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Hiper Type-R Modular Blue Line 580W PSU Review
MrIcee2 writes "XtremeResources today has on the test bench the Hiper Type-R Modular Blue Line 580W Power Supply Unit . Our European Senior Reviewer Grace evaluates the high end modular Power Supply Unit solution powering her Intel P4 3.73 EE, Asus P5AD2-E premium based test bench. Read along as she determines the flexibilty this unit offers in it's modular construction, and takes a look inside to see what make this unit the powerhouse that it is.
"Most users underestimate the necessity of a good, reliable and high quality power supply unit. They usually do not understand that it is the driving force for the whole system and it can affect reliability and stability substantially. An inadequate power supply unit will cause instability of the system at best, it may overload and burn out attached components in the worst case scenario. Hiper (High Performance Group) recently released the Type-R modular blue line HPU-4B580 power supply unit, which is competitively priced and claims to be able to offer everyone what they want and require. Hiper was nice enough to have us take a look at the unit, so we will shortly know if it can stand up to its claims."
If you dig around a little bit you will find the acceptable tolerance levels most equipment is designed around.
For ATX 2.01.. the variance is only 5% for all positive voltage rails. For instance, if you see a reading below 4.75 on your 5v line... you are looking at a problem.
I've already seen this on a cheap power supply and the problem resulted in a few things. Extreme system instability (It was a fair chunk below the 5% mark) and lots of extra heat.
My guess is the power supply was extremely over taxed because it was over rated, but rather then waste time with further research... I simply replaced the unit. (down time being lost revenue). It still sits in storage... waiting for a day when I will toy with it.
You can rely on the internal sensors if you like and most newer boards come with such devices. I have a bit less trust in such things and prefer to take the reading directly from the line with a volt meter.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
To make matters worse, there are no standards per se. For example, most mainboards these days draw CPU power from the 12v rail, but some (most notably a few Tyan boards) draw power for as many as two CPUs from the 5v rail instead.
When a power supply is listed as "XYZ watts," most users just assume that either it's big enough or it isn't. But a 550 watt power supply that only supplies 25a on the 5v rail giving the rest to 12v is going to flame out or melt wires eventually if your mainboard runs two CPUs on its 5v line. Meanwhile, a 550 watt that supplies 50a on the 5v line but only 10 or 15 on the 12 will flame out if your mainboard runs a pair of CPUs on 12v.
There really is that much variability, too--check the power supply listings on ebay for a single value like 450 watts and read the amperage ratings for each rail. That power is spread every which way depending on manufacturer whims.
To make matters more complex are all of the big hairy AGP card that people are running these days, which draw tons of current, too.
It's a big deal and probably will get bigger if we continue to use bigger and bigger CPUs and GPUs.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
You clearly have no idea how a) power supplies work and b) how marijuana growing works.
a) 580watt is it's rated maximum power output, on all three voltage rails combined. There are individual maximums for each voltage rail, so you would have to be exactly at each of those to be drawing the full 580 watts at any given time. You never max them all out, you max one out, typically the 5v. Point number two: 580 watts is its maximum power output. After that it may very well burn out or catch fire or whatever. Realistically if you're drawing anywhere near 580 watts you're going to be getting a very unstable system, because at that kind of output it cannot keep a reliable stream of power coming out. For a good power supply, you never want to exceed two thirds of its rated output. For a cheap powersupply, cut the rated output in half, or even to a third. You don't want a maximum sustained load above that. Third point: In all realistic use, PC powersupplies only approach their maximum at startup, when everything (hard drives, fans) is spinning up and all the capacitors are filling, etc.
b) Even modestly sized marijuana grow-ops (disclaimer: I am not one, I don't even smoke pot, so take this with a grain of salt) use absolutely ridiculous amounts of electricity. The grow-lights alone they use are typically 1 or 2 KILOwatts each, and if you think they're using only one or two lights you're crazy. The temperature control also uses a hell of a lot of electricity for hydroponics. I have 7 computers in my house, two of them very hefty servers, and all of them with at least 340watt power supplies. My power usage on my last bill was 671 kilowatt-hours for a month. A grow-op will use that much in a week, or even days.
Random and weird software I've written.
There's a company listing:
HIPER ENTERPRISE CO LTD
E224709
5TH FL
79 MIN-SHENG EAST RD, SEC 4
TAIPEI 105, TAIWAN
But they have no listings for PC power supplies. They're listed as a maker of circuit and battery chargers. The Hiper web site says they're in Guangdong province, China. So this may be a different company.
What this outfit seems to do is buy power supplies and repackage them. But, because they change the wiring, fan, and connectors, any certification applying to the original power supply is now invalid. Hiper should have run their power supplies through UL certification under their own name. They didn't.
