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Thread: Why do people buy PSUs that are over 700W?

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    Lightbulb Why do people buy PSUs that are over 700W?

    I have an old friend I talk to on MSN who is big into gaming and overclocking and I was asking him about PSUs: He's just built a new system, an overclocked Q6600 with 3 500gb SATA on a highpoint RAID controller and 2 SLi 8800GTX!!! - And I know you might think he's bull****ting, but he's a guy I did computers with at college 5 years ago, and now is a plumber, so earns **** loads of money, and wastes tons of it on his PC. But even he only has a 700W FSP Epsilon - So what kind of system needs a PSU that's more powerful than that?!?!?!? - It surely must only be server systems?

    It seems a huge PSU just something for an enthusiast to waste money on so he can say "my PSU is bigger than your PSU"? It seems to me like computer enthusiasts becomming more like Boy Racers who waste money on things to improove performance faster than the car will ever be driven!

    Or am I missing something?

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    Re: Why do people buy PSUs that are over 700W?

    why do people buy cars that go above the speed limit?

    yes you are missing something

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    Re: Why do people buy PSUs that are over 700W?

    imo anyone who buys over 700w is just too rich to care or just ignorant, oh c2d uses loaaaads of power i must have the highest wattage psu out there!

    and yeah the my psu can pump more watts than yours bla bla, BOASTING FTW =D

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    Re: Why do people buy PSUs that are over 700W?

    Anything over 700w is a waste and the people that buy 700w + PSUs just look on how much electricity they will be using not exactly green and energy efficient is it

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    Re: Why do people buy PSUs that are over 700W?

    Quote Originally Posted by GoNz0 View Post
    why do people buy cars that go above the speed limit?

    yes you are missing something
    So... what is it I'm missing? (or is it that you don't know what you're talking about)

    And people buy cars that go over the speed limit because the speed limit sucks and everyone breaks the law. But that's not what I meant with my analogy with boy racers - most of them don't know much about how cars work, and they needlessly waste money on things that will never be used anywhere near it's potential because the rest of their crap car can't push it anywhere near it's peak performance.

    Sorry for trashing boy racers here, but I hate them, every good citizen has to pay for their idiocy on the roads because they make everyone's insurance cost so much!
    Last edited by Andaho; 12-08-2007 at 12:58 PM.

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    Re: Why do people buy PSUs that are over 700W?

    Actually, having a quad core that you overclock, and having two 8800GTX's, does mean that the PC is going to use a hell of a lot of power. I am surprised he went with a 700W power supply. It might be enough, but if you can afford all that gear, then why not just buy a high end PSU too?

    Thats why people buy them. If you can afford over &#163;600 on a single CPU, and over &#163;800 on a pair of graphics cards... then you would be mad to skimp on something as cruicial as a PSU. Your mate's CPU is cheaper, and the 8800GTX's have dropped in a price a bit, but my mate for example, bought "all the best" components for his PC a few months ago, so thats like I said.. over 600 on the cpu alone, and then over 800 on a pair of GTX's. So if you are spending &#163;1400 on just 3 components (or two if you consider both the cards are basically just working together as one component), then you would have to be a bit of a spaz to go cheap on the PSU.

    Also, people forget about how PSU's lose their power over time. So a PSU may work great for a year, but in a years time when the PSU has lost some of its power (especially if the PC is on 24/7 like my PC), then it may start randomly rebooting etc... And unless you are the kind of person who upgrades their entire PC every year... then you may want your PC to last several years (like my last PC did). You run a PSU 24/7 for several years... and you lose a large portion of its power.

    Lastly, hard disks use a fair bit of power. So yes, if you only have a couple of disks, then you probably won't need a massive PSU, but again, using my mate for an example, he's got all that super power hungry, thousands of quids worth of components.... and then he has a pair of WD Raptors, and atleast four! 750gig hard disks. And he plans on buying more disks (the new 1terrabyte disks). So with all that... I think having a huge power supply is sensible.

    Personally, I've got a 620W psu. Had I have gone with a quad core instead of a dual core, and a pair of 8800GTX Ultras, instead of a single 8800GTX, then I might have considered a huge PSU too.
    Last edited by acrobat; 12-08-2007 at 12:59 PM.

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    Re: Why do people buy PSUs that are over 700W?

    Quote Originally Posted by Blitzen View Post
    stupid betond belief.
    You owe it to yourself to click here really.

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    Re: Why do people buy PSUs that are over 700W?

    Ideally I like to run a power supply well within it's limits (say 50-60% of it's rated output) rather than at full load, both for stability and longevity of the supply. So, for a 700Watt supply, that's about 350W. Now consider an OCed Quad can draw over 200W, and a couple high end Graphics cards another 200W (now start OCing those!), plus a few drives at 30W each plus 50W for everything else and a really high end rig could conceivably top 500W total peak draw (not common, admittedly). I wouldn't want to be running that 24/7 on a 700Watt supply, even a high quality one.

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    Re: Why do people buy PSUs that are over 700W?

    A pair of overclocked GTXs = 400w ish.
    An overclocked/overvolted quad core can pull 250w+

    Theres 650w without any hard drives, motherboard, optical drives, PCI cards, water pumps, fans, RAID controllers, fan controllers, LED displays, RAM, overvolted chipset/NB/SB, lighting etc.

    Edit: Phil got there before me
    Quote Originally Posted by Blitzen View Post
    stupid betond belief.
    You owe it to yourself to click here really.

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    Re: Why do people buy PSUs that are over 700W?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mad-Max View Post
    Anything over 700w is a waste and the people that buy 700w + PSUs just look on how much electricity they will be using not exactly green and energy efficient is it
    i don't think that's quite right. A power SUpply only supplies the power that is requested of it. So if you ran a Celeron on it, with just one hard drive and onboard graphics, it would use a lot less power than a meaty rig. The psu would only proved what was requested of it.

    ie they dont use their maximum all the time

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    Re: Why do people buy PSUs that are over 700W?

