PC Peripherals Why are we obsessed with high power PSU's ?

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:huh: Woah !!! That was a complete bounder over my head. Need to sync with a few knowledgeable friends to even contemplate what you are saying.

cranky said:
The reason for this is that PSUs actually are very dirty devices. They interact with the line and have a power draw pattern that does not correspond with normal resistive loads like a fan or a light. The 'Active PFC' PSUs are slightly better, but still terrible. It's impossible to get correct power consumption readings from a device that is drawing power every 100ms and off every 200, and then that itself changes as the load varies. The only accurate way to do that is sample-and-hold, and those meters cost a lot of money - I think only the utility companies actually have the right equipment.
:)
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More than 50% of PC buyers use their PC mostly for browsing/music/movies/office software's etc

Yet they go for 2 to 3 Ghz Core and Athlon processors, when a sempron can get the same job done easily

And all the above things can happy on XP, yet most people go for Vista (pirated or not) and hence 2 or 4GB rams with it

So when people are obsessed with PC components higher than their requirement, they should be equally obsessed with getting a high quality(not power) PSU which powers all of these.

Crappy PSUs wont just die alone but will take rest of the components together with it

And then comes the life of cheapo PSUs, most of them wont last more than a year, some can die within months

A quality PSU can be guaranteed to perform its job for 3-5 years, thereby peace of mind

Its like building a beautiful bungalow with a crappy foundation and be happy saving costs on it
 
vinayaga said:
I guess that includes the power drawn by the UPS itself to charge its own batteries. Im also seeing insane numbers when I measure the current drawn by the UPS with my computer connected to it. I guess that the UPS always keeps charging its battery while providing uninterrupted power from the mains.

Just having a UPS increases the power being used. Food for thought, huh ?
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Nah, it was the load on the UPS that I mentioned, not the power drawn from the socket. I have a 2KVa Online UPS which shows the load on the UPS on a built in LCD (don't trust it's accuracy 100% though). But, yes, 380 was including the monitor and a Seagate 500GB Free Agent Desktop Drive. Settled for a high capacity online UPS to power the machines at home as power is very bad here+was sick of the many UPSes beeping everytime the power went off :)! Also all the 1 KV line interactives I had bought would fail to power my rig if there'd be a power cut while I'd be gaming.

Btw, you never did clarify whatever it is you're ranting about? High quality PSUs like the VX450s or high wattage PSUs like mine? Alternatives if it's the first? And no questions here if it's the second ;)! Most of TE and the world agrees there.
 
The OP has a point, and that is people exaggerate the 80+ rating a lot, causing a lot of new folks to misinterpret it.

I see a lot of posts saying - 'wow you gotta buy this 80+ PSU cause you will be saving sooo much on your electricity bills'. Wrong! While it may save you money in the long run, especially if you're the type running huge loads 24 x 7.. saving money on electricity bills should be one of the last reasons for you to pick an 80+ PSU.

The 80+ rating itself started off as a good thing since it was an easy way to identify well designed PSUs, but off late it has deteriorated to just another bit of advertising fluff.

Its good that vinayaga has cleared that aspect experimentally, but high-power and 80+ rated PSUs are two different topics. So perhaps the thread title should be renamed to 'Why are we obsessed with high efficiency PSUs' ?

greenhorn said:
I'm not. After a so called high end PSU died and took my ailing motherboard with it, I've stuck with cheap PSU's.granted that my rigs are regular workhorses , nothing fancy.
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Which high end PSU was this?
 
^ When did the Platinum become high-end :O

It was the same old L&C unit. Simply put, Platinum = generic PSU + shiny paint job + LED light + longer warranty.

I did hope the components and QC would be a little better just like the Powersafe units, but unfortunately it wasn't.
 
it cost me about 2k 3 years ago:S

thankfully, since the shop didnt have a replacement in stock, got something else in return since I was a regular customer :D
 
Older zebby PSUs were bit decent. Swap components inside and they become good :D

Best was the VIP 300W. but the rest were crap.
 
from around dec'02 my P4/2.4GHZ had 300W Mercury, except onboard display, i ran my 2 IDE HDD (40 & 120), Yamaha Sound Card, Ethernet Adapter, 2 DVD Writers, 2 80MM Fans.