This matters. If you read serious reviews of power supplies, where they're connected to a dummy load and run at their rated power, you find that many power supplies won't deliver their rated power. Some catch fire under full load.
When you look at the loser power supplies in those reviews, the ones that burn up are never in the UL database. And most of the ones that work properly under full load are.
UL loads the things up to full load at the top end of their temperature range and runs them for a few days. That's all. UL certification only means that it won't catch fire. That's a good first step, These guys didn't take it.
Laptops actually only have a portion of the power supply outside the case. They convert to 28V, for example. Converting to a low voltage like 3.3V outside the case is inefficient, for the same reason that houses don't use 10V power. If you have a device that needs 330W, it can take 12A at 28V or 100A at 3.3V. Now, let's consider the resistance in the wires. If they are 0.01 ohm/foot, and you have 1 foot of wire, then you will lose 0.01*12 or 0.12V if you use 28V , or you will lose 0.01*100 or 1V at the 3.3V input. Now, at 28V, you lost 0.5% of your power. At 3.3V you lost 30%. And this is over one foot. If the wire is 3 foot, it gets far worse. So it is smart to run high voltage as much of the way as possible, and the low voltage runs should be short. Again, this is the same to your house. Laptops get away with this because they use less power, less power is less power lost. And as I said, they don't put the power supply outside the machine, only part of the power supply. It might be smart to put the rectification (AC->DC conversion) outside the case, because it doesn't reduce the voltage and it does generate heat. But it really won't save you much. On a final note, connectors have a voltage drop of their own, so it really isn't smart to put extra connectors in the low voltage outputs from the power supply. New power supplies are doing this, because it sells units, but it will cost you in the end in lost efficiency and lower reliability (connectors can break).
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Before you spend your hard-eanred cash on such fancy item, be sure to go to http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/ and calculate your PSU requirements, which will likely inform you that, unless you're in the exceptionally rare minority, far less expensive PSUs with less wattage will more than suffice.
A "quality full wave rectifier" can be made with four power diodes at less than a dollar each; the PX6007 springs to mind, or the BR106 bridge package if you need really heavy currents. But any full-wave rectifier puts out pulsed DC, it is up to the filters and regulator section to provide a clean output.
In my experience repairing PSUs, problems are usually caused by poor quality or inadequate filtering components (which can leave noise on the supply rails), capacitors failing or an under-rated or overheating switching transistor (FET/SCR/IGBT etc). The full wave rectifier is rarely a source of problems, and often remains intact even when the rest of the PSU is a charred mess.
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Yeah, it's a pretty box that has a big number by the word Watt.
I don't know this power supply and it may be solid. But one thing most PSU manufacturer's keep hidden is the temperature that these's PSU are tested at. Some boast Watts of over 500, but at temperatures of 25 C.
The hotter your PC is, the lower the Watts your PSU puts out. It was something I learned before by nVidia's latest videocard.
I went with PC Power and Cooling for the reason that they display the Watts AND the temperature that it runs at.
PC Power and Cooling Turbo 510: 510W at 50 C
They didn't get UL listed because (A) it costs money and time, neither of which a fly-by-night company is willing to invest; (B) it probably wouldn't've got past the UL engineers.
If this PSU catches fire and burns your house down, your insurance company will not cover it because you are using unlisted electrical appliances. No joke, son.
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First, because of the shitty way that digital audio is transmitted, cables actually can make a difference, at least in the copper realm. Not sure about fibre, I'm inclined to believe not but who knows. At any rate, how can there be any problems with digital you ask? Well because the way the elected to do transmission is not only data, but clock as well down the wire. So this means that not only is if a bit is 1 or 0 important, but WHEN that bit happens is equally important.
The phenomena of a clock being irregular is called jitter and it's quite audible. However it's a funynt hing, you can fuck up a DAT unit so that it jitters so bad that a DAC has trouble locking on the signal and man will you hear it, it'll be awful. But, if you use another DAT to make a digital copy, it'll come out perfect, since there you are just concerned with the data, not the clock (well that's not entirely true, but the clock is stored globally).
So what can happen with a cable of improper impedeance espically in a noisy environment is that the changes in voltage introduce jitter in to the signal, and thus cause distortion. Now I don't htink this happens with optical signals, but I don't know, I suppose it could. Now please don't mistake this for meaning you need some special audiophile cable, but there can be a difference between some random RCA cable and a properly shielded 75 ohm cable made for S/PDIF.
