News Super Flower’s beastly 2800W power supply lands at $899 — enough juice to power a couple of RTX 5090 GPUs

[drivinfast247]

..and there your wrong. But why in the world is anyone running 30a 240v for standard electronics? 15a is all you need and only needs standard wiring. In my house, white plugs are 120v, 15a and black plugs are fed by a whole house UPS which are 240v, 15a. All computers are plugged in to those outlets.

Not my main job, but I participate in datacenter build out and sometimes get cast off old equipment. When I built my house, I put some of that stuff to good use.

Thanks for proving my point about reading comprehension. And also thanks for saying your house wiring isn't standard in so many words!

 

[bit_user]

Appliances can draw 3,000 watts from a standard UK wall socket, and in Western Europe that goes up to almost 3,700 watts. However, with heavy duty cabling you can get 7,000 watts of juice to your UK PSU. After that we are talking 400 volt three phase, which you will have to share with your Tesla charger.

I'm looking forward to new innovations in PSU technology!

You might also be looking forward to new innovations in air conditioning technology to go along with them, because 3.7k Wh is ~1084.5 BTU and 7k Wh is ~2052 BTU. It will require air conditioning. Even in the dead of winter, you'd at least have to open a window, because it will be too much heat for one room.

Nobody is going to build a PC needing nearly 3kW, you'd melt for starters and even if you have AC - Can it take an additional 3kW of load in a single room?

A quick search shows a 6000 BTU window air conditioner uses about 1.65 kW.

Then there's the why, even if you could get your hands on 4x 5090s and managed to wire them up without burning your house down four times over, what are you going to do with them? SLI is dead so you can't use them for gaming so realistically we're talking rendering or AI.

AI. You could build a multi-GPU training machine, like this:

https://tinygrad.org/#tinybox
​

This PSU has approximately two real customers across the world.

In the past, it wasn't too uncommon for AI researchers to build multi-GPU workstations, which is by far the cheapest way to do lots of training. However, that's not going to work for big models, like LLMs. Those need a whole network of machines. That doesn't make the multi-GPU workstation completely irrelevant - just narrows it down to an even smaller set of people.

 

[bit_user]

datacenter build out and sometimes get cast off old equipment. When I built my house, I put some of that stuff to good use.

But you still need to replace batteries and stuff. That can't be cheap.

 

[jp7189]

But you still need to replace batteries and stuff. That can't be cheap.

Thats true, but the individual cells in the proprietary modules are actually 12v 5AH batteries that are fairly cheap if you're willing swap cost for effort.

 

[jp7189]

Thanks for proving my point about reading comprehension. And also thanks for saying your house wiring isn't standard in so many words!

Care to mention which of your points I'm failing to grasp? I'd love to get your viewpoint, but as you've said.. Im missing it.

All I'm saying is 240v isn't hard to come by in residential (being the default panel feed, and works over standard house wiring using 2 hots instead of 1 hot, 1 neutral), and is indeed the standard in datacenters where this PS is likely to be used.

 

[palladin9479]

Be nice.

Also the US is indeed 240v into the homes. Along time ago in the early days of power to the house, when most of Europe was still using candles, light manufacturers decided 120v was optimal for light bulbs. This caused all the early wiring to be run as 120v to standardize all those early lighting. Since 120v is rather inefficient in the long run, homes were run as 240v then it is stepped down at the breaker box for the lights. As appliances started to be invested, they just adopted the same standard as the lights so that they could all be on the same circuit. And that is where we are today. 240v into the home, then split into multiple 120v circuits and a few 240v circuits.

Upgrading an outlet to 240v isn't hard or expensive, just kinda depends on the age of the home.

Cost to Install a 220V or 240V Outlet [2025 Update] - HomeGuide

The cost to install a 220V or 240V outlet is $250 to $800 on average, depending on the amps, distance from main electrical panel, & the home's current wiring conditions.

homeguide.com

Everything made in the past 10~15 years has sufficient panel capacity to not require upgrading the box, instead it's down to if they have to run a new line or if an existing line can have it's breaker and outlets swapped. About $500 average to run a new dedicated line somewhere, most is the cost for the licensed electricians.

 

[Rob1C]

Now my supermodel girlfriends won't have to keep bugging me about unplugging the dryer to power my ballwarmer, I can sit on the computer and say that's what's plugged in; and schedule not to use the computer in the evening (when we're busy).

 

[ThereAndBackAgain]

Typical 240 volt socket would be 30 amps in the US. These would be installed in any home where heating appliances were expected. A 120 volt socket converted to 240 volts would typically be 20 amps. .

You came back after almost 20 years to post this as your second post. I'm impressed!

 

[bit_user]

You came back after almost 20 years to post this as your second post. I'm impressed!

Not saying it's true, in this case, but one reason someone can have an old account with a low number of posts is if some were deleted either by them or a mod. Also, sometimes old accounts coming back to life can be due to them getting hacked by a spammer - again, probably not the case, here.

 

[kute]

I really don't understand why people are weirded out by this? Do you guys really think nobody runs multiple components? Did none of you do any GPU farming? There is approximately 10,000 use cases, AI farms, server clusters, all sorts of hardware mining, or just people who run several PC's

"Imagine the fire with this thing" - I'd imagine it'd be about as hot as a fire started by anything else. If you start a fire from a freezer, is it iceflame?

Google asic power supply. Interlinked. Supply interlinked

 

[bill001g]

Now my supermodel girlfriends won't have to keep bugging me about unplugging the dryer to power my ballwarmer, I can sit on the computer and say that's what's plugged in; and schedule not to use the computer in the evening (when we're busy).

Your cat may not agree to give up its spot on top of the computer....and they have very sharp claws

 

[bit_user]

Do you guys really think nobody runs multiple components? Did none of you do any GPU farming?

You mean GPU mining? Is that still a thing (and profitable)?

There is approximately 10,000 use cases, AI farms, server clusters, all sorts of hardware mining, or just people who run several PC's

I disagree. It's pretty much limited to machines with multiple GPUs. Nothing else is going to use that much power. As the article points out, it has only a single motherboard connector, so you can't use it to power multiple machines.

Also, it'd be kinda weird to use it for a server meant to do anything mission-critical. For that, you typically have a server chassis with redundant power supplies.

 

[DougMcC]

Interesting replies about the 240v in the home. It may be that where i'm at most of the homes are older, but my home has exactly 2, 240v ports (oven, dryer), and all of my friends' homes are similar. So there's no convenient place to plug this thing in. But maybe newer homes have more 240v outlets. I'll get a chance to go to an open house for a new build in the area in a couple months, i'll check.

 

[stonecarver]

One thing this does have going for it is the amperage it needs when being used. It will use less and run cooler.

2800 watts being fed 240 volts = 11.666666666666 Amps

2800 watts being fed 120 volts = 23.3333333333333 Amps

It's the amperage that determines power used and the heat it will generate while using that power.

If someone only uses 1200 watts of the 240 volt power supply there only using 5 amps.

 

[yngndrw]

One thing this does have going for it is the amperage it needs when being used. It will use less and run cooler.

2800 watts being fed 240 volts = 11.666666666666 Amps

2800 watts being fed 120 volts = 23.3333333333333 Amps

It's the amperage that determines power used and the heat it will generate while using that power.

If someone only uses 1200 watts of the 240 volt power supply there only using 5 amps.

It doesn't work like that sadly.

 

[spongiemaster]

The more I think about it, the dumber this power supply is.

Nobody is going to build a PC needing nearly 3kW, you'd melt for starters and even if you have AC - Can it take an additional 3kW of load in a single room?

Then there's the why, even if you could get your hands on 4x 5090s and managed to wire them up without burning your house down four times over, what are you going to do with them? SLI is dead so you can't use them for gaming so realistically we're talking rendering or AI.

But even those use cases don't make sense as realistically they would be rack mount machines with their own custom PSUs. Rack mount machines are designed to handle these sort of thermals and let's face if, if you need 4x GPUs in one machine you're probably going to have a lot more than one machine.

This PSU has approximately two real customers across the world.

This isn't a DIY part or for home users. This is something OEM's would use for purpose built workstations. Something like this, seven 4090's in one workstation (system ships with 2 x 2000W PSU's):

 

[bit_user]

One thing this does have going for it is the amperage it needs when being used. It will use less and run cooler.

2800 watts being fed 240 volts = 11.666666666666 Amps

2800 watts being fed 120 volts = 23.3333333333333 Amps

It's the amperage that determines power used and the heat it will generate while using that power.

Like @yngndrw said, Watts is Watts. The only real difference in how you get there is that you lose more in your house wiring and power cord at lower voltage. That's where you have a point. However, once it gets into the PSU, the input voltage is stepped down to the same voltages used by every other PC (i.e. a mix of 12V, 5V, and 3.3V, depending on what's connected).

The amount of heat produced by a PC (or anything else, really) is a function of the energy consumed. Energy (measured in Joules or Watt-hours) is power integrated over time. Power is the product of current (Amperes) and voltage (Volts).

 

[bit_user]

This isn't a DIY part or for home users. This is something OEM's would use for purpose built workstations. Something like this, seven 4090's in one workstation (system ships with 2 x 2000W PSU's):

Seems a little hard to believe those are all 4090's though. For one thing, it seems like they each have just two 8-pin power connectors. For another, I don't really see how even a 480 mm radiator would be enough cooling.