Power Supply Suggestion - Please

[Googer]

Originally posted by: jewno
I'm thinking...Ultra X-connect 500w PSU would fit your need.

Maximum PC gave ULTRA a rating of 4 and it failed the Stress and Voltage test. Dont be a sucker and fall for gimmicks, fancy marketing and shiny packageing, Power Supplies are just like people: it's whats on the inside that counts.
To add Insult to Injury the Ultra X-Connect was Beaten by an el-cheapo generic no name 400 watt psu. Ultra failed the voltage drop and load test while no name passes with flying colours.

By the way how many times a week am I going to see someone ask this same old silly question on Forums.anandtech.com: "Like dude I am building a new RIG, and I have decided on all my parts but the psu, so debate it for me........ " I hope no one ever starts a thread like this again because there are about 50 identical ones just like this one. Just search anandtech, read Maximum PC, CPU Mag., and all of your questions will be answered.

5 years and a ROW Maximum PC has seen all of the PSU gimmicks from scores of companies come and go, and one company has never added any gimmicks to their psu's, one company has chosen to improve reliabilty and performance over fashion, and ONLY one company has BEEN the PSU of choice for MAXIMUM PC 5 years Running:PC Power and Cooing- Turbo Cool 510 Line of PSU's CASE CLOSED.

Here is another one. These threads should be locked.
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...12&highlight_key=y

 

[boggsie]

By the way how many times a week am I going to see someone ask this same old silly question on Forums.anandtech.com: "Like dude I am building a new RIG, and I have decided on all my parts but the psu, so debate it for me........ " I hope no one ever starts a thread like this again because there are about 50 identical ones just like this one. Just search anandtech, read Maximum PC, CPU Mag., and all of your questions will be answered.

Point taken, Googer - quite honestly, I felt that with all of my devices (5+ SCSI HD, Dual CPU's) I could justify a thread of my own. I never expected such a series of volitile reactions.

 

[Googer]

I did not mean to direct that at you personaly, I was trying to make a statement in general. But sorry anyways for any hurt i may have caused.

Its all just a little Math and some reasearch to find a reputable maker of PSU's

For everyone who cares just use this as a guideline or general Rule of thumb:

15 watts for each Hard Drive
10 watts for each Optical drive
130 watts for motherboard Cpu and Ram.
15 watts for each Add on card
90 watts for each High end Graphics adapter.
50 watts for Fans and accessories <--- slightly high since a fan uses .5 to 1 watt max

These numbers are slightly high in order to leave some head room for cold booting and upgrading. If I were to build a system using one HDD, one Video Card, one Optical Drive, one CPU, one Audigy, and fans and accessories a 350w HIGH QUALITY PSU would do the job just fine.

You can talk to an Engineer or Designer at PC Power and Cooling, they will answer all your questions.
800-722-6555

In Feburary PC Power and cooling will come out with a monster 850 watt PSU for large cases with sli. Custom Cabling options are avalable for Dual CPU's and Specialty Motherboards, ask for details.


Your Pal,
"Googer" (Rymes With Google)

 

[DrCool]

did any of you actually read the OP's post?

I just put all his components into the psu calculator ( http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/ ), and it's adding up to about 600W.. that's not accounting for any bumper/leeway..

generally you want to have about a 15% bumper between what you NEED and what the PSU can provide..

so he would need a 700W power supply to reliably power his BEAST of a setup..

the fact that your current enermax can even power that system at any level is remarkable.. I don' t know of any 700w power supplies even on the market.

The fact that you guys are recommending 500W power supplies from PC&amp;P, Enermax, and Antec is laughable, I want some of what your smoking..

with that amount of components you should be running TWO computers, with 350W power supplies, instead of all in one..

your not going to find ANY power supply currently on the market that can meet the demand of that setup!

 

[Googer]

My Calculations were for a computer with one Hard Drive and One Optical Drive.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: DrCool
did any of you actually read the OP's post?

