Evga 550 b5 psu (550w)

[HEXUS]

Offering a solid feature-set in a hotly-contested segment.

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[Spud1]

It's high time we moved away from 80-plus bronze PSUs imo and the industry starts to really standardise on 80+platinum as a minimum...the environmental impact of these lower efficiency PSUs is already rather large, and it's climbing the more computers & therefore PSUs that are out there.

Good quality 80+platinum PSUs were widely available over 10 years ago, offering 94%+ efficiency compared to the 80ish% that the Bronze PSUs offer. Yes you can argue about amount of copper/manufacturing costs, but like with EVs...the long term environmental benefits are worth it.

I am a fan of EVGA PSUs, but I would not be buying anything lower than a "80+Gold" in 2020, and ideally platinum when they come on sale.

edit: the "gold" version of this PSU (well actually, the G3 550w)... is £19 more (or less if you can find it on sale)- you'd likely save that much (if not more) in power usage over the life of the PSU, plus would be helping the environment overall

[goldstar0011]

Was just thinking the same.

I saw LTT video on the new PSU design and connectors that bring efficiency right up, good times

[Xlucine]

It's high time we moved away from 80-plus bronze PSUs imo and the industry starts to really standardise on 80+platinum as a minimum...the environmental impact of these lower efficiency PSUs is already rather large, and it's climbing the more computers & therefore PSUs that are out there.

Good quality 80+platinum PSUs were widely available over 10 years ago, offering 94%+ efficiency compared to the 80ish% that the Bronze PSUs offer. Yes you can argue about amount of copper/manufacturing costs, but like with EVs...the long term environmental benefits are worth it.

I am a fan of EVGA PSUs, but I would not be buying anything lower than a "80+Gold" in 2020, and ideally platinum when they come on sale.

edit: the "gold" version of this PSU (well actually, the G3 550w)... is £19 more (or less if you can find it on sale)- you'd likely save that much (if not more) in power usage over the life of the PSU, plus would be helping the environment overall

We're talking very marginal gains here. At 40 W there's 1.4 W between them at the wall, so assuming heavy use of 40 hours/week that's only 3 kWhrs/year - probably about 2 frozen pizzas worth. Assuming 20p/kWhr, you'll pay off the difference in a mere 3 decades. The difference in power goes up at higher loads of course, but only 4 W worth at 300 W as the efficiency also goes up (40 hours a week of gaming, that'll pay off the £19 in 11 years). ATX PSUs are ATX PSUs, for the most part.

[th3_f15t]

We're talking very marginal gains here. At 40 W there's 1.4 W between them at the wall, so assuming heavy use of 40 hours/week that's only 3 kWhrs/year - probably about 2 frozen pizzas worth. Assuming 20p/kWhr, you'll pay off the difference in a mere 3 decades. The difference in power goes up at higher loads of course, but only 4 W worth at 300 W as the efficiency also goes up (40 hours a week of gaming, that'll pay off the £19 in 11 years). ATX PSUs are ATX PSUs, for the most part.

That's fair enough on a single-PC basis, but multiply this extra energy usage by the global numbers of ATX power supplies being run like this and we start to understand why every little really does help.

[Spud1]

That's fair enough on a single-PC basis, but multiply this extra energy usage by the global numbers of ATX power supplies being run like this and we start to understand why every little really does help.

Exactly - I mean to reply last week and say the same, this is one of those simple changes that doesn't really affect you/cost you anything (Given the average lifespan of a PSU) but could make a big difference to the world's energy usage.

[Xlucine]

For the sake of 2 things cooked in the oven per year? It costs the user £20 upfront, and you only save ~£6 over a 10-year lifespan - that's a non-zero cost for a rounding error on a rounding error of energy usage. If you really want to save the planet there's far better uses of £20 - another roll of loft insulation, or a small travel kettle (so you only need to boil a cupful at a time when you want a cup of tea). You could easily save an order of magnitude more energy by turning down you monitor brightness! That's all without considering the ecological cost of manufacturing the higher quality PSU to begin with, that'll be non-trivial or else they'd all be platinum rated - 30 kWhrs gets you very little in terms of manufacturing, and that's just to break even.

[Spud1]

Sorry, but you're wrong..yes you can do all those other things too, but using a more efficient PSU does help on top. Again though its not about saving money for yourself (even though it will do that too )

If you have your PC on 8 hours a day - pretty typical, maybe a little on the low side whilst everyone is working at home, you will save around £5-£6 a year....which is more like £25-£30 over the lifespan of the PSU if it lasts 5 years, or obviously double that at 10 years. That's only based on a tiny 450w PSU.....which is again a likely average size that people will own.

Again though that isn't the point. Manufacturers makes the cheaper and less efficient PSUs because then they can create the classic "budget, normal, premium" ranges in a much easier way than through pure branding alone - it suits them - but they could just as easily only make the highly efficient units if we tightened up the regulations.

The extra ecological cost of manufacturing is just not an issue here anymore than it really is with electric cars.

As for sources for my claims above? Pretty much every major tech site has done this test, but here are a few links pulled from google to back it up.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/7474/...ze-vs-platinum
https://www.techjunkies.nl/2018/03/0...-power-supply/

[Xlucine]

Sorry, but you're wrong..yes you can do all those other things too, but using a more efficient PSU does help on top. Again though its not about saving money for yourself (even though it will do that too )

Sure it helps a little, but it doesn't help enough to make any appreciable dent (especially compared to other things you can put the money towards). 1.4W is below microwave quiescent current levels.

If you have your PC on 8 hours a day - pretty typical, maybe a little on the low side whilst everyone is working at home, you will save around £5-£6 a year....which is more like £25-£30 over the lifespan of the PSU if it lasts 5 years, or obviously double that at 10 years. That's only based on a tiny 450w PSU.....which is again a likely average size that people will own.

This is not 9W, ergo there's no £5 saving to be had:



There's no appreciable difference in practice.

Again though that isn't the point. Manufacturers makes the cheaper and less efficient PSUs because then they can create the classic "budget, normal, premium" ranges in a much easier way than through pure branding alone - it suits them - but they could just as easily only make the highly efficient units if we tightened up the regulations.

The extra ecological cost of manufacturing is just not an issue here anymore than it really is with electric cars.

Electric cars are great - there's literally a 4-fold difference in the energy used to travel a certain distance. They're at the point where pouring fuel in a gas turbine to generate electricity, then sending that miles through the grid, then charging a battery, and then turning a motor still comes out at about half the fuel per mile than just putting that fuel in an internal combustion car. For power supplies, we're talking about literally a few percent - totally incomparable.

There's a huge budget for manufacture emissions with battery cars, and a tiny one for PSUs - really (and this goes for computers in general), re-using an old PSU even if it's less efficient is better by a huge margin

As for sources for my claims above? Pretty much every major tech site has done this test, but here are a few links pulled from google to back it up.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/7474/...ze-vs-platinum
https://www.techjunkies.nl/2018/03/0...-power-supply/

Those links:
a) Lack any actual efficiency measurements
b) don't even support your argument

In idle there was no significant difference between both PSU’s, pulling around 90-92W from the wall.

That's comparing 80+ white to platinum!

[markzero]

The cost-conscious builder may try to use a non-modular 80+ bronze instead, paying half the cost of this modular one, especially when it's on sale. And that's what you really have to factor against the 80+ modular gold and platinums. Also, as a practical matter, do people reuse their power supplies when building new systems, when the left over ones are over 7 years old?