As for PSUs, yes you get better performance from a better PSU. Not better speed wise, better stability wise. You get lots of stability problems from a shitty PSU. You have to remember that ene if you don't load down your PSU (shitty PSUs don't perform under load) line voltage isn't stable. At best it's mildy unstable, at worst it can be really unstable. Well a good PSU can provide stable output even during voltage sags or spikes. Shitty ones will change the output voltage, which is highly likely to cause a crash.
Now while I wouldn't trust something like this to be high end, it looks like so much hype, it really is a buying concern. Don't get some brand X POS, spend the money to get a real quality powersupply. I'm a fan of Antec and Fotron/Sparkle personally. If you want something really solid, it's hard to beat PC Power and Cooling but they tend to be on the loud and expensive side. Good for servers though.
At any rate, there IS a measureable difference between good and bad power supplies. There's also the question of what happens in the event of a failure. Suppose it over heats or the output limits are exceeded, what's it do? A good one will cut power and not cause a problem. Bad ones often catch fire.
As you would have found if you'd clicked on the company link in the article, the company name is "High Performance PC LTD". Now try searching the UL database again (look for file E245388), and post a correction. Moderators may want to do the same thing.
Nope. Actually, "Type-R" has a very specific meaning -- it's a trademark that Honda uses several of its cars to denote a more highly tuned model, such as an Integra Type-R. The ITR was brought to the US in 1997, featuring a more powerful engine, a different gearbox, and less frills to reduce weight (such as air conditioning and insulation), among other changes. This is not dissimilar to other cars from other brands, such as the Mazda Miata R, the BMW M3 LTW, and the Chevy Corvette Z06. Honda also has a Type-S designation for other cars that sits between the regular versions and the premium enthusiast version.
However, car/pop culture being what it is, the branding has been diluted with lots of wanna-bes and suddenly Type-R stickers and badges started appearing on all kinds of cars, notably non Type-R Hondas, but on other makes and models as well. For example, Accord Type-Rs, of which none were brought into the US, are a relatively common "sight."
"Badge engineering," as you point out, has much to do with the prevalence of such silly names making it into all kinds of non-car products. However, the Type-R designation has a very specific meaning that is rapidly getting diluted in a very bad way.
I'm with you on the "sleeper" bit, but my car, is less than stealthy.
My computer uses exactly 40 Watts under full load, which means playing HL2 at a decent resolution. The PSU is fanless, noiseless and can deliver 60W sustained power, although that's never needed if my power meter reads correctly. The computer has a heat pipe system, transporting CPU and GPU heat to a single 8x8cm heatsink with a small temperature controlled fan, exhausting directly to outside air. This fan switches off, so the system is, except for a barely noticeable HDD noise, extremely silent, whenever convection cooling is sufficient, e.g. system is less than half-loaded and ambient temperatures are below 25 degrees Celsius, for example while writing /.-comments and surfing the web ATM. The CPU core frequency adapts in 4-step granularity to current computing power needs, so it saves more power and exhausts less heat while the CPU is waiting for me typing comments in a browser window. Typical low-power intake is about 25W, so the PSU is barely above room temperature.
The system had cost me 15 percent more as an equally powerful (in terms of computing power) but 7 times as energy consuming system. And the best (hehe): it has an integrated UPS with a backup capacity of 2 to 4 hours, depending on load. Did I mention the flatscreen built in for improved portability to LAN-parties?
Welcome to the world of current notebooks. I will never go back to a desktop rig, as long as those are weighing more than 4kgs, consume more than 200W while writing mails and surfing the web and produce more noise than a vacuum cleaner.
I don't know why PC manufactures haven't caught up to the current standards in power saving and noise reduction. Traditional desktop systems are IMHO not that much cheaper to offset their disadvantages, compared to notebooks. When I browse sites like Newegg, I conclude the price premium for notebooks is less than 15 percent, taking the integrated 15-17 inch TFT screen into account. The only thing notebooks lack is HDD space and speed. Most have 4800 upm ones and their capacity is 100GB at max. Capacity is offset by cheap USB-HDs if needed and speed is currently catching up with the first 7200 upm HDs appearing for the 2,5" form factor. Noise will then be an issue again, though, I fear.
Switching power supplies don't use full wave rectifiers.
Indeed they do. The switch is essentially a PWM delivering a chopped DC signal with a mark-space ratio modified by feedback from the output rail. The DC is provided by a bridge rectifier feeding a high voltage capacitor of modest value; by using a half-wave rectifier you need double the capacitance to achieve the same ripple trough, and high voltage capacitors are much more expensive than diodes.
Here's an example of an ATX PSU: http://www.pavouk.comp.cz/hw/atxps.png The bridge rectifier is at the top left, components D21-24.
What switchmode PSUs don't use is large stepdown transformers. You can find out more at http://www.smps.us/smpsdesign.html. Google is your friend.
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