I just put all his components into the psu calculator ( http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/ ), and it's adding up to about 600W.. that's not accounting for any bumper/leeway..

generally you want to have about a 15% bumper between what you NEED and what the PSU can provide..

so he would need a 700W power supply to reliably power his BEAST of a setup..

the fact that your current enermax can even power that system at any level is remarkable.. I don' t know of any 700w power supplies even on the market.

The fact that you guys are recommending 500W power supplies from PC&amp;P, Enermax, and Antec is laughable, I want some of what your smoking..

with that amount of components you should be running TWO computers, with 350W power supplies, instead of all in one..

your not going to find ANY power supply currently on the market that can meet the demand of that setup!

What hogwash, with 510 watts you can power a xeon and 10 scsi hard drives.



His numbers are way off base, 25 watts for a 15k scsi drive is higher than anything produced. Check the white papers on scsi hard drives from any MFG and they use about 10 watts. I said 15 watts , they need 1-2 watts extra to get the spindle moving and headroom.

 

[shinotenshi]

Well PC&amp;C does make a psu to fit his needs if what he says is true.
Turbo-Cool 850 ETX (SSI)
However even i am appalled that they even made this thing, its like hummers or ford excursions, they are just vulgar displays of human wastefulness. remember this a PC&amp;C so its 850 at 50C, i wouldnt be suprised if its pushes close to a 1000watts at 30c.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: shinotenshi
Well i was reffering to the Brand PC&amp;C,
and fyi they make a psu if all op says is true, please check your facts first, its not that hard.
Turbo-Cool 850 ETX (SSI)

you grammer and sentance construction is unreadable. I do not know what this means since it not a complete sentance, but a gathering of words and abbreviations; so please elborate a liitle more and tell us what you really mean.

"and fyi they make a psu if all op says is true, please check your facts first, its not that hard".

please spell in english! ??? FYI? op? what do those words mean?



Thanks Your bud, (politely)
Googer


if some how that comment was directed to me, I got my information directly from a PC Power and Cooling Engineer/PSU Deisgner.

 

[Algere]

Originally posted by: Googer

"and fyi they make a psu if all op says is true, please check your facts first, its not that hard".

please spell in english! ??? FYI? op? what do those words mean?

FYI : For your information
OP : Original poster/post

 

[boggsie]

Originally posted by: Googer
I did not mean to direct that at you personaly, I was trying to make a statement in general. But sorry anyways for any hurt i may have caused.

Not offended ... I searched after I made my original post and was a bit embarassed. There are quite a few threads out there and PCP&amp;C appears to be the way to go for an absolutely unquestionable power supply.

Originally posted by: Googer
15 watts for each Hard Drive
10 watts for each Optical drive
130 watts for motherboard Cpu and Ram.
15 watts for each Add on card
90 watts for each High end Graphics adapter.
50 watts for Fans and accessories <--- slightly high since a fan uses .5 to 1 watt max

15 * 5 (75)
10 * 5 (50)
130 * 1 (130)
15 * 4 (60)
90 * 1 (90)
75 * 1 (75)
= 480w maybe a little more for dual cpu

Originally posted by: Googer
You can talk to an Engineer or Designer at PC Power and Cooling, they will answer all your questions.
800-722-6555

I sent them an e-mail and will be following up with a call.

 

[shinotenshi]

It wasnt directed at you googer. i was talking to dr.cool who claimed no one made a 700 watt psu. I didn't even want to go into the fact, that zippy also has units over 700w. Sorry I'm all for conciseness, sorry if you thought anything was directed at you.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: boggsie

Originally posted by: Googer
I did not mean to direct that at you personaly, I was trying to make a statement in general. But sorry anyways for any hurt i may have caused.

Not offended ... I searched after I made my original post and was a bit embarassed. There are quite a few threads out there and PCP&amp;C appears to be the way to go for an absolutely unquestionable power supply.

Originally posted by: Googer
15 watts for each Hard Drive
10 watts for each Optical drive
130 watts for motherboard Cpu and Ram.
15 watts for each Add on card
90 watts for each High end Graphics adapter.
50 watts for Fans and accessories <--- slightly high since a fan uses .5 to 1 watt max

15 * 5 (75)
10 * 5 (50)
130 * 1 (130)
15 * 4 (60)
90 * 1 (90)
75 * 1 (75)
= 480w maybe a little more for dual cpu

75W for fans and accessories? Damn.

