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Power Supply Torture Test
An anonymous reader writes "With the latest batch of power hungry graphics cards, the PSU in your computer is more important than ever. If you're looking for a new power supply, check out this group test. They've tested 19 PSUs - some good, some bad and some downright explosive!"
If you ask me (and i think you did) the power rating on power supplys useless. I have seen 300W power supplies (good ones) with better power output then cheap 400W.
Its the same scam the PMPO ratings on speakers.
Cruise TT
In soviet russia power supply torture tests you
Maybe the guys at Trusted Reviews don't use the recommended Power Supply of it has been /.ed
http://www.michel.eti.br
Mirrordot link to Trusted Reviews power supply review
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
http://mirrordot.com/stories/1a1ed7983abc245725eb
Clicky
I always stress the importance of getting a good power supply when I give advice for building PCs, but it seems like something people are largely willing to gloss over, and just go for some cheap no-name with high wattage. It's nice to see a review for these, finally...
But, of the companies on here, I've never even [i]heard[/i] of Tagan, and it seems a bit sketchy that Tagan wins best honors in their review... which was conducted in Tagan's lab.
Furthermore, why aren't Sparkle or Antec power supplies tested? Along with Enermax, they're widely regarded as some of the best around.
noise measurements. A l33t PSU is no good if it sets up a howling gale in my room.
In college, I was the guy to go to if you had a computer problem. One night, one of the football players comes knocking on my door, "Hey Mark, my computer's acting weird, can you come look at it?" I agreed and we walked down the hall to his room. Strangely, the machine was off so I reached my hand out and turned it on. I jumped back at the sound of a loud pop and the sight of flames and smoke coming out of the back of the power supply. Immediately, I reached for the cord and pulled the plug.
:-)
"So can you fix it," he asks in all seriousness. I just looked at him in total disbelief and said, "Man, your computer was just on fire. No, I can't fix it."
He was really good at football though!
Mark A. McBride -- OmniNerd.com
That page is annoying, it keeps jumping up and down while I'm trying to read it, because of that stupid javascript ad.
It's kinda silly anyway, the article's premise is that they got access to this $20,000 power supply testing equipment... A set of simple $10-$20 high wattage load resistors would have worked just as well.
A $1000 scope might help if you want to catch a load dump overshoot, startup transient, or ripple, but it looks like they aren't even concerned with such important specs of a power supply, specs that could burn our your system.
Anyway, some testing is better than no testing, which seems to be the norm for computer power supplies, so I am thankful that someone with access did these tests, but it would have been more useful if they had tested more than simply steady state load.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Come on, you don't need $20000 test equipment to push a tiny little power supply to the edge of its existance. The first paragraph looks more like a marketing scam.
:-)
A nice old 3 inch nail bent up and jammed into the plugs for a few seconds should sort the good supplies from the bad
Probably power-failure.
I always stress the importance of getting a good power supply when I give advice for building PCs....
Personally I'm happy if I can teach users to remember to switch the powersupply from 110 to 220 volts when recieving computers from bought in the USA before plugging them into a 220v power outlet. I still have trouble not laughing out loud every time one of those ebay jockeys shows up with a PC/MAC that has a burned out powersupply. It must be really frustrating to buy a PC/MAC for a shitload of money and then damage or completely ruin it because you forgot to flip one little red switch.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Costs a fair bit, weighs more than a house brick and could probably power the rest of the street, but I reckon I need it. When video cards need 1 or 2 molex connectors you know they're sucking up a healthy whack of juice, and I'm running 3 hard drives, 2 DVD burners and about 4 external USB hubs with all kinds of junk plugged in (including 2 external 2.5" drives and 3 external 3.5, although the latter have their own power)
I did that online test where you put in the hardware and it calculates your PSU requirements. Mine said 'portable nuclear power station', but the 550W Antec was all I could find.
Anyone know if card manufacturers are planning slower, low-power modes? I like the way the Athlon 64 winds itself back when not under load, but the fan in my 6800GT runs full tilt despite the fact I use 3d features maybe once a fortnight. (Sure, I wish I could use it more, but work before pleasure and all that.)
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
My last desktop had to be built twice. Once with a good motherboard, good ram, good processor and Cheap case, the second time with a much better enclosure.
If that case and PS is $45, just HOW MUCH money do you think they're devoting to clean power?
On a more positive note, the new system is dam-near silent as the better case had a large slow moving variable speed fan controlled by the better PS.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Goodness.
You're not real familiar with normal english usages, are you? It's hard to imagine the term being more diluted.
Most english speakers of median intelligence are capable of separating meanings by context. Thus, a "torturous" math test is significantly less laden with horror than "torture" at Abu Ghraib (under US management), which is in turn much less nasty than "torture" at Abu Ghraib (under Saddam's management).
Sounds like a case of political newspeak overwhelming reality.
Make sure you don't have any slave hard drives at home or work, either. Dilutes the meaning.
Wattage means almost nothing, the 12v rail is much more important. Looking for the magic number of at least 15amps but 18 is much better.
I was having consistent random crashes - the computer would suddenly reboot (all the way to bios, instantly) with no warning. The only clue was it happened most often when I was doing a disk-intensive task (which meant I had several crashes while the system was writing the FAT... BAD news).
For months I troubleshot all kinds of stuff, to no avail. New mobo, new processor, rearranged hard drives, reinstalled software, new network card, you name it - one step at a time, but no effect. The crashes continued.
Finally I happened upon some similar accounts of instability and they mentioned power supplies. I thought I was okay with a 300w supply and my Athlon. Nope. As soon as I replaced it, instant stability.
