Why High Wattage Power Supplies Are Stupid
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
954 words · ~4 min read
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High wattage power supplies are almost always a bad idea just due to being too
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expensive I mean sure that is of course as long as you're not doing some asinine
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projects such as seven Gamers or eight Gamers or 10 gamers one CPU and even
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then running seven freaking graphics cards two 140 wat TDP CPUs and a small
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mountain of ssds does legitimately take some solid wattage your standard gaming
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PC does not
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tunnel bear is the simple VPN app that makes it easy to browse privately and
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enjoy a more open internet to try tunnel bear for free check out the link in the
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video description we have a number of videos about not needing super high
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wattage power supplies but it became even more blatantly apparent when our
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massively Overkill setup of a high-end enthusias 6850k and dual GTX 1080s Drew
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just over a third of the watted dwell under heavy load of a standard Flagship
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power supply at 1200 WTS what the SH now
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I know I know this isn't a new idea as I already said and I do have a fairly
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recent video on it a super craptastic Workshop video that you actually
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probably shouldn't bother watching because well it's garbage but be quiet!'s
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own Kristoff katzer has an article on this back from 2008 when he used to work
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with an nanch which is named debunking power supply myths and is actually a
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wonderful read in his final thoughts section he notes that few people if any
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need more than an 850 W power supply that's from 2008 components have been
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getting progressively more and more efficient this entire time and it
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doesn't stop there either power supplies have also been getting more efficient as
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well with the increasing abundance of highly rated 80 plus versions across the
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board recommended power supply ratings for various computer components have
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started to react to this as well which which is great for example Zac's crazy
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new amp extreme GTX 1080 featuring an oversized 2 and 1 half slot cooler and
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ample amounts of power sorry terrible joke it only recommends a 500 wat power
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supply for the whole system and cooler Master's power supply calculator seems
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to sing a similar tune an i56600k with
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16 gigs of RAM a GTX 1070 an SSD a hard
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drive a few USB devices a 240 mm
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allinone CPU Cooler additional three fans and gaming peripherals all equated
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to an estimated grand total of 344 Watts
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at load and a recommended power supply of 394 Watts but as I'm sure a few of
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you are acutely aware this isn't the whole story and I wouldn't buy a 400 W
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power supp for that computer any day I just wouldn't really be comfortable with
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that not only do the capacitors within a power supply degrade slightly over time
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as it ages but there is also the efficiency curve to consider and the
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overall build quality of the power supply each power Supply's efficiency
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curve is more or less unique but let's use the curve of the Corsair 1200i for
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example you can easily see the rise and the fall best in the middle worst at
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excessively high and excessively low usages ideally if your power bills are
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high you'd like to sit the load power of your system at a highly efficient point
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in this curve as long as that makes sense to offset the cost of the power
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supply for that particular purpose another graph supplied by Corsair and
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the reason I chose this power supply as the example is the fan noise graph
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people going for absolutely silent systems can greatly benefit from low
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power usage components because certain power supplies are able to go into a
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zero RPM fan mode below certain amounts
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of wattage or usage at 30% a 1200i would
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give you 360 watts of zero RPM fan mode
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head room plenty enough for a 6850k and
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a GTX x 1080 which is a really high-end setup but don't use this video as an
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excuse to buy a cheap crappy power supply buy a good power supply skimping
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on this component is just fundamentally a bad idea that being said buying a 1200
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watt power supply for your system when it will only Peak at like 300 watts and
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you don't care about zero RPM mode is just lighting your money on fire there's
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no point in doing that if you're worried about your choice of power supply check
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out Johnny Guru power Supply reviews I'm
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pretty sure he's been reviewing power supplies for longer than I've been interested in computers in total and
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that guy knows a lot all right guys if you disliked the video because you're
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like I knew all that already hit the
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dislike button hit the like button if you liked it and feel free to get subscribed check out power supplies at
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Amazon and also Link in the video description is our merch store which I
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think will soon have these shirts I'm not entirely sure and the Forum
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Community where it's you can discuss things like
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the intricate qualities of power supply components as you read them on Johnny
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Guru because I'm not going to get into that type of power supply review nope
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not happening check out this video whoever is editing this will pick
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their favorite video on any one of our three channels actually no pick a tech
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quickie video because I'm wearing the shirt there we go