For my dual system I get:

15*3=45
10*2=20
130*1=130
80*1=80 (2nd CPU)
15*5=75
90*1=90
40*1=40 (Fans and such)
-----------------------
480W

 

[DrCool]

Originally posted by: shinotenshi
It wasnt directed at you googer. i was talking to dr.cool who claimed no one made a 700 watt psu. I didn't even want to go into the fact, that zippy also has units over 700w. Sorry I'm all for conciseness, sorry if you thought anything was directed at you.

I actually said:

Originally posted by: DrCool
I don' t know of any 700w power supplies even on the market.

not that they didn't exsist, just that I didn't know of any.. and do you have a link to anyone actually selling them? Just because something exsists doesn't mean it's easy to come by, and i'm sure it will be outrageously priced..

 

[Googer]

I was not offended, but I said the same thing earlier about the850.
So when you reposted the fact that PC Power and Cooling is offering an 850watt monster and "said check your facts"; I was not sure what you meant. All is ok.

 

[Googer]

PC Power and Cooling offers an differant 800 watt redundant PSU made, but I cant find it on their site. It is differant that the one comming out in two months and I have seen it many times before on PCPOWERANDCOOLING.com.

 

[shinotenshi]

Well you can buy a zippy 700w for about $300 from newegg. Of course zippy like PC&amp;C have very high standerds, so the cost isn't a suprise. personally i think anyone who is going to buy a 700Watt psu, shouldn't buy anything other than a Zippy or PC&amp;C. I would like buying a car thats goes 200mph(and you intend to drive it 200mph) by say hyundai, that cost $10,000. At some point, price needs to take a back seat to general safety and quality, i think once you start hitting the 700 watt mark you've reached point, esp if you actually need to use such a powerful PSU(meaning you are actually consuming that much power), safety, reliablity and quality become more important than price.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: jewno

Originally posted by: boggsie

Originally posted by: jewno
I'm thinking...Ultra X-connect 500w PSU would fit your need.

It sure is pretty, that's for sure.

I have that PSU and it runs like charm. Obviously, I run a lot of programs on my computer so I need a better PSU to handle them all.

Here is the Article from this months Maximum PC, I have taken the time to copy it verbatim.
Excerpt from January 2005 Copy of Maximum PC and written by Omeed Chandra of Maximum PC.


ULTRA PRODUCTS X-Connect
A sexy-looking power supply with and ugly disposition

The Ultra X-Connect is like a bad first date. It?s sleek, intricate fan grille and shiny silver finish are immediately impressive, but after about 20 minutes, it clearly comes up short on inner beauty.

Ultra claims the X-Connect can continuously deliver 500 watts of power, but our load test proved otherwise. Everything seemed fine at first, with the X-Connect typically drawing around 350 watts from the outlet. But a few Minutes into the test, we witnessed extreme artifacting in 3Dmark03- a sign of an unclean power stream. At times, a few moving white lines were all that could be seen on an otherwise black screen. Soon thereafter, the power supply started to emit a strange and rather worrisome burning smell.

Concerned we immediately closed 3Dmark03 and shut down the computer, noticing that the Windows Desktop was also badly distorted. After letting the X-Connect cool off for a few minutes, we re-booted and the graphical distortion had vanished. Fire extinguishers in hand we tried running the load test a second time and quickly reproduced our earlier results.

In the voltage sag test*, the X-Connect was a mixed bag. We measured an initial voltage of 12.57v on the 12 volt power rail- the biggest deviation of any PSU in this roundup, and dangerously close to the 12.6v maximum tolerance of the ATX spec. It?s conceivable this could damage cheap or poorly designed hardware over time. On the other hand when we dropped the input voltage to 60v, the X-Connect maintained an output voltage of 11.54v. that?s high enough to avert a system crash.