Some things to note about my experiences:
I upgraded to the Antec TruePower 430. It's an extremely quiet supply, even quieter than my processor fan, with a temp-controlled variable-speed fan and a second case fan molex connector that also is temp-controlled. It rarely runs above idle, but my case is always cool. That alone was worth the upgrade price.
I was loading the supply more than I had realized: I run dual graphics cards, two hard drives, and two CD/DVD drives. The crashes were apparently caused by the hard drives - it's apparently well-known (in some circles) that the highest instantaneous current draw in a PC is when the hard drive head starts to seek (lots of current is needed to get rapid motion and get the seek times down). So anytime I was doing a disk-to-disk operation - like a backup or CD burning - I was loading the power supply dangerously close to its limit. One step over the line, and the processor would hiccup. Boom, instant bad FAT table and a week of rebuilding.
Finally, this wasn't an overnight problem. I brought it on over time by adding things to my PC incrementally... hey, let's add another drive... hey, a spare graphics card... I can keep the case - it's working fine, right?
So word to the wise: get a GOOD power supply, and get one that's rated well ABOVE your expected average load. Pay attention to those current draw numbers on the hard drives; wattage alone doesn't tell the whole story, and small spikes can kill you.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
To tie a cheap oem 300watt power supply to a whopper of a PC that you just blew a few thousand dollars on is the biggest mistake most people make, and overlook. Dirty unreliable power supplies that feed your PC are like heart attacks waiting to happen. If you're going to invest heavily into building a new computer, do not over look your PSU. If you do a little research (other than compare maximum power to price) regarding Max power @ watt operating temperature, you'll see that most cheap PSU's are rated say 300watts, but for a nice 30 degree Celsius operating temp. Now let's think about that. How many PC's operate that cool? Also, your better built PSU's will typically weigh a lot more, because they're simply better built. Nice and heavy means beefier power supplies, larger capacitors (to give your board that extra oomph it requires when you boot, or when you load it up), and it might even mean you have PFC included--a Power filter controller. These PSU Companies aren't always out to get the consumer by the jugular.
> I was cheking the ATX pin connectors but not sure what terminals should I jump to turn it on.
Connect the one green wire to any ground (black) wire. That will turn the PSU on (you need to keep it shorted to keep it on).
You can then measure the voltages, but I'm told that the voltages are often wrong when there's no load.
My other car is first.
do you have a multimeter even?
you shouldn't have that much trouble finding which two pins on the atx header you have to connect, a strand of wire or whatever will do.
but without a multimeter you can't really check the volts, so you won't know for sure unless it just outright refuses to start properly.
it could be some self-safety check too.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
First - I spent the better part of 20 years designing military and aerospace switching power supplies and systems. Admittedly these toys were commercial products, but I think I'm qualified to say the following:
:) )- the latter is seldom accurate.
a) purely resistive loads are a poor model for PC load characteristics, as are purely constant-current loads. But the CC load is a tougher test.
b) transient line and load response (or lack thereof) can preclude operation at the steady-stete levels tested.
c) I just skimmed the article as it was loading strange, but I didn't note any specific cross-regulation tests. These types of tests may yield poorer performance measurements. They almost always do.
d) Testing to see if a PS will run at full load is not the same as seeing if it will START under FL. I didn't notice these tests. Likewise Starting at low or hi input is tougher that running at same.
e) we ps designers had an expression: Power supplies are like assholes - everyone has one and everyone thinks they're an expert. The former is true (some folks have two
OK - flame away. I'm gonna go eat lunch.
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
The output power rating, which is what you need for operation, is based on a combination of the outputs that can be simultaneously loaded.
The efficiency of a power supply is also dependent on the load being used. For instance, the main regulation feedback loop probably has the highest efficiency and the other outputs have secondary post-regulators that require more background power to operate.
Power supplies operate from a 120 volt or 220 volt input AC wall plug/outlet and undergo some severe transients at turn-on and turn-off. Some of the supplies have automatic voltage sensing circuits to operate from either of these inputs automatically. Nearly all power supplies operate from an internal 340 VDC. This voltage has to start from zero and return to zero when unplugged. Most present power supplies have a keep-alive circuit to allow instant on from a standby condition. (The green wire on the output side.) Don't mess with the green wire with yellow stripe that is on the input side. That one is a safety wire for the input protection.
A WORD of CAUTION: Give your power supply a chance! Design engineers cannot anticipate and design in protection for all conditions and still give you a power supply you can afford. When you turn it off, wait 10 seconds before restarting so that capacitors can discharge and voltages can settle to stable conditions. You may never be able to make a power supply fail if you don't, but you will not be happy if you do. I have designed power supplies, purchased, and tested PC and custom power supplies. I have two bad hard drives from a system I bought from DELL last year. A friend could not tell that the system turned on (too quiet) so he pushed the power on/off too rapidly and too many times. Twenty years ago,my first computer suffered a power supply failure when I turned it off and immediately changed my mind and turned it back on.
Looking up HIPER in the UL database, HIPER has a few products listed, but none of them are computer power supplies. So that's a brand to avoid.
Consistently, every power supply with a valid UL mark passed. And every power supply that blew up lacked a valid UL mark.
UL tests power supplies by loading them up to their rated load at their maximum rated temperature and running them for hours or days. They also test for safe behavior if short circuited, overloaded, or overvoltaged. They're not concerned with power quality, just safety. The device must not blow up or catch fire, even after a single component failure.
Report phony UL marks to UL at 1-877-UL-HELPS (854-3577). They arrange for seizure at U.S. Customs, and catch about $12 million a year of hazardous components, which are then crushed.