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New 1 Kilowatt PSU - Too Much Power?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the so-i-rewired-it dept.

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?"

2 of 535 comments (clear)

  1. You build it, one is born every minute to buy it by stecoop · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. Definitely unnecessary by chrome · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.