The X-Connect ships with sturdy shielded power cables that glow under UV light, and extra cables can be disconnected to reduce case clutter. But active power factor correction- the ability to smooth out distortions in the current being drawn from your wall outlet- is absent, and the Ultra?s power factor rating of 63 percent is was the lowest of the round up.

MAXIMUM PC VERDICT- 4
+ CLASSIC ROCK
Sturdy, modular shielded cables and exceptional fit and finish.

- ELECTRIC SHOCK
Poor voltage accuracy, no active power factor correction, and it failed our load test.

$100, www.ultraproducts.com


© 2004/2005 Maximum PC


The only other product to be have failed the test was Vantec Stealth VAN-520A. Both PSU?s were beaten by a generic no name 400 watt PSU. All PSU?s were tested in the same manner using the same equipment. Some passed while others failed. Only PC Power and Cooling could maintain a PFC Rating of 98% and a consitant 12.08 volts no matter what the conditions were during these tests, Most of the other Makers fell short of these marks.

Conclusion if you want the ultra don?t waste your money, get a $35 generic special that can out perform the Ultra X-Connect. Pure Gimmick if you ask me, so don?t be fooled.

I will type more of these when I have time.

 

[Rand]

Originally posted by: DrCool
did any of you actually read the OP's post?

I just put all his components into the psu calculator ( http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/ ), and it's adding up to about 600W.. that's not accounting for any bumper/leeway..

generally you want to have about a 15% bumper between what you NEED and what the PSU can provide..

so he would need a 700W power supply to reliably power his BEAST of a setup..

The sites listing for various hardware is so vastly overstated it's often more then double what you need.
If you believe that site my system should not be able to run at all on anything less then a 455W PSU.
In reality I was formerly running a 300W Fortron perfectly fine with no issues at all before I replaced it with a quieter Enermax NoiseTaker unit.

Using a power meter when the system is under full load for 5hrs, the highest DC power draw I ever recorded was only 217W. That in an intentionally contrived scenario in which I was stressing the processor/NIC's/Graphics/HDD's heavily simultaneously, not exactly a scenario likely to be encountered in the real world.

I've seen quad Xeon's with a 5 drive RAID 5 array powered by a 'mere' 400W PSU, granted the unit in question was specifically designed for the supply requirements of the OEM in the requisite platform.


Power meters are available relatively cheaply, if you want to know the exact power your system is utilizing. You can pick up a Kill-A-Watt power meter for about $40 US, a low end model granted but it should be able to measure within ~3% of the actual power draw in my experience.

 

[boggsie]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42

Originally posted by: boggsie

Originally posted by: Googer
I did not mean to direct that at you personaly, I was trying to make a statement in general. But sorry anyways for any hurt i may have caused.

Not offended ... I searched after I made my original post and was a bit embarassed. There are quite a few threads out there and PCP&amp;C appears to be the way to go for an absolutely unquestionable power supply.

Originally posted by: Googer
15 watts for each Hard Drive
10 watts for each Optical drive
130 watts for motherboard Cpu and Ram.
15 watts for each Add on card
90 watts for each High end Graphics adapter.
50 watts for Fans and accessories <--- slightly high since a fan uses .5 to 1 watt max

15 * 5 (75)
10 * 5 (50)
130 * 1 (130)
15 * 4 (60)
90 * 1 (90)
75 * 1 (75)
= 480w maybe a little more for dual cpu

75W for fans and accessories? Damn.

For my dual system I get:

15*3=45
10*2=20
130*1=130
80*1=80 (2nd CPU)
15*5=75
90*1=90
40*1=40 (Fans and such)
-----------------------
480W

75w may seem and perhaps is excessive, but that would have to cover include:
1) Koolance dual pump reservoir
2) Koolance control board (fan control and LCD readout)
3) 4x 120mm case fans
4) 5x 80mm case fans

 

[maluckey]

In reality I was formerly running a 300W Fortron perfectly fine with no issues at all before I replaced it with a quieter Enermax NoiseTaker unit.

