PSUs highly overrated?

[dethman]

i've been reading about all these high wattage and super expensive PSUs and was wondering why...do people actually need to spend $70 on a 400W Antec power supply? or do they just THINK they do? i don' t know...



On a 300W generic i have running:

athlon tbird 1ghz @ 1.4ghz on abit kt7a raid
seagate 80gb 7200
maxtor 100gb 5400
maxtor 60gb 5400
pioneer ide dvd 6x
nec scsi 40x
plextor ultraplex 40x scsi
sony 8x burner scsi
nakamichi 16x 5cd changer
nec ide zip 100
baybus w/ 6 leds
1 90mm fan, 2 80mm fans, 2 70mm fans.

plus in the slots i have a gfti200, adaptec scsi, maxtor ide adapter, xitel platinum sound card, and belkin nic.

and i've had all drives running at the same time before, many times. this setup has always worked (other than the 100gb which is new) for over a year with no probs whatsoever.



i guess i just don't get the power supply craze.

 

[Pariah]

"or do they just THINK they do?"

Bingo. The bigger is better regardless of actual needs or practicality theory runs rampant on these boards (and others).

 

[Markfw]

According to my rough calculations, based on an article on Tomshardware.com, your current setup is using 350 watts IF everything is running. Also, the same article showed that 14 of the 21 power supplies tested would put out 350 watts or more (regardless of actual rating). So your odds are good that if you have a decent PSU (generic or not) and don't use all of your CD's at once, you would have no problem. However, as seen by the same article, some rated 350 watt PSU's didn't even put out that much. It is also a known fact that a bad PSU (or not enough power output from one) can sporadically cause BSOD's. With your setup, and Antec True power 380p would be a great power supply if yours gives out.

When in doubt, more power is allways better for PC PSU's (Tim Allen strikes again!!)

 

[sechs]

The thing about power supplies is that you want to get more than you need (especially if you plan on adding anything later that will pull power) and you want good power.

While I agree that people tend to vastly oversize their power supplies, the question of power quality is very important. People have found that the more expensive power supplies provide what they want and need, and so they suggest them and continue to buy them.

 

[fluxquantum]

i hope my enermax 350W will last me a while. i have a p4 1.6a o/c to 2.3 @1.6V. i know that sucks up quite a bit of juice, but i should be fine since everything has been stable. my old PSU was a 250W.

 

[Wolfsraider]

heck i am running:
2.8 p4
4g4a+ mobo
512ddr
ati 9700
sblive
onboard lan
4 case fans
lsi u160 scsi controller
ibm 15000 rpm hdd

and i am overclocking but at 3230 my psu starts dropping the voltage and its a 350 watt so yeah i am going to get the antec true power 430 watt @99.00:Q

 

[GoodRevrnd]

The antecs are quiet too. I think the bigger issue here is power quality (esp. if you have something like a flakey ECS board) though... although in my pc repair days (ala 1 year ago) I probably did more dead PSU replacements than anything so there are other issues at hand. Of course the place I worked for what ghetto so we swapped one POS generic for another.

 

[CurtCold]

You can see from my sig what all I have running on my 300watt psu HEC. Haven't had any probs so far......knock on wood.....

 

[Jhhnn]

I definitely agree that the need for high power ratings is overblown. The need for good quality is not, however. That doesn't mean that there's a direct correlation between price and quality, unfortunately- there's a lot of lo-qual stuff being sold for high prices and vice-versa, too. Everybody has their favorites. One of the nice thing about a place like ars is that you can rapidly figure out what not to buy.

The problem with generic psu's is that you really don't know what you're getting. It could be a total POS or from a brand name manufacturer just needing to up production for efficiency reasons. No matter what, if it's too cheap, then it's too cheap to be any good..... anything under about 10 cents/watt(w/o shipping) isn't worth having, anything much over 15 probably isn't a very good deal..... Anything over 350w is generally a waste of money, imho.

 

[MJ99]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I though most of teh power needs was at startup. Boot time for m/b, cpu, etc... and I guess also each time you access the cd-drive. So if it boots with no problem its probably ok.

 

[dszd0g]

Read Inadequate and Deceptive Product Labeling: Comparison of 21 Power Supplies over at Tom's Hardware Guide. There is a real need for 350W power supplies on newer systems. Even if it works, that doesn't mean it won't be causing stability issues either.

 

[Pariah]

"There is a real need for 350W power supplies on newer systems."

Not true. Take a look at this link:

Extreme Tech

Scroll down a bit to the second chart containing the Gateway and Compaq systems. Both of those systems are running on 200W PS's and are more loaded than even the average system on these boards. If those systems can run on 200W's, you would have to put an insane amount of hardware in a case to make a single CPU system that would require a 350W PS to function properly.

 

[dszd0g]

Pariah, in that article they even say they wish they used more powerful power supplies. In both the systems they picked the parts for, they used 350W power supplies.

 

[Pariah]

For upgrading purposes, yes, you would probably want more than a 200W. But lets look at this realistically, a 2.4GHz P4, 1GB RDRAM, Ti4600, DVD writer, 120GB HD, what component would anyone besides the obssessed techie need to upgrade within the next 18-24 months on that system? And from the article:

"The real downside of the Presario is the power supply--it's a somewhat anemic 200W supply. However, we encountered no issues that could be attributed to inadequate power delivery, even with the power-hungry GeForce4 and Athlon XP2100+. Since you can't muck around with the system clock or voltage settings, the power supply is adequate to the task."

