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About LinkBacksRead more.This 80-Plus Platinum rated PSU even lets you display videos on its LCD screen.
Read more.This 80-Plus Platinum rated PSU even lets you display videos on its LCD screen.
Honestly, first it was LEDs, then it was RGB and now you can get random bliddy screens on your water cooling pump and now your PSU!
Most cases now shroud your PSU off, so is this just a fun gimmick or actual use (barring enthusiast overclockers whom are using their system on an open bench!), we dunno!
They are covering a need there is none for... I don't get what use of it.
My first reaction is perfectly covered by the first two replies in here, especiallywhich is delightfully succinct. So here's the long version.
My second reaction was, well, next time I see someone with their head stuck inside a PC case for an undue length of time, and sweating profuely, I'm going to wonder exactly what they're watching .... on their PSU.
My fourth reaction was not just an LCD monitor but alsoAn LCD monitor and RGB? That's just getting greedy. And showing off. And no wonder it's 1200w if it has to drive all the fancy gizmo's.Gigabyte has put an aRGB backlit Aorus logo in a wedge section below the display.
My next reaction was the bit in the review that mentioned pricing was not yet available. I bet it wasn't.
My overall conclusion was, well, as this is a 1200w PSU it's aimed at a pretty small target marget anyway. How many PCs, even with extremely muscular graphics cards actually need 1200w. It's a niche market, IMHO, to say the least. But if someone wants all that, and has more money than sense, why not? It's not like we're facing a global environmental crisis, a threat of global warming, imminent power shortages and all frantically being encouraged to try to switch everything to lower power consumption devices, from electric cars to LED light bulbs, is it?
Oh .... wait ....
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
"In the fevered minds of the Aorus designers, the concept "Welcome to the Digital Code Era," is the central reason why the display was implemented."
Pretty sure we've been in the "digital code era" for a good few decades, not sure that's a good reason for implementing something so pointless. That being said, I'm looking forward to someone getting Doom up and running on it and playing it through changing energy requirements of the PSU by putting it under different loads.
I can see only one use and that's some kind of open test bench where you want certain metrics measured from the PSU directly. It might save you faffing with a meter.Originally Posted by Saracen999
My first reaction is perfectly covered by the first two replies in here, especially
My second reaction was, well, next time I see someone with their head stuck inside a PC case for an undue length of time, and sweating profuely, I'm going to wonder exactly what they're watching .... on their PSU.
My fourth reaction was not just an LCD monitor but alsoAn LCD monitor and RGB? That's just getting greedy. And showing off. And no wonder it's 1200w if it has to drive all the fancy gizmo's.Gigabyte has put an aRGB backlit Aorus logo in a wedge section below the display.
My next reaction was the bit in the review that mentioned pricing was not yet available. I bet it wasn't.
My overall conclusion was, well, as this is a 1200w PSU it's aimed at a pretty small target marget anyway. How many PCs, even with extremely muscular graphics cards actually need 1200w. It's a niche market, IMHO, to say the least. But if someone wants all that, and has more money than sense, why not? It's not like we're facing a global environmental crisis, a threat of global warming, imminent power shortages and all frantically being encouraged to try to switch everything to lower power consumption devices, from electric cars to LED light bulbs, is it?
Oh .... wait ....
How many people actually want this kind of set up? Myself, I have a couple of bench PSUs that tell me exactly what is going on. Most people in diagnostics would have a few multi-output bench PSUs. Maybe this would save space for certain applications?
But would I trust something that's there to make my PC look like a pride parade to perform and report accurate electrical measurements in a predictable and consistent manner? Naaah.
Any decent self respecting reviewer or overclocker would have power output monitors that can be attached to the PCIe and EPS PSU connectors of which there are many easily available and quite accurate systems out there to do this.
Pretty much all upper end reviewers I generally see have an EPS or PCIe inline current monitor to establish more exactly how much power is being drawn to each sub component.
Well, sort-of.
In nit-picking mode, it depends on the publication/site, which largely determines the target audience. I mean, for enthusiast overclockers, yes. But all most general gamers, or power users (like video editors, modelling software users and so on) are going to want to know about the power supply is whether it's good quality, adequate capacity and likely to be reliable. i.e. does it do the job? It also very much depends on the publication/site. Any number of reviewers could be reviewing a high-end PC with a chunky PSU, and could be doing it for a national daily, a consumer-focused site or a specialist site, and a good reviewer can write for all three, and write three entirely different reviews aimed at their respective readerships, only one of which is going to care about exact numbers from inline monitors.
