PC Peripherals Why are the most common PSU > 400W

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cute.bandar

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I have always wondered about this , but never asked..

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/64 Why are most quality power supplies above 400-500W ?? when these benchmarks indicate that even the most extreme cases power supply use in watts doesn't go above 200W ? I can understand a room of a 100W, so doesn't it make sense to make more psu's @ 300W ?

what say ?
Edit: So in some extreme cases, like SLI or something a 400W+ PSU will be required, but what should be the PSU requirements for a regular PC - 1 discrete gpu, a couple of HDD, a couple RAM sticks etc
 
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Everything inside CPU needs power to work. Graphics cards, HDD, DVD Drive, Cooling Fans, PCI cards etc but you are only looking at processor.
 
What if any one wants to add additional Graphics card, Water cooling kit, HDD, TV Tuner, Sound Card etc?
 
Simple - most power supplies work best at 30-40 pct of peak load. So for a 150w load use a 400w power supply.
 
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For a given power supply, efficiency varies depending on how much power is being delivered. Supplies are typically most efficient at between half and three quarters load, much less efficient at low load, and somewhat less efficient at maximum load.
Click to expand...
Source- wikipedia

So according to this for 150W load, 250W would be the idle wattage (60%)
 
In your mind, what is a 400W supply?

All supplies are not the same. So where an Indian-branded power supply rates their power supply on explosion value (the point where the supply would spontaneously combust), a basic import supply would strain and heave and almost give up, and a properly designed supply would be able to provide that kind of a load all day, all year, for many years.

This has been discussed many times on the forum before. Since the entire power supply marketing landscape revolves around numbers and bigger numbers sound better, mannfacturers are loath to change something that people understand. Which is why will probably not encounter a supply below 400w for a few years. Even the bargain basement radeon 6450 'requires' a "400w" power supply, in fact it draws less than 30w at full tilt. One reason is that people who are scraping that end of the barrel have less money, and therefore more likely to be using cheap and nasty supplies.

In many ways this segment has not kept up with the race to drive down power consumption over the years, but things will change. Seasonic already has a few sub 400w models out, as does Silverstone. India, as usual will lag behind the rest of the world and you can expect never to see these coming here till low power technology goes mainstream.
 
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