As I already mentioned, some companies are very good at underrating their PSU's. FSP is about the most conservative power estimate on the market as far as their PSU's go. If you didn't know, they made the PC Power and Cooling units until recently. They also make PSU's under the guise of or simply rebaged for SPI, Sparkle, Fortron, Zalman, Verax, Conrad, AOpen and a couple others. The FSP Server 550 and 460 units are pre-burned in at 50C and ensured to deliver at LEAST the ratings on the case. Try THAT with just about ANY other PSU.

I beleive this is from Dans Data, but correct me if I am wrong.......

"Here's how to make overly optimistic power supply specifications. It's really simple.

First, power the thing up. You can make an ATX power supply that isn't connected to a motherboard turn on by grounding pin number 14 on the big motherboard power connector. It's easy to spot that pin, because it's the only one with a green wire going to it.

Use any handy bit of wire - like the paper clip in this picture - to connect pin 14 to any ground contact. The ground contacts are the ones with the black wires going to them. Presto, the PSU will turn on.

Now, break out your brick-sized power resistors and load the heck out of one of the output rails - the +5V rail, for instance. Measure the current as you increase the load, until the voltage sags unacceptably far below the rated voltage.

How do you tell what an unacceptable voltage sag is? Well, you could choose a nice conservative small permitted sag - say, 0.1 volts - so that your results are genuinely useful to your customers. Or you could just ignore the voltage and say that when a fuse (or some other component...) blows, that must have been the limit, right there.

OK. Now you've made a big fat amperage number for the +5V rail. If you blew up the PSU in the process, get another one, and repeat the process for +12V and +3.3V, and for the low current rails as well.

On no account, though, should you test more than one rail at a time. This is the key to the whole scam.

A big beefy PSU may be able to deliver 50 amps (say) on the 5V rail when nothing else is under load, and 25 amps (say) on the 12V rail when it's similarly all alone. But the 12V and 5V rails together may only be able to deliver, say, 350 watts between them, when they're both under load. Watts equals amps times volts.

In a real PC, all of the power rails will always be under load together.

But you're not testing what the PSU can really do - you're making pretty numbers for the sales brochure!

So test all of your rails alone, get an amperage figure for all of them, multiply that figure by the voltage of the rail it came from (the nominal voltage, not whatever the voltage had sagged to as the PSU pumped electrons through the dessert spoon you'd soldered to the circuit board), then take all of the resulting wattage figures and add 'em up. That's a wrap, folks. Ship it!

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: boggsie
75w may seem and perhaps is excessive, but that would have to cover include:
1) Koolance dual pump reservoir
2) Koolance control board (fan control and LCD readout)
3) 4x 120mm case fans
4) 5x 80mm case fans

Dang.

 

[Googer]

Check out this link on actual power usage, a 300 watt PSU would be plenty.

http://www.systemcooling.com/powerangel-03.html

 

[Googer]

If you didn't know, they made the PC Power and Cooling units until recently. I beleive this is from Dans Data, but correct me if I am wrong.......

what did you mean by this? PC Power and Cooling has been Making PSUs for 20 years.

Could you please give a web address, I would like to read the whole article

 

[Googer]

I copied this from Fujitsu's web site, data is for all MAS line of 15k SCSI Drives.

Power consumption, SCSI 11.3 W 73.5gb model

(8.5w for 36.7gb model and 7.5 for 18.4gb model [ Fujitsu MAS 15k scsi])
Fibre Channels uses 13 w


They do use more power on a cold boot in order to get the spindle going, but this is not an issue. And you should not need to take HDD start up into acount, simply because other components are not running at full load during post and hence are not using much power. (i.e. The CPU is mostly at idle for the first few sec, the graphics card is not using more than 15w, each dimm (ram) uses 7w max). Because you have so many drives and they are high speed 15k, I would go into the bios (if it permits as mine does) Insert a HDD Pre Delay. IF you bios has such a feature, enable it. What it does is delay all operations and post routenes so that the HDD's can get up to speed before the rest of the system boots and alows for proper detection of drives. And it halts operations so more power can get to the drives instead of other componets for a few seconds (5-15).

 

[IGBT]

Sparkle......