Any self-respecting reviewer, or at least good ones, will either have such equipment (and know how to use it and interpret the results), or will decline to do reviews that would require it.
Nit-picking mode off.
Were I writing a review that required that type of data, and I have in the past, I'm not convinced I'd trust the accuracy of sensors built in to the PSU itself. Maybe they're okay, but if they were importantt to the review, I'd want to be using third-party equipment I knew and trusted, and if they weren't essential to the review, I wouldn't need anything the PSU LCD is likely to tell me. Either way, IMHO, that LCD is pointless for that purpose.
It's bling, pure and simple, IMHO.
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
If a reviewer is wanting to do fair and unbiased tests, they will opt to never rely on in built monitoring tools that could vary on focus and sensitivity from system to system. Therefore, having a fixed method for measuring across different systems will be opted for and units with this kind of thing on will likely garner a side comment "it's a nice gimmick" and whether it's accurate or not.
Commenting on the bolded part, I disagree, it's not about thinking that the more accurate inline methods will push the target audience around, it's more down to "how much power is being drawn by CPU/GPU". The target audience doesn't really care at the end of the review whether it was done via inbuilt or external monitoring methods but a reviewer will (see, should) want to make the testing method as consistent and level from unit to unit. If you are a non-commercial enterprise level customer, you'll be going to reviewers like STH who have proper load testing systems to establish everything from the idle up to full tilt load efficiency. We are simply talking about why this LCD even exists on the side of the PSU and the likelihood of its use. At most I would expect to see a comment from a reviewer on whether it is accurate or not but I would not expect a reviewer to use this system as their test bench PSU just because of the screen.
Pretty much.
How about RGB screws next with a torque read out so you know how much you're screwing things up , think I'll Email Gigabyte now in case Asus etc do it 1st. lol.
Actually, if I ignore the fact that it will be hidden in most cases, which is in all honesty the biggest issue, the idea of a mini LCD isn't actually that bad.
Plenty of people have been modding cases to include (mini) LCD's which show things like case temps etc, JayzTwoCents even did a video showing how you could essentially do this (he put a small lcd next to the psu attached to the shrowd) in a phanteks (I believe) case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTdniu3gn3Y
Well.... I have a 1200W purely because I didn't like the spikes my 3090 FE + 9900KF were producing, I'd prefer a little bit of headroom to be on the safer side of things. Fair point about global warming etc, but I'll be long dead before then, if not, I'll just have to suffer. I'm fairly sure my miniscule carbon footprint is nothing compared to others though.
Depends on the polling rate, but I'd hazard a small guess that having a proper meter and diagnostics equipment is far more accurate than anything else.
Your PC is banned from sale in some states in the US. Greta is displeased.
Depends on the meter. My good meter, yes. The one I take out on my bike or attach to anything dodgy... nah. I'd trust whether the cockroach I've attached inline is smoking or not as a better indicator of what's going on. Same with my bench PSUs; the good one is lab grade and I trust that implicitly. The other one is some all in one solder, SMD, PSU station which is really handy for space limitations but I only trust it with stuff that can take tolerance or stick a meter into it to check what it's doing before attaching things. It was free and I've repaired it about 4 times now, so it's all good. It's next to my fire extinguisher and sink.Depends on the polling rate, but I'd hazard a small guess that having a proper meter and diagnostics equipment is far more accurate than anything else.
I once tried to use the cheap meter to do continuity testing on a SATA interface. It took me over an hour because it was so unreliable. Good enough for testing if a single wire with good access is working but use it on anything complex at your peril.
From a purely diagnostics purpose, I'd treat anything like this like my dodgy PSU - never trust the readout. If you want to be sure someone's doing their job to the best of their ability, you don't ask them. You check it independently. It's like asking the monorail guy about the benfits of the monorail.
We're talking at cross puroses here.
It's not about "pushing target audiences around". It's that any good reviewer knows who his (or her) target audience is, and pitches a review to that audience. This is because different publcations and/or sites have different reader/user demographics and anyone that knows their job pitches it accordingly. The subject matter will vary, though with overlaps, and they way you would write a review on a subject for different target audiences would vary, even where the subject of the review may appeal to both. For instance, you wouldn't write a review for Infoweek the same way you might write it for a techology piece in a national daily, because one has an readership of IT professionals and/or business managers, and the other the general public.
