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 Posted: Fri, 5th Nov 2010 21:17 Post subject: Understanding the 80+ PSU certificate |
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| Quote: | | Efficiency is traditionally an overlooked power supply specification. It says how much power is being wasted while you are using your PC. Problem is that you are paying for this wasted power. The 80 Plus certification was created to allow consumers to know which power supplies are the most efficient ones and, as the name implies, guarantees that the power supply is able to present efficiency of 80%. With more and more manufacturers trying to design power supplies with efficiency well above 80%, they decided to create three new certification categories: Gold, Silver and Bronze. Learn what they really mean. |
Good article 
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Slizza
Posts: 2345
Location: Bulgaria
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Werelds
Special Little Man
Posts: 15098
Location: 0100111001001100
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| Posted: Fri, 5th Nov 2010 21:33 Post subject: |
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They miss one very important point, or at least don't focus as much attention on it as they should. I explained that in my hardware post, I'll just quickly quote myself:
| pwerelds wrote: | Now, what exactly does efficiency mean? Let's take a 650W unit (gives me nice round calculations). First some load numbers: 20% would be 130W, 50% would be 325W and 80% load would be 520W. The 80% load is what's generally considered to be the highest healthy long-term usage of a PSU - so if your target system will consume 500W under extreme loads, you'll want 500/0.8 = a 625W PSU. Next step is to explain efficiency: if you are putting a 300W load on a crappy PSU, it is very likely that it'll actually be pulling upwards of 400W out of the wall socket. Now, you may not give a shit about your electrical bill, but what you do care about is how long your PSU lasts, right? Well, if a PSU is pulling 400W out of the socket, but only delivering 300W to your system, it means that the remaining 100W have to be dissipated in other ways. Generally, that means it's coming out as heat. You can already see where I'm going here; the hotter your PSU gets, and the longer it is exposed to such heat, the quicker the parts inside will degrade.
This is why efficiency is so important. Not because it'll save you some money on your electric bill, but because it'll simply make your PSU last longer. Not only does it generate less heat, the parts inside of a high quality PSU are of a lot higher quality and can withstand heat longer to begin with. Even with a basic 80+ 600W unit, if you're putting a 300W load on it, it'll generate 75W of heat; going up one step to Bronze already knocks that down to 53W of heat, and so on. |
Also a shame how they show the first TX750 version (2nd version which just came out is a Seasonic build, old was CWT), that's a PSU from 2007. Newer units have a much flatter curve between ~35% and ~70%.
I do like how they address some of the bad things in the 80+ spec though (testing temperature and equipment)
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Frant
King's Bounty
Posts: 24642
Location: Your Mom
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| Posted: Sat, 6th Nov 2010 06:28 Post subject: |
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If you want to know what a particular PSU is rated as, check this 80+ list: http://www.plugloadsolutions.com/80PlusPowerSupplies.aspx
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
"The sky was the color of a TV tuned to a dead station" - Neuromancer
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