TOUCHWOOD, it still works fine, until i decided to upgrade myself & keep this system for backup & for internet only.

only then i got registered to TE last year in Oct, i read all that jazz abt PSU's & then i decided to buy myself Corsairvx450.

so lets see, its MERCURY300W vs CORSAIRVX450 now
 
vinayaga said:
I joined TE when I wanted a PSU, ended up reading a lot of threads and getting the Antech 650w for my system. When I did the measurements, I felt that such a high wattage expensive PSU was not required and so my thread was a honest question.
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vinayaga said:
Yup, this might need to go to the showoff thread. Im reasonally well settled in Bangalore, have a Elantra Car, a Thunderbird bike and a Honda Activa. Im proud of each of them !
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BIKeINSTEIN said:
By the same logic,

why not a Splendor/Unicorn/... instead of the Thunderbird?

Why not a WagonR/Santro/something instead if the Elantra?

You bought an AntecEA650 as per some suggestions- your wish and your own decision too.

Looking at your quadcore-based rig specs, i would have said get VX450 if you have no plans of upgrading the same later.
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I just wanted to say that the OP read some threads and took a call.

And later found something amiss with his decision and the suggestions posted in those threads.

I put that car analogy to indicate no one will go shopping with the budget of a Santro and pick up an Elantra na, just because some guys in a forum may rave about the Elantra and label the Santro "crap". :P

And someone with the budget and intent to buy a Merc is not gonna come home with a Santro, even if it is to ferry the kids to school or something, just because a bunch of people in a forum thinks it's waste to splurge so much. :P

greenhorn said:
bikey, the elantra/thrunderbird have real and tangible benefits to anyone.
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Not anyone greenie. :)

There is a reason not everyone has them or wants one. :)

greenhorn said:
I think a more appropriate comparison would be to, say synth oil as opposed to mineral, or K&N filters as opposed to paper filters, or cold plugs as opposed to stock, or Monster or chord cable as opposed to lamp cord
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vinayaga said:
On the other hand, a synthetic oil versus normal oil is a good analogy to the PSU. Nobody sees it, but the driver can feel the tangible benefits and the smoothness in the drive !!!
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Totally agree.

And there are those who will even argue about benefits of easily and cheaply available semi-synth over absolutely low quality or recycled oil available for way cheaper. :(

greenhorn said:
I'm not. After a so called high end PSU died and took my ailing motherboard with it, I've stuck with cheap PSU's.granted that my rigs are regular workhorses , nothing fancy.
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greenhorn said:
Zebronics - Power Supplies :)
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Crazy_Eddy said:
^ When did the Platinum become high-end :O

It was the same old L&C unit. Simply put, Platinum = generic PSU + shiny paint job + LED light + longer warranty.

I did hope the components and QC would be a little better just like the Powersafe units, but unfortunately it wasn't.
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sorry. one should not laugh at someone's misfortune.

so-called high-end? :S it wasn't even "so-called worth considering" my friend. :rofl:

Zebronics Platinum horror stories are aplenty.

Here at TE, some have always posted them as crap along with intex, iball, mercury, ...
 
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at that point, it was not mentioned, and i didnt know this fact either :ashamed:

so went by the thumb rule that if the 640 is good, the 500 should be okayish too
 
greenhorn said:
at that point, it was not mentioned, and i didnt know this fact either :ashamed:

so went by the thumb rule that if the 640 is good, the 500 should be okayish too
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I'll ask again.. are you freaking blind :O

open the damn thread and read it :O

To make things easier for your challenged eyes..