I do (and did) agree hat using data from in-built sensors or tools is not a good idea for a reviewer, and for at least two good reasons. First, just like not using benchmarks supplied by someone with an axe to potentially grind, you want to be sure such tools haven't been designed to be .... kind. But also, yes, you would usually be wanting to be able to compare to other systems and you can't use built in tools to do other systems, even if you were to correctly aassume them to be neutral.
As a reviewer, I wouldn't conclude a feature with a built-in LCD is just bling, a pointless and expensive gimmick, without at least talking to the supplier and finding out what usage case they have in mind. But as a forum poster, not a reviewer on here (or ever, for HEXUS, though we did talk about it once or twice over the years) that is my opinion.
What possible usage case? Arguably, while a reviewer might need and/or have independent tools, an individusal user might not. At least, not hardware inline tools. Indeed, it's pretty unlikely. So a case could be made for that. Personally, I'd rather (as an end-user, not a reviewer) just rely on monioring software that I'm used to, even though that would be influenced if not entirely reliant on what built-in sensors report.
Where we part company is the assertion that "any decent and self-respecting reviewer" would have external output monitor gear. No, absolutely not. Only reviewers writing for sites or publications where those mesurements matter would do that, and for most publications, those readings don't matter. Whether the PSU is good quality and up to the job does, but detailed power readings don't unless the nature of the publication, and its readers/users expect that level of detail.
Something aimed at an overclocking site? Sure. A general public computer magazine aimed at a non-technical public? Not a chance. Or rather, not for that readership. The reviewer might have such equipment if they are either personally interested or also write for a magazine/site where that kind of detail was expected, and they might (out of personal interest) even use it if they have it, but it won't be necessary for that general type of review. They can be decent and self-respeting reviewers that just don't do those kinds of reviews.
An example of that was that as I used to do a lot of reviews of printers, I had some rather expensive colour test gear (densitometers, etc) and if i hit puzzling results they would sometimes be useful in noodling out what was going on, but it sure wasn't expected by any of the mainstream PC press I was working for. Moreover, on occasions where editors queried how I got to some of my conlusions, even the mag staff writers rarely had access to the sort of stuff I was using, and were very surprised I did. But it did mean that when I made certain assertions, I had raw data to base them on, not just a subjective opinion.
Some, indeed many, decent and self-respecting reviewers don't work for the kind of sites/publications with the kind of readership that expect or necessarily even understand results from metering gear, and would not need to possess it. Anyone working for the kind of site/mag for which such data is expected or matters absolutely should not be basing such readings on built-in displays.
That is why readership matters. It's not about pushing them around. It's that some readerships care, and others don't.
In short, for those readers that care about such readings, they're not going to want to rely on the in-built display's readings. They wouldn't necessarily want all the data but would expect to be sure they were accurate and you can't be sure unless you verify that externally. Less technical readers just want to know if the PSU will do it's job properly .... and perhaps an opinion if it's massively over-specified (like a 1200w PSU in a system needing 450w).
Yes, exactly. A reviewer writing for them needs to pitch it accordingly, and have the equipment necessary to be able to back that up. But if you're writing a one-page review for .... oh, ComputerActive? The readership is different, therefore the nature of the review is different, and so is the equipment necessary and the nature of testing.If you are a non-commercial enterprise level customer, you'll be going to reviewers like STH who have proper load testing systems to establish everything from the idle up to full tilt load efficiency. We are simply talking about why this LCD even exists on the side of the PSU and the likelihood of its use.
Know your target audience.
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
Then arguably you have an actual need. Not having, or having tested, a 3090, I have no opinion.
Okay, I'll bite.
Yes, and so is mine. But if several billion of us all adopt that attitude?
The UK could say "our national carbon footprint doesn't compare to China, US etc". And it doesn't. So let's just build shedload of oil-fuelled power stations. Then, about 99% (*) of countries can say that, well, China, US and now UK .... so we won't bother either. So let's all switch back to energy-hungry incandescent bulbs and stop recycling 'cos, hey, my tiny little bit doesn't matter. And it doesn't. But billions of them do.
(*) 100% accurate statistic according to my WAG (**) method of statistical analysis.
(**) Wild-Assed Guess.
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
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