PC Power Supplies: More Important than You Think

[muk]

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/08/09/pc_power_supplies/index.html

Despite their importance and the sometimes demanding requirements they must satisfy, power supplies just don't get enough attention. We illuminate everything worth knowing about power supplies here, using Gigabyte's new Odin GT series as an illustration. The Odin family brings software monitoring and configuration into an already very interesting picture.

 

[joex444]

Did I miss the benchmark? Or was this just a plug.

 

[Houndsteeth]

Yes, this article does appear to be a massive plug, but it still has a ton of good info for the common man. The PSU is the one part that can kill an entire system, and is usually the most under-monitored part of any system, and is usually the first part to get the blame if your computer won't even start.

I guess what the reviewer/writer was trying to get at is that the Odin series of PSUs from Gigabyte actually delivers a methd to monitor your power supply's performance, as well as challenging other PSU manufacturers to step up to the plate and deliver more efficient units.

 

[croc]

Yes, this article does appear to be a massive plug, but it still has a ton of good info for the common man. The PSU is the one part that can kill an entire system, and is usually the most under-monitored part of any system, and is usually the first part to get the blame if your computer won't even start.

I guess what the reviewer/writer was trying to get at is that the Odin series of PSUs from Gigabyte actually delivers a methd to monitor your power supply's performance, as well as challenging other PSU manufacturers to step up to the plate and deliver more efficient units.

Title was a bit misleading, the lack of benchmarks was a bit disappointing. Jonnyguru.com reviewed the 550 watt variant, and benchmarked it against one of the pcp&c units. A truly good read.

 

[Gh0stDrag0n]

Looks like a Gigabyte Odin Ad to me
For good PSU reviews visit www.jonnyguru.com

 

[russki]

Still, I thought it was better written than vvery many of the latest offerings.

 

[steve_hb]

blah blah blah Gigabyte blah blah blah Odin blah blah blah $$$ blah Gigabyte Odin blah

 

[aevm]

There's a good review here. I still like my Silencer more, but the Odin is not bad at all

http://anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.aspx?i=3046&p=22

 

[randomizer]

Did I miss something or did they discuss "combined power" on the 3.3V and 5V rails, but not the 12V rails? this is an important detail they should discuss, so I hope I am wrong and they did include it somewhere. Admittedly I couldn't be bothered reading the whole article as it did seem very...

blah blah blah Gigabyte blah blah blah Odin blah blah blah $$$ blah Gigabyte Odin blah

to me

 

[cladari]

The article stated

The well-known market principle often stated as "faster, better, cheaper" (snip)

The actual principle is - faster, better, cheaper - pick any two.

 

[BushLin]

So... no-one other than Gigabyte have anything to offer with regards to PSU innovation?
There is some good information in this article, shame there's no objective advice on what brands you should be looking for when making a purchase.
I'll be looking to see if any more "infomercials" show up on this site before I stop visiting here, the DriveSavers mis-information and HP adverts in the RSS feed do not fill me with confidence.

 

[aevm]

I like Gigabyte, never had a problem with their products, but there's something I don't get about this latest innovation of theirs. If the PSU doesn't work, then I can't even boot Windows, let alone run their PSU-monitoring software. If it does work, why would I run that software?

 

[tiger131]

Usually power supplies will give warnings before they're about to fail aevm. Unless they get a surge or they're that old, power supplies don't tend to flat out die (as far as my exp/knowledge goes - replace power supplies on a weekly basis for customers).

 

[aevm]

Thanks! OK, now it makes a lot more sense...

 

[Hatman]

OCZ StealthXtreme is serving me fine

 

[zenmaster]

Terrible article.
Even for an article that was nothing but a plug.

They did little to talk about articles.
From what I gleaned, all PSUs are the same except for efficiency rating.
Look at the rated Wattage, Look at the Efficiency, and buy from there.

Sigh............
We know that is not the truth.

How good are the capacitors?
How good is the cooling on the unit? Do I have to worry about a hot system killing the PSU?

How stable is the power that it provides?
Show me how to read the Amps on the various Lines?
What about Single Rail vs Multiple Rail?

Might I go on?
This article discusses nothing of value.
It is not even a good plug for the PSU it's writing about.
(Excellent Capacitors, Better than Average Capacity, Nice Fan, etc...)

REAL information about this PSU and others is available at
http://www.johnnyguru.com as others have noted.

 

[TexasVol]

I like the recommendation to size your power supply based on your components, only it is nearly impossible to get real data on this. For example, the technical specifications on the mobo give you all the speeds, feeds, ports, and standard interfaces, but leaves out the electrical data. Hmmm.

 

[barneybadass]

and here's a pretty good PSU calculator so you can determine how much power you are likely going to need

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

But thanks for the commercial... we now return you to the regular drivel

 

[sailer]

Did I miss something or did they discuss "combined power" on the 3.3V and 5V rails, but not the 12V rails? this is an important detail they should discuss, so I hope I am wrong and they did include it somewhere. Admittedly I couldn't be bothered reading the whole article as it did seem very...


to me

You weren't wrong, the 12V rail power wasn't discussed, unless it was hidden very well. I found the article boring, informative perhaps to a 5th grader, and a poorly disguised advertisement for Gigabyte. The articles done a long time ago telling of the torture tests and failure rates of various psu's were much better. Those told me something useful, rather than being a bunch of words strung together which told me nothing of use.

 

[neogodless]

"By calculating the ratio between energy consumption and energy production, we produce a number somewhere between zero and one. Thus for example, net energy production of 450 W divided by gross consumption of 550 W at maximum load produces a value of 0.818. This number represents the efficiency of the power supply. Commonly this efficiency index is represented as a percentage value, which may be calculated by multiplying the previous ratio by 100, to produce in our example a value of 76.4%."

I'm pretty confused by the math here. Shouldn't the final result be 81.8%?

 

[sailer]

What? Do you mean to say that the writer of the article may have confused something? Your math is right. I learned how to multiply numbers like that back in third grade. The writer needs to study his math assignments more closely. There probably should be some editor that looks over these articles to make sure they read correctly as well. I mean, any of us can make errors, so maybe this was a simple error and not a sign of bad math.