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?"

Comments

Sweeeeeeet....

[Jaime2]

I use PC power supplies for other stuff because they are VERY cheap when compared to general purpose power supplies from electronics places. 66A at 12V will run a nice little 5-axis home built CNC mill. The "proper" power supply for something like this would be way out of my budget.

Re:You build it, one is born every minute to buy i

[Gentlewhisper]

Definitely dual processor systems.

I used to have an Antec 550W PSU, powering my WS with a K8WE, and 2 mid range Opterons.. and for a while I thought having to wait 20-30s before my PC would start after pressing the power button is *normal*

Apparently not so, the moment I got a PC Power and Cooling 850W PSU, the system powers up immediately.

At this point I still do not have any explaination for it, but seeing all those capacitors on the K8WE, perhaps it needs to *charge* them all up somehow before starting, and the old PSU is just too short of juice to do that?

Just a crazy explaination with no basis behind it probably, but the fact remains, a good PSU matters! Get a good PSU for your PC today!

*PS: I'm not from PC Cooling, but their PSUs really made me change the way I look at offerings from "Antec" and other such brands, I used to think Antec was great... but I did learn that it really is just a rebadged ChannelWell.

NetBSD Toaster

[billstewart]

You saw that NetBSD-based toaster at Linuxworld, didn't you?

A kilowatt is a bit light-weight for a toaster, but on the other hand it doesn't need highly filtered DC in several different voltages, so the power supply can look suspiciously like the power cord used by other power supplies...

Re:You build it, one is born every minute to buy i

[Trepalium]

Not to mention this rather large PC server from HP has dual redundant PSUs that each provide 1150W (1440W consumed). And this thing takes up to 4 CPUs, 64GB of RAM, and 8 Ultra320 SCSI drives. If you need more drives, you just hook up one of these to attach another 14 drives, which will consume up to another 537W of power. Unfortunately, you need to run this server off 200-240V power for the redundancy to work. IBM and Dell each have similar sets of products to accomplish the same things.

Of course, this Enermax PSU won't fit into any of these devices. I can't even imagine how you could build a desktop system that would ever need much more than 1/2 that PSU's possible output. Quad CPU boards are a little difficult to come by, and they won't run off completely standard PSUs anyway (although the label on the PSU says it's EPS 12V, so it might have the 24 pin power + 8 pin processor power connectors). However, this isn't really the market for whitebox manufacturers, and what meager money you might save would most likely be outweighed by the next-day shipping of replacement parts that name brand vendors can offer you.

Besides, I don't even want to contemplate needing a dedicated 15A breaker just for my system. My little 350W PSU is working just fine for me.