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New 1 Kilowatt PSU - Too Much Power?
Steve from Hexus writes "While at the GC 2005 gaming convention in Leipzig, Germany, Hexus.net encountered a new 1kW PSU from Enermax, called the 'Galaxy'. At peak output it will use 1.4kW of mains power to provide a total of 66 amps across its various power rails. Who will actually have a need for this PSU, and when this amount of power is being consumed, shouldn't we be thinking about redundant power systems (or perhaps energy efficiency) instead?"
shouldn't we be thinking about redundant power systems (or perhaps energy efficiency) instead
Who said you were the target audience for this product? I am sure if you want to buy one enermax won't say, nah you're goofy for spending money on this everyone knows that a 250 watt compusa generic brand works for just as good. This is, just maby, a stab at a *server* or it will be required for the next high end Nvidia card. I just hope that the goofs at work don't come in boasting about their new 1000 watt(!) power supply staring the next arms race right after the mega hertz debacle has ended.
The problem is that most people work off the maximum wattage draw of all the components in their system, and add it up, and think "Ooh, I need a 900 watt power supply!".
Its complete bollocks.
A mate and I went to Akihabara to buy him a new PC. He had loads of money to burn on it, and burn he did. Dual core Athlon 64, 8 - yes, Eight, SATA-II 320GB drives, a raid card, 2 x GeForce 7800s (I think thats the model?), a SLI capable motherboard, etc etc...
And the guy came over and tried to sell him this really ugly loud monster PSU (700 watts) for it. We looked at it, and then at the 420 Watt power supply that had all the SATA power we needed, plus the power for the SLI, plus everything else.
It came with some software to see what the power draw is.
He set it all up. How much its drawing? Even when he is hammering the RAID5 volumes as hard as he can, he still only draws about 300watts.
Do we need 1KW PSUs? no. I don't think so. Not unless your machine has something like 30 drives in it, and good luck finding a case that fit that many.
More likely, however, is that it's being done for bragging rights. Dodge, for example, put the Viper into production, even though the small margins add very little to their ledger. The reason was that it lifted the brand up as a whole; other models, as horrible as they are, became a little more cool through association.
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The summary said "shouldn't we be thinking about redundant power systems (or perhaps energy efficiency) instead?" Energy efficiency I can agree with but why mention redundant power? I can't see the connection. Redundant power won't help with increased power demands only with keeping the demand fulfilled when the main systems fail.
Trolling is a art,
Most clusters have a PSU per one or two processors, shouldn't fewer, larger supplies actually be more efficient?
If you count the number of solar systems destroyed and divide it by the number of times the galaxy has been saved, it sorta works out. Of course, they managed to destroy not one but two entire solar systems over the course of two hours last Friday, so your millage might varry.
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everyone knows that a 250 watt compusa generic brand works for just as good
Please sir, never build a computer yourself.
The sad truth is that the quality of power supplies IS dependant on how much money you spend. First of all, 250w is simply not enough to power a demanding computer. When the processor alone draws up to 130w (Pentium 4) and each of the two videocards draws 80w (GeForce 7800 GTX), just the CPU and videocards alone are already drawing 290w at peak. Don't forget the motherboard, hard drives, sound card, and all other peripherals and cards.
So, now that we've established that 250w isn't enough, even if it WAS enough, why wouldn't a generic PSU work? Well, because the cheaper you go, the shiftier the manufacturers get with their wattage claims. Yes, that generic power supply can hit 250w. At room temperature. However, with the heat inside a PSU usually closer to 40c to 50c, the cheap PSU can only provide a fraction of their rating. Not to mention that the power from the generic PSU isn't going to be nearly as clean, or nearly as close to the desired voltages on the rails. And cheapo PSUs are unreliable too; they have a way higher failure rate than higher quality PSUs. I blew out 4 cheap PSUs in a 2 year period due to my houses's less than optimal power quality before I finally got a good quality Antec. It has lasted another 2 years without issue.
The general rule of thumb for the quality of a power supply is the weight. The heavier the power supply, generally, the higher quality. Compare a 300w generic power supply to a 300w "premium" power supply, and the better quality one weighs about twice as much. There is a reason for this, better internal cooling and a heck of a lot more internal components.