I am planning to buy a new PSU and I would like you all to suggest the best PSU among the following 5 choices :

1. Antec SP 2.0 500W

2. Powersafe 600W

3. Zebronics 640W (skyhawk oem)

4. Vantec Ion2 460W

5. Any other ?

Creating a poll for the same.

PS : I dont intend to do SLI / CF on these. just wanna know which is the best for a powerful overclocked rig.

Any other suggestions will be welcome but please keep my budget in mind which is under 5.5k.
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Greenie does have a point though (maybe not in this case). Not too long ago, people were falling over themselves recommending the CM Xtreme power 600W. That was the time the VX450 was just making an entrance and if I remember correctly there was around 900 bucks or so between the two.

That was before the CM600 fried a graphics card or two here :ohyeah:
 
cranky said:
The reason for this is that PSUs actually are very dirty devices. They interact with the line and have a power draw pattern that does not correspond with normal resistive loads like a fan or a light. The 'Active PFC' PSUs are slightly better, but still terrible. It's impossible to get correct power consumption readings from a device that is drawing power every 100ms and off every 200, and then that itself changes as the load varies. The only accurate way to do that is sample-and-hold, and those meters cost a lot of money - I think only the utility companies actually have the right equipment.
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This is what I was saying in post #14. The current waveform is high in harmonic content.

The typical PSU has a front end that has a bridge rectifier charging large caps. This means that the current flows in to charge the caps only near the voltage peaks at each half cycle. It is a small duty cycle with very high peak currents. I don't know how sample and hold would be used. The two methods I used in the past were:

a) Use a good high bandwidth analog multiplier (I used one from Burr-Brown) to do an instantaneous multiplication of voltage and current and then integrate the output for measurement.

b) Use a analog multiplexer and ADCs to sample and convert voltage and current to digital a large number of times each cycle, multiply the corresponding readings, do a summation of the products.
 
Vulc4n said:
Not too long ago, people were falling over themselves recommending the CM Xtreme power 600W. That was the time the VX450 was just making an entrance and if I remember correctly there was around 900 bucks or so between the two.
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The CM extreme power 600 has been around since late 2006 maybe.

The one sold locally was the PCAR iirc, which didnt even have passive PFC.

Visualise this-

CM takes a Seventeam ST-500-BKP and paints it black.

Maybe they change the fan too.

CM removes the passive PFC circuitry from it.

CM removes the copper heatsinks and replaces them with Aluminium ones.

ST has 2 sata connectors and CM had 3?

ST had one PCIe connector and CM put in one more to make it SLi capable. :O

And CM goes on to "tweak" it to show a peak of 600W instead of the 500W rated by Seventeam. :P

That's like taking away the crutches of a person who had fractured his foot and asking him to run a marathon? :lol:

Surprisingly or not, the ST-500s have been chugging along in OCed Q6600 render servers and dual opty rigs for sometime now.

But CM600 had been dying every 6-8-10 months in similarly specced, especially OCed rigs. :(

jammed/dead/noisy-as-hell fan issues, dying RAM, HDD/gpu issues were even more common. :(

Check this link, posted earlier too and note the date.

http://www.techenclave.com/pc-peripherals/corsair-vx-450w-vs-coolermaster-extreme-128757.html

This was when the VX450 had established itself in the market, atleast on TE.

CM600 vs VX450 threads were such a daily affair, i got fed up of replying often and wrote that and subscribed to it to be able to copy-paste the link everytime.

A VX450 was around 3.5K odd at that time iirc.

CM 600 price had dropped to 3.2K odd around the time of that post, from the initial 3.6K-3.8K odd price.

VX450 had arrived on the scene quite some months earlier and was at 3.8K odd iirc.

That's why the remark there that- at 3.6K odd, give or take a few hundreds, a CM extreme power 600 buyer would be ... :P

Eventually VX450 prices dropped to as low as 3.1K in Mumbai and actually ended up killing sales of every other compromise available for 2-3.5K. :P

So simple solution- Hike Vx450 prices and the sale (and the higher margins) of the rest resume automatically. :lol:
 
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