paulktreg Posted April 5, 2008 Posted April 5, 2008 I have over the past few weeks been looking very closely at power supplies with the eventual aim of writing reviews for the Street. I have come across the OCZ Gamexstream 1010 Watts and I think to myself why? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but in these days of energy efficiency, global warming, etc., why would anybody need a power supply of over 1kW? The trend these days amongst the majority of developers/manufacturers is to design hardware with power consumption in mind and I can only see a performance to electrical power ratio if not falling at least staying level. So why would anybody feel the need to buy a power supply that is capable of supplying the equivalent of a one bar electric fire? Take my system for example. Although not a top of the range system I like to think it is fairly powerful. The most I have ever been able pull from the mains supply is 180W. (Thats with orthos and 3dmark06 running at the same time!). Does anybody out there have a system that really needs 1kW and how do they justify it? Regards Paul Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
radodrill Posted April 5, 2008 Posted April 5, 2008 I've seen up to 1.6KW PSUs; the lowest rated PSU recommended for TRI-SLI is a 1KW Corsair, but 1.2KW is more the norm Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulktreg Posted April 5, 2008 Posted April 5, 2008 Radodrill I'd love to test one of the 1.6kW supplies and see how it performed on this load 24/7. I can appreciate the need for initial high power at switch on but even a tri sli system would, I'm sure, be pushed to need even half this power once running. I'm glad I'm not paying the electricity bill! Regards Paul Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheReaper Posted April 5, 2008 Posted April 5, 2008 I just bought EZCool 1050w because it has four +12v rails, two give 20a and the other two give me 36a, which is needed for some vid cards. Mostly because it features Green Power >= 80% Active PFC: Saves over 80% power usage (optional) This card actually saves more engergy than my old 500w and 750w PSU's. So far so good. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulktreg Posted April 6, 2008 Posted April 6, 2008 thereaper Could I just make the point that on the figures you are quoting for the 12V lines that would be 1344W. There will be combined limits on your 12V power supply outputs. Power factor correction will not save you any money on domestic supplies in the UK. Large industrial users are the only ones charged more if their PF slips below a certain value and they benefit from using power factor correction. Regards Paul Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jachyra007 Posted April 6, 2008 Posted April 6, 2008 i have the GameXstream 700, and its not like the PSUs consume that much power all the time. Granted, my results are purely based on the LCD readout of my APC 1500 UPS, but idle power usage for the full system including monitor is around 180w, with full CPU load being about 230w. The most I have ever seen it was about 260w. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
radodrill Posted April 6, 2008 Posted April 6, 2008 I bet you'd like to try out a 1.6KW PSU just as much as I'd like to try a pair of 9800GX2s I've got a 1KW PSU in my rig, but I have no Idea how much of that is actually under under full graphics load. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheReaper Posted April 6, 2008 Posted April 6, 2008 I'm not that good with electrics etc, how does this work? "the 12V lines that would be 1344W". I need to learn more about volts and watts consumption. Cheers mate. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
radodrill Posted April 6, 2008 Posted April 6, 2008 how does this work? "the 12V lines that would be 1344W". P = V * I P: power in Watts V: Voltage in V I: Current in Amps in your case, P = 2 * ( 12V * 20A ) + 2 * ( 12V * 36A ) = 1344W Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr_bowtie Posted April 6, 2008 Posted April 6, 2008 I have over the past few weeks been looking very closely at power supplies with the eventual aim of writing reviews for the Street. I have come across the OCZ Gamexstream 1010 Watts and I think to myself why? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but in these days of energy efficiency, global warming, etc., why would anybody need a power supply of over 1kW? The trend these days amongst the majority of developers/manufacturers is to design hardware with power consumption in mind and I can only see a performance to electrical power ratio if not falling at least staying level. So why would anybody feel the need to buy a power supply that is capable of supplying the equivalent of a one bar electric fire? Take my system for example. Although not a top of the range system I like to think it is fairly powerful. The most I have ever been able pull from the mains supply is 180W. (Thats with orthos and 3dmark06 running at the same time!). Does anybody out there have a system that really needs 1kW and how do they justify it? Regards Paul Although this holds true most all the parts of a PC the only exception seems to be video cards....the more intense they get the more power hungry they become.... If it we didnt need those power hungry video cards we could still get by with 300watt PSUs...everything else is way more efficient than yesteryears parts were and consume about 1/2 the voltage of parts only 2 years ago..well maybe 3 years ago...lol Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnUnknownSource Posted April 6, 2008 Posted April 6, 2008 Isn't the wattage being drawn from the socket going to be different anyway? The rated wattage at the 12/5v DC end is one thing, the watts the psu draws from the socket (AC) is going to be different (lower), it's a different circuit. I may be wrong. Who's testing PSUs? We got something for you to test... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
radodrill Posted April 6, 2008 Posted April 6, 2008 Isn't the wattage being drawn from the socket going to be different anyway? The rated wattage at the 12/5v DC end is one thing, the watts the psu draws from the socket (AC) is going to be different (lower), it's a different circuit. I may be wrong. Who's testing PSUs? We got something for you to test... power is power, the voltage is just the carrier; with a higher voltage it takes less current to draw the same amount of power. Power_out = Power_in - Losses = Power_in * efficiency If anything the power drawn from the wall outlet would be somewhat higher than the total power used by the system components Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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