Comments on: 5 Ways of Finding the Right Power Supply http://blog.superuser.com/2011/09/28/5-ways-of-finding-the-right-power-supply/ The Super User Community Blog Mon, 05 Dec 2016 07:34:06 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.6 By: Dan Neely http://blog.superuser.com/2011/09/28/5-ways-of-finding-the-right-power-supply/#comment-446 Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:27:39 +0000 http://blog.superuser.com/?p=4133#comment-446 I’d also advocate having a fair amount of headroom for noise reasons. If you look at fan vs load curves for PSUs you’ll see that with a family of PSUs the fan typically stays at idle until the last X watts where X is the same for the entire family. eg if a 450W unit doesn’t start spinning the fan up until 200W the equivalent 600W model will remain at idle until 350W. If you’re trying to build a quiet/silent system, sizing your PSU so that even at high load the fan stays at low RPM is critical even if it means paying a penalty with a slightly lower efficiency when the system is idling.

]]> By: Shinrai http://blog.superuser.com/2011/09/28/5-ways-of-finding-the-right-power-supply/#comment-445 Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:59:49 +0000 http://blog.superuser.com/?p=4133#comment-445 I disagree with point five. All your points are correct, but in my experience a power supply that’s run near its rated capacity has a significantly reduced lifespan, and I don’t think it’s worth the tradeoff. My personal policy is to have at least 25% extra capacity from the expected max load draw of your machine. It also makes it much easier to upgrade down the road if you’ve got some overhead and you don’t have to worry about replacing the PSU as well.

Now, if the immediate cost of the upgrade is a concern, obviously this is a non-issue; you buy what’s in the budget. I’m not suggesting you go put a 1000W PSU in your HTPC either, of course. 🙂

]]> By: Daniel http://blog.superuser.com/2011/09/28/5-ways-of-finding-the-right-power-supply/#comment-444 Wed, 28 Sep 2011 11:59:02 +0000 http://blog.superuser.com/?p=4133#comment-444 The claim about single rail is interesting one. This means that the OCP will not kick except in extreme conditions. So instead of some recoverable failure of a component you may have much more serious damage to your system. I think that avoid is misleading. You have some quality of life benefits, not having to worry about rail load distribution, but there is minor trade off.

]]> By: Gnoupi http://blog.superuser.com/2011/09/28/5-ways-of-finding-the-right-power-supply/#comment-443 Wed, 28 Sep 2011 10:16:31 +0000 http://blog.superuser.com/?p=4133#comment-443 Whatever you buy, don’t buy the lowest price. some of them are highly unstable, and even dangerous (see the video):

http://www.x86-secret.com/dossier-36-3000-Alimentation_Noname.html#suite

( http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.x86-secret.com%2Fdossier-36-3000-Alimentation_Noname.html%23suite )

Some “Noname” PSU are cheating on components, so they can’t even deliver to appropriate current, and often are even dangerous.

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