anandtech's promotional review.
Less clicking, at any rate.
As a requisite disclaimer for the "It's Just Fine For Me" folks: While it may be true that certain electronic components are being engineered to be quieter, it's still the case that manufacturers rarely advertise/publish noise levels. The fact that there is a booming cottage industry devoted to quieter replacement components is evidence enough that manufacturers haven't yet fully addressed the needs of computer owners who are starting to discover that their nagging headaches and frequent innability to concentrate is due in large part to that box under their desks.
Who cares? More to the point, who cares about articles that decide reliability based on a sample size of one?
Are we just killing time while we wait for the next SCO rant?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
When wiring up electrical systems, it is important to remember that your long runs should always be done with high voltage cable. For instance, from the wall to the power supply is 120V AC. Once the voltage is reduced, the runs need to be kept as short as possible, since every foot of cable loses substantially more power at the increased current required.
Well, you have to also factor in that AC travels much better than DC. That debate goes back to Edison and Telsa, and Telsa got it right. That's why your mains power (that comes out of your wall socket) is high voltage AC and not DC.
A minor reason is that I suspect that switching power supplies with long DC leads would act as unintential radiators (i.e. accidential antennas) at LF, 20-40kHz typically I believe in most computer power supplies. Thus they would be unable to get FCC approval due to the RF noise.
It seems to me that there is a trend going about for high wattage PSUs. Don't most systems (even high end Athlon XP's) idle at something like 150w with a hard drive and cdrom, and video card in?
Don't these systems peak at something like 200-250w (with 3d card suckin juice, and 100% cpu usage, etc).
Why the hell would you pay $150 or so for a 450 or 500w (or more!) system? Unless you're running multiple CPUs or some sort of file server with a whole bunch of drives... I just don't see the point, it's just gonna run up your electric bill and add more heat (and therefore fan noise) to the system.
no comment
BTW, the worst case was a guy who had build a large IDE raid box. He figured he didn't need backups because he had RAID and the likelyhood of losing two drives at the same time was pretty low -- or so he thought. When his PS blew, it took *all* of the drives (and all of his data) with it. Can you say suck-o-rama? I knew you could...
-p.
I have no idea, it could be from 1-400watts depending on the system.
Your friend's parents are idiots. Even if it was drawing 400watts, that could be recouped by just shutting a handful of lights off. 400 watts mean 4x100watt lightbulbs, or 7x60watt lightbulbs.
Better yet, they should try unplugging any devices that they aren't using, since most devices that are turned-off are still drawing 2-4 watts a piece 24 hours a day. Unplug 4 devices would recoup your friend's 2 hours of 'computer time'.
Good guess. I happen to have tested my XP 2000+ (with a "Kill a Watt"), and it's drawing almost exactly 100watts.
Although, in addition to the computer, my 19" CRT monitor uses just under 60watts, so things begin to add-up. Maybe your friend can use power usage as an excuse to get a LCD, or even better, a notebook, which would use up about 25-35watts.
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