Which is the whole point I'm trying to make, that you don't require these huge wattage PS's that people seem to think you need on this board. These are large OEM's selling warrantied systems and using 200W PS's. If the system needed more, they would use something more powerful. For a home built system I would recommend a 330W Antec Trupower. The only reason why I recommend one that large, is because they don't come any smaller. If they had a 300W, that's what I would use in my single CPU systems and recommend for others.

 

[bendixG15]

Does Dell push out 350Watt PS?????

 

[Pink0]

Pariah is completel right. Most people don't need more than a quality 200 watt power supply. Some companies deceptively lable their power supplies though so a 300 watt in generic power supplies is likely really only a 240. Anyway, the toms article that you're refering to doens't say that everyone needs a power supply like those. They just rigged up a way to draw enough power to meet what it says it can deliver. The test was to show whether or not the power supplies lived up to their claimed output not to show you that you need power supplies like those. Those high end power supplies are for computer with dual processors and 4 hard drives as well as 2 optical drives and maybe a wilcat with some pro audio boards etc. You average PC doesn't need more than 200 quality watts.

 

[anthrax]

People are getting over obssed with this PSU stuff...

FACT 1: with a decent 200W PSU you can power the following...
P4 2.8
512MB/RAM
ATI 9700 PRO
WD 120JB 120G HDD
IBM GXP60 61.5G DEATHSTAR HDD
32X CD-RW
USB Mouse/KB

 

[KoolHonda]

Dont know about Dells other lines, but Dimensions top out at 250W (although I've read of a 330W upgrade complete with their special Dell only connector). I replaced my 8100 with an Antec case with 400W "Smart" power instead.

 

[Pink0]

I just looked at the system that they put together which they claim uses more than 350watts. As has been the case of late tomshardware is feeding people mistleading information for hits. It's all about making up a story.
Here are the problems with their system:

They say that a motherboard with integrated components can take up to 23.50 watts. Okay, so if it has integrated components than why did they also list the power requirements of a lan card, a PCI sound card etc. If you're going to list the discrete cards then the motherboard's power requirements go down as devices are disabled.

They list a modem in addition to a LAN card. I mean, really, who has dial up and high speed? We'll let this one fly under though

They list power requirements of devices that are attached to the computer through USB and firewire. This is ridiculous! In fact, they list the maximum that the bus can output for both firewire and USB. That's a lot of power. You would never completely drain the busses like that! Most power draining external devices have their own power adapter anyway.

Lastly, they use FOUR (4) hard drives in a RAID array. That's nice but 4? That's ridiculous! If your computer has 4 harddrives raided, it stops being a PC and then becomes either a server or a workstation.

So, if we remove these "errata" we can remove 104.47watts from their silly estimate. wow, we're down into the 250 watt range now. That's with the Modem and LAN still in there. I would say that this would be a more accurate estimate of what a normal PC would use and that's with high end parts.

 

[CTho9305]

I just have trouble believing a mobo uses >20 watts. A 20 watt CPU needs a pretty large heatsink WITH a fan, but on a lot of mobos, there are NO fans (or one tiny one) and only a couple tiny heatsinks. 20 watts would heat up that kind of surface area pretty fast, wouldn't it?

edit: the only power supply I've seen kill itself was some cheapo 300 watt powering a 1.4ghz tbird setup... I replaced it with a 250 (don't remember brand) and it has better voltages and hasn't died yet (in a few months).

 

[Greenwald]

I've got a 300 watt generic psu running these components:

p4 2.53
Epox 4g4a+, intel 845G mobo (graphics and onboard sound)
1024mb pc2700 ram (512 x 2)
Leadtek GF 4 ti4200 w/128 mb ram
Philips S/C
Firewire
USB Microsoft intellimouse usb
Win modem
3 hard drives: 30G 7200 maxtor, 80G WD 7200, WD 120G SE 7200
Fans: CPU, Front/rear case, Videocard
TDK CDRW
Floppy

Never had a hiccup yet.
I had 3 drives in another computer and CDRW with a k6-3 (with less ram) and a 150 watt psu. for years, no problems. But if this psu fails I'll probably put in a 350 watt unit.

 

[Greenwald]

Check that, my K6-3 PC has a 230 watt psu. Sorry about that.

 

[Telsari]

I've got a generic Award(R) 300 Watt PSU.

I run the following:

ECS K7S5A MB w/Integrated LAN, audio (disabled)
750 Mhz Athlon
512 MB PC 100 SDRAM
GeForce 2 MX 400 (OC'd to 200Mhz Core, 200Mhz Mem)
Diamond Monster Sound MX400
Diamond Supra Max 56K Modem
Lite-ON LTR 16x10x40 CD Burner
Toshiba CD-ROM XM 32X
30 GB IBM ATA 100 Hard Drive
Floppy Drive
Plus a few fans, etc.

NEVER had a problem. Rock solid!

 

[ElFenix]

the reason you have AMD and ATi recommending 300 watt power supplies is people buy these cheap power supplies that don't live up to the manufacturer's claims. if you get a 200 or 230 that doesn't live up to the claims you'll probably have problems with those components. if antec made a TP230 it would probably work just fine.

 

[dszd0g]

Originally posted by: ElFenix
if antec made a TP230 it would probably work just fine.

Agreed, because Antec True Power's can provide way more power than their rating. That TP230 would be closer to a 450W power supply in what it can actually do and that is plenty.