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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.'"
A PSU that can run two high end computers. Its funny but very intresting if it can do this without a problem.
1KW, 4KW .... you can heat a room up with 1KW and heat a whole house with 4KW.
concidering the fact that we have -15 degrees by celsius outside right here, i prefer the heater.
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
On the other side, there's my fanless mini-itx system, just 533 MHz, but enough to run X and FVWM, mutt, and all the other tools I need in my daily life (work AND private use). And that at a mere 15 watts, no moving parts except the HD. In germany, 1 kWh costs about $0.23, I save about $660 every year (8 hours/day) compared to 1KW...
A few days ago, I installed a Thermaltake TWV-480 in one of my machines. This is a power supply that inclues a front bay panel with an LCD display telling you how many watts of power are currently being used. The machine is a Pentium 4 2.4ghz with a Radeon 9600 Pro, a CD burner, four hard drives and several USB devices.
Since installing the panel, the machine idles around 50 watts or so, spikes up to perhaps 55 if I turn up the fan speeds (which is rarely necessary), and maybe 60-75 or so for a few brief moments when I'm doing something that requires heavy disk access like openning a large file (or group of files).
I can't possibly imagine that newer, more powerful hardware would consume a full two orders of magnitude more power than this machine, especially given the great work we've all heard being done recently in heat and power efficiency with AMD's newer chips Cool 'n' Quiet tech and Intels Pentium Ms. So given that, who needs this much power?
> around 88% efficiency (depending on the model)
If you read some real powersupply reviews (where the majority is real data, not press photos) on X-bit labs such as this one or this one you see that normal PSUs are more like 70-80% efficient in their good range, with only one hitting 90% efficiency. The problem with switcher PSUs is that below a certain power draw their efficiency drops off significantly. For these units it's around 100w. It'll be interesting if X-bit does a review of this unit to see what its efficiency curve looks like.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned that some of the newest dual-core Power Mac G5s run a 1 kW power supply STOCK. I thought it was insane when I first found out about it.
I'm on top of my game like I'm standin' on Xbox.
Here, in Quebec, power is around $0.05/kWh CAN (about $0.04 US)... and it goes around $0.035 (roughly 0.03$ US) outside peak hours for people who are on bi-energy or similar plans.
Since I only have electric heaters in my apartment, a big PSU (and a PC to match) would give the heaters a break when it is -30C outside with no measurable net effect on the power bill during most of winter. I wouldn't turn that on unless absolutely necessary during summer though.
If PSUs keep getting larger at the current pace, some people will have to consider getting tri-phase power in the not so distant future... or at least rewire their 110-120V houses for 220-240V.
Actually, no. Lead nucleus is made of protons and neutrons, which in turn are made of quarks. Now, thanks to quantum mechanics, the exact position of those quarks can never be known for sure; you can find them in any given position if you wait long enough. Which means that, given enough time, all of the quarks will happen to be found near enough to each other that they are turned into a miniature black hole, which will boil to gamma rays almost instantly thanks to Hawkings radiation. Losing enough protons and neutrons in this way will eventually cause lead to become unstable, and even if it didn't, it would ultimately lose all of the particles that are a part of it and consequently ceasing to exist.
Unless those electrons are travelling in a straight path all the time (which is impossible, unless the magnet is infinitely long), they will change direction sometimes. Changing direction implies acceleration. A charge that experiences acceleration loses its kinetic energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation. Given enough time, the speed of those electrons will approach zero.
There is none. Doom and gloom, baby, doom and gloom ;)...
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.