    Quote Originally Posted by Andaho View Post
    So... what is it I'm missing? (or is it that you don't know what you're talking about)

    And people buy cars that go over the speed limit because the speed limit sucks and everyone breaks the law. But that's not what I meant with my analogy with boy racers - most of them don't know much about how cars work, and they needlessly waste money on things that will never be used anywhere near it's potential because the rest of their crap car can't push it anywhere near it's peak performance.

    Sorry for trashing boy racers here, but I hate them, every good citizen has to pay for their idiocy on the roads because they make everyone's insurance cost so much!
    thank you for answering your own question, yes people want cars to go fast so they need lots of power...

    now to overclock past the limits you need lots of power..

    maybe another pint of coffee and a quick google before asking stupid questions that warrant a stupid answer.

    i love your utter ignorance, in the way your so fast to criticise others that you have absolutely sod all knowledge of.
    Last edited by GoNz0; 12-08-2007 at 01:13 PM.

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    Re: Why do people buy PSUs that are over 700W?

    Quote Originally Posted by Clunk View Post

    I don't believe it
    Fixed

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    Re: Why do people buy PSUs that are over 700W?

    Quote Originally Posted by acrobat View Post
    and then he has a pair of WD Raptors, and atleast four! 750gig hard disks. And he plans on buying more disks (the new 1terrabyte disks).
    That sounds like it is a server system! So of course he'll need more power than 700W

    Quote Originally Posted by Clunk View Post
    LMAO Yeah I suppose it is a bit of a conservitive thread I've started here

    The reason I started it is because so many people post asking "what PSU will I need for this new system I'm building", and they always get told to get 500W+ (usually the corsair 520W or 620W). When it looks like the system their building would easially run on less than 400W quite hapilly. It seems people are advising them to waste money.

    Quote Originally Posted by Phil_P View Post
    Ideally I like to run a power supply well within it's limits (say 50-60% of it's rated output) rather than at full load, both for stability and longevity of the supply. So, for a 700Watt supply, that's about 350W. Now consider an OCed Quad can draw over 200W, and a couple high end Graphics cards another 200W (now start OCing those!), plus a few drives at 30W each plus 50W for everything else and a really high end rig could conceivably top 500W total peak draw (not common, admittedly). I wouldn't want to be running that 24/7 on a 700Watt supply, even a high quality one.
    Now this is the first sensible post that has made some good points from looking at efficiancy charts of PSUs, they do peak at max efficiancy at mid usage BUT a system is never constantly under full load unless you're doing stress-test benchmarks on it. Your argument about a PC being on 24/7; How often in this 24/7 usage is it going to be run at full power? 99% of the time the power hungry components will be idle, so on our example system, the PSU will be running at half power (probaby even a lot less).

    Quote Originally Posted by Clunk View Post
    A pair of overclocked GTXs = 400w ish.
    An overclocked/overvolted quad core can pull 250w+

    Theres 650w without any hard drives, motherboard, optical drives, PCI cards, water pumps, fans, RAID controllers, fan controllers, LED displays, RAM, overvolted chipset/NB/SB, lighting etc.
    Again, these are the MAX ratings when the components are being stress-tested; under normal conditions a PC gets nowhere near that. So it makes sense when the PC will rarely be drawing it's max power, that the PSU will rarely be demanded for it's max power.

    Quote Originally Posted by GoNz0 View Post
    i love your utter ignorance, in the way your so fast to criticise others that you have absolutely sod all knowledge of.
    I do apologise for coming across as criticising, and yes I am arguing my points with a lot of ignorance, and I do the same thing when I have a lot of knowledge of a subject because I find that's the best way to get people to explain things fully. But at the moment you seem to be coming across as the ignorant one that jackvdbuk explains here: (because you're showing little in your posts to show that you understand anything - at least I'm making a valiant effort to understand this subject and want to get down to the facts)

    Quote Originally Posted by jackvdbuk View Post
    imo anyone who buys over 700w is just too rich to care or just ignorant, oh c2d uses loaaaads of power i must have the highest wattage psu out there!

    and yeah the my psu can pump more watts than yours bla bla, BOASTING FTW =D

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    Re: Why do people buy PSUs that are over 700W?

    As I always say its good to have some overhead in case you throw a few drives in etc etc, and as said before even clucks 1kw monstrosity (lol) wont be using 1kw all the time.

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    Re: Why do people buy PSUs that are over 700W?

    Quote Originally Posted by daza View Post
    As I always say its good to have some overhead in case you throw a few drives in etc etc, and as said before even clucks 1kw monstrosity (lol) wont be using 1kw all the time.
    Oh yeah, I agree with that, but I still think too many people are going overkill!

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    Re: Why do people buy PSUs that are over 700W?

    Quote Originally Posted by Andaho View Post
    from looking at efficiancy charts of PSUs, they do peak at max efficiancy at mid usage BUT a system is never constantly under full load unless you're doing stress-test benchmarks on it. Your argument about a PC being on 24/7; How often in this 24/7 usage is it going to be run at full power?
    But you need to have a PSU that can cope with max power draw. What if you get to a point in a game (for instance) where everything is being stressed and your 500Watt supply can't cope? Your PC crashes. If you had a 750Watt supply, there would have been njo problem.

    You need to take the maximum usage into account, ven if it only occurs very rarely.

    You can compair this to bridges. A bridge might only experience winds of up to 50mph for 99.999% of the time, but it still need to be able to handle that 0.001% when the winds hit 100mph.

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