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A Kilowatt of Power
An anonymous reader writes "There is finally a review available of a kilowatt power supply. The PC Power and Cooling 1KW produces 1000W of power output with 1100W peak. The review points out how great this product did in the testing but was not afraid to admit how much of an overkill it is for the enthusiast market. From the article, 'In the current computing world, where more always equals "better than" the 1KW is king.'"
The power supply does not deliver 1000w all the time. 1000w with 1100w peak means that the PSU is rated to deliver up to 1Kw constantly and up to 1,1Kw for brief periods; but the PSU will deliver only the power that it's requested from them.
Switching PSUs waste some power, of course, but are among the most efficient types of electrical power supplies available - that's what make them so well suited for computers.
No, sir, the power supply is a switcher, not a linear power supply. All computer power supplies are. They do not operate by continuously wasting power - instead they transform the line power into the desired voltage and current at around 88% efficiency (depending on the model) all the way from a minimal load to a full load. In fact, for a normal load, this power supply won't draw any more wall current than a 300 watt supply - but it will be able to draw a lot more if it needs to, without failing, if its claims are true.
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.
Not with Pentium 4. There is no standard OEM MB out there to carry the number of Pentium 4s to get that far. And the special ones are actually designed together with a power supply and a case.
In fact there is just a single "standard" MB I can think of to use with this beast.
It is the Assus 8 Opteron MB which has 4 CPUs on board and 4 CPUs on a daughther card. If we assume normal Opteron and throw in some video, cooling and disks in you end up having a 700W+ maximum power consumption.
If someone can think of something else to generate that much power without coming with a dedicated power supply - post it. I can't.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
I want everyone to realise what efficency means. Simply put it means that if a powersupply is 90% efficent and you are drawing 90 watts on its output, you would be drawing 100W on the input. This is because of the 10% loss during the conversion, hence 90% efficiency. I guess you dont know the difference between a switcher and a linear. A power supply does indeed waste power but thats a given. Nothing is 100% efficent. There is an idle current so to speak but usually very very small. A power supply only draws what the load demands plus its own internal loss.
The switcher immediatly converts the ac line current to dc and takes the ripple out using 2 or 3 big fat capacitors. Thats why it sparks when you plug a cold switcher in, the caps charge up. The dc then feeds a transistor which is controlled by an oscillator and produces a 20+ KHz square wave. This feeds some high frequency transformers that kick the power down to the necessary voltages like 3.3, 5, and 12 volts. Each voltage gets its own transformer, more caps to filter out the high frequency and then to regulators for each voltage. Thats the benefit of a switcher, light weight and compact for the power it converts(although more complex and only a 70-80% efficiency). On a side note: If you ever wonderd why aircraft use 400Hz power here is your answer, smaller and lighter power systems.
A linear would take the 120/240v line power at 60/50HZ and put it strait through a big fat transformer made for 50/60 hz and lower it to 3.3, 5 and 12 volts then each to a set of smoothing caps and regulators. A 1 kw linear would weigh oh id guess 20-30 pounds! The higher the frequency, the less turns of wire and smaller core a transformer requires. Plus it would be more efficent then a switcher.
Each of those power supplies have there respective efficiencies but in no way does the linear waste it as you imply. Please if you dont know what you are talking about then dont post misinformation.
Not trying to be an ass but it hurts the eyes when so many posts including opening article have kW wrong. It is kW not KW. It has a small k because kilo isn't taken from somebody's name.
I found a list of metric prefixes.
I have no idea why Kilo is not uppercase as are most multiplyers of greater than unity. In common pratice is is common for greater then unity multiplyers to be uppercase to avoid confusion with less then unity multiplyers. That is why most street signs read KM to the next exit and transistors are measured in nm and leakage current is measured in uA.
Prefix Symbol Multiplier Exp
yotta- Y 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 10+24
zetta- Z 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 10+21
exa- E 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 10+18
peta- P 1 000 000 000 000 000 10+15
tera- T 1 000 000 000 000 10+12
giga- G 1 000 000 000 10+9
mega- M 1 000 000 10+6
kilo- k 1 000 10+3
hecto- h 100 10+2
deca- da 10 10+1
deci- d 0.1 10-1
centi- c 0.01 10-2
milli- m 0.001 10-3
micro- 0.000 001 10-6
nano- n 0.000 000 001 10-9
pico- p 0.000 000 000 001 10-12
femto- f 0.000 000 000 000 001 10-15
atto- a 0.000 000 000 000 000 001 10-18
zepto- z 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 001 10-21
yocto- y 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 001 10-24
The truth shall set you free!
I never noticed that most units larger than unity are capitalized. Nevertheless, I imagine the lowercase k is because another SI unit uses uppercase K. (Kelvin)
I seem to remember the same arguments from a few months back:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/ 22/2157244&tid=232&tid=126
And, since IAAPSD (I am a power supply designer), the same observations are applicable: