Did you know that there are 2,000 watt PC power supplies
on the market, but very few people seem to be buying them?
I mean, they can offer more watts per dollar than other high wattage models.
So why aren't people opting to get something for nothing?
Let's start by looking at a big reason, having a power supply that powerful
might put off consumers. Namely, it's gonna be consuming a relatively large amount
of power when the PC is sitting at or near idle.
Say when doing light tasks like web browsing. This is because power supplies tend to be most efficient
when they're somewhere around 40% load, which is 800 watts for a PSU of this size.
But a PC near idle might not even be drawing 200 watts.
And when power supplies are running at less than 10% of their capacity,
they tend to be really inefficient,
with the result being you're paying more on your power bill than you would have
if you had just bought a lower wattage power supply. But if this is the case, why do they even exist?
Well, there are use cases where someone might legitimately need that much power.
Many 2000 watt power supplies are aimed at people
who are into cryptocurrency mining, which is very computationally expensive,
and that such sucks down a lot of electricity. Another use case is if you have a very high powered PC,
referred to as a workstation, that can be used for a 3D modeling or rendering,
training an artificial intelligence model, or even running scientific simulations.
For science, some of these machines actually use multiple graphics cards
to do all this computing, which use a lot of power.
But here's the thing, it might be very difficult to run a 2000 watt power supply in your home or office,
at least if you're in North America, even if you could actually use one.
A huge part of the problem is that in the US and Canada, the standard voltage for a wall socket is 120 volts.
If you think back to your high school of physics, watts equals volts times amps,
meaning to power a 2000 watt power supply when it's at a full load,
you'd need almost 17 amps of current.
But most of the wiring that's probably in your home or office
is only rated for 15 amps. Trying to connect a device that needs more amperage
than your wiring can provide will lead to the circuit breaker tripping,
or even a fire in your walls if your circuit breaker sucks.
Now, some buildings do have 20 amp wiring
connected to certain outlets. These tend to be in places like kitchens,
so you can plug in multiple high draw appliances, such as blenders or toaster ovens, for example,
without tripping the breaker. But if you plug your workstation with your 2000 watt PSU
into an outlet like this and leave it running at load
for a long period of time, you'd still run the risk of the breaker tripping,
since they're often only designed for continuous loads of around 80%,
which would only be 1,760 watts in our hypothetical.
And plus, you'd have to run it in your kitchen which doesn't sound very convenient.
So unless you wanna pay for an electrician to come out and install a special circuit
just for your beefy power supply because you truly need that much wattage,
it doesn't make much sense to try and run one in a typical North American home.
In fact, some 2000 watt power supplies are only designed to work with the 230 volt outlets
used in places like Europe that don't require as much amperage,
while others are labeled 1600 watts when sold in North America,
since the PSU will limit its maximum wattage if it detects it's plugged into a 120 volt outlet.
And even a 1600 watt power supply would not likely draw full load
since a typical gaming PC setup, even if you're rocking a 4090,
wouldn't come close to drawing 1600 watts. Additionally, multiple outlets and even entire rooms
are often all on the same circuit. So you wouldn't want the PC itself
hogging all that amperage, especially as you'll need to power your monitor,
your lights, your vibrating chair, whatever else you have in your computer room.
Imagine a massage chair. Anyways, thanks for watching.
Like, dislike, leave a comment with your ideas for future videos. And if you wanna know why it's also a bad idea
to buy a really cheap power supply, go watch this video next.