[PLUG] power supply (was Motherboard) recommendations

Quentin Hartman qhartman at gmail.com
Wed Mar 11 23:56:20 UTC 2009


On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 4:06 PM, Eric Wilhelm
<scratchcomputing at gmail.com> wrote:
> And has a big impact on operating costs.  I've started to see cases
> (namely Antec) include "80+" power supplies, which is nice because the
> electricity savings (even at current salmon prices and neglecting A/C
> cost) can recover the $10/$20 premium within about a year at this
> point -- usually not such an easy choice if you buy a case and replace
> the 60% efficient power supply.

Indeed, many (though not all) manufacturers who are 80+ certified are
listed at http://www.80plus.org/ .

> Of course, many situations can find a few hundred dollars in labor and
> downtime savings to justify a quality, efficient PSU.
>
> Unfortunately, I haven't seen any of the pre-built system vendors
> mention the efficiency of their power supplies.  Non-fun when they're
> specially dell-shaped units.

Yes, I haven't seen any numbers on those either, it would be
interesting to find some information on the PSU's that the tier-1's
include in their builds. I like to think that they are as efficient as
they are reliable (I have found the PSUs in my Dell and HP servers to
be 100% reliable so far....) but I find it more likely that they are
not. As far as my own builds go, I've long been a fan of PC Power and
Cooling. They were making high-end power supplies before it was cool
to make high-end power supplies, and they have several 80+ models..

The Tech Report is pretty serious about power supply testing. They
built a device they call The Beast for load testing PSUs, and they do
PSU roundups regularly. The most recent one seems to be this:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/16073

Anand Tech seems to have reasonable testing methodology and they do
PSU reviews often as well.

-QH-



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