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.'"

Comments

Insanity

[Anonymous Coward]

For a consumer power supply, this thing is insane. I mean, there are certainly applications for it with today's use of RAID arrays, SLI video cards and Pentium 4 processors, but we should really be asking whether using this much electricity on running a single computer is really worth it.

"Benchmark 2006: How many drums of oil does your computer burn a year?"

Re:Insanity

[LoRdTAW]

I hope you and everyone else reasises that it only draws 1kw if the total system load is 1kw. A powerful setup might burn 500W and thats about it.

"Benchmark 2006: How many drums of oil does your computer burn a year?"

I agree. While 1kw is a gimic really, I would like to see power consumption come down. My whole home has those compact flourescent light bulbs so right now my computer is the biggest power draw in the house. If I left most of the major lights on (about 18 bulbs) the draw would be only 250W.

Re:Insanity

[Fred_A]

You don't have a refrigerator ?

That's typically the biggest power draw by far in any house (unless your computer is an IBM system/370).

Re:Insanity

[sjames]

I agree. While 1kw is a gimic really, I would like to see power consumption come down. My whole home has those compact flourescent light bulbs so right now my computer is the biggest power draw in the house.

It's not as gimmicky as it might seem. I sincerely HOPE nobody's desktop system actually draws a Kw, that's not the whole story. The closer a supply's output is to it's max rating, the more ripple there is and the more the voltages tend to sag. It also means the internal parts in the P/S will be running close to their max heat rating.

So, a power supply that never sees more than 50% of it's rated load will run cool and very stable and will have a long service life. Looking at the green aspects, this P/S won't end up taking space in a landfill next year.

Re: Insanity

[alienw]

Well, the difference is that none of those things run _continuously_ like a computer does. The fridge only runs about 10-30% of the time. The hairdryer, microwave oven, and so on run for a few minutes / day. A really power-hungry computer can jack up your electric bill pretty fast. If you use up 1kW on average, that's a $100/month electric bill.

No one cares!

[John Nowak]

I thought this was Slashdot, not GHZWATTMBCIRCLEJERK.

okay Lets start counting.

[JollyFinn]

I just rounded few PEAK consumption figures.

125 wats x2 for the GFX cards.
100 Wats x4 for the fastest dualcore opterons.
15 wats x 10 for the 15krpm SCSI:s.
10 wats x 16 for ram.
Soundcard,chipset,network, DVD writer. 40 wats total.

1000 wats total,

TYAN thunder K8QW is the motherboard where everything fits.

Sure 1kw is overkill for with mass market enthuastics but don't underestimate the needs of the rich.
So 8 cores and 32GB of ram, and large SCSI raid array and two fastest GFX cards, it might be overkill but its most certainly the fastest system, for everyday linux desktop usage, with a multithreaded app.
Sure the system is not cheap, but there are multiple situations where such "desktop" system would be warranted.
One is with a 100k$ per user workstation application use by 100k$ per year employee, another is when you have millions and don't care about the price.

how about a good power supply instead?

[Wansu]

Most computer power supplies are crap. In the race to the bottom to get the lowest cost, quality and performance were the casualties. In previous power supply roundups and shootouts, a number of products didn't deliver rated faceplate performance. Some smoked. Forget thousand watt power supplies. Most general purpose computers need a reliable power supply that meets it's published specs at 350 watts.

Re:how about a good power supply instead?

[blincoln]

In my experience, PC Power & Cooling tend to make high-quality products.

This review, however, is crap. If someone is writing about a PSU and can't bother to include whether it's UL listed or not in SIX PAGES of text, their site is a joke.

UL listing is one of the most important things to look for in a PSU, yet almost none of them have it, and few if any review websites seem to care. If there's one thing in my computer that I want to be over-engineered for safety, it's the part that plugs into the wall socket.

This one *is*, but I had to go to the manufacturer's website to find that out.

Re:Pfffft

[ultranova]

a pretty percentage of it will be turned into moving air and to light emission too, also to spin hdd's. but i agree, most of it will turn out as heat in the end

All of it will turn to heat in the end. Moving air will stop due to friction, as its kinetic energy turns to heat, and light is absorbed to walls and your eyes, warming them up.

All energy turns to heat in the end, some units of it just take a longer road than others.

Re:Pfffft

[NerveGas]

If your power bill is high, maybe it's not the computer. Even if you're getting charged 25 cents per KW/H, a 20-watt machine running 24 hours/day for a month only uses (20*24*31/1000)=14.4 kilowatt-hours, for a grand total of... less than $4. If $4 is breaking the bank, then you're *really* in a predicament.

steve

Talk about missing the point!

[GrahamCox]

1kW is a joke. Wake me up when they announce that a computer with at least as much processing power as today's top of the line runs on 1mW of power (yes, one MILLIwatt). Boasting about 1kW is like boasting that your car gets 1mile to the gallon.

Computers are powerhogs

[tsa]

I think it's time to make computers less power-hungry. I have a 1300 MHz Duron with an nVidia geForce 5700 and two harddisks. That thing uses 145 W when it's doing nothing, and that is without the monitor. I use less power to light all the rooms in my, admittedly small, house! Even my big wide-screen CRT TV doesn't use that much power when it's on. I can't believe we can't do better. With better, I mean make computers that use less power.

Inverted thinking

[macemoneta]

A 1KW power supply is not king, it's the worst possible example of waste and the most ineligant solution.

A computer system that can perform at currently accepted levels and needs less power is king. Show me an AMD64-class CPU running at 3GHz with a terabyte of storage operating at 100W or less and I'll be impressed. It takes no magic to throw more hardware/power at a design - that's just brute force.