High Wattage PSUs - Do they consume more power?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,657 words · ~8 min read
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welcome back to the workshop set this is going to turn into a segment but I'll
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cover that in a moment first off right now today we're going to be looking at
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if really high wattage power supplies actually use more power than a power
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supply that's tuned for your computer that means power from the wall so what
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we have is a 450 W power supply a 750 W
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power supply a 1200 W power supply and a
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1,500 W power supply we're going to run our 5930k and a 980 TI through some
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stress tests using Ida 64 system stability test and furmark just to get
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the wattage up there and then test each power supply read the wattage from the
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wall figure out what's going on it's a very straightforward answer the question
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Style video and that's what the workshop is going to turn into I've been kind of
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grappling with what I wanted this to be over the last few videos that I've done
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in the workshop that being and you can check these out up here the where should
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case fans be or how many case fans do you need video and does your cable
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management actually affect your thermals throughout your face video there's going
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to be more of these there's already one on the schedule coming up soon if you guys have ones that you might want me to
1:05
cover live testing things in front of you guys on the workshop set in the
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future hit me up on Twitter or comment in the the comment section down below my
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Twitter should be on screen but just in case it's @ lukor LFR I'd love to answer
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whatever crazy things you'd like me to try to figure out
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Intel brings ddr4 to the mainstream with their new core
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i76700k and core i56600k processors
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check out the link in the video description to learn more hello everyone
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this is future Luke uh this is Luke from further on in the video and I'm
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wondering right now if you guys would be interested in a little experiment
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there's going to be a straw pole link somewhere and I want you guys to vote
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before you see the rest of the video which power supply you think is going to
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win which one is going to use the least wattage from the wall to power this
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computer in this scenario let me know I'm interested what
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do you think so we're going to start off with the power supply that was already
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in this test rig this is my standard graphics card test rig this is way too
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much wattage potentially on the power supply so this is a little bit
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overshooting it so after that what I think I'm probably going to do is step
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it down a little bit go to the 750 then the 450 then do the 1500i after that
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we're going to wait few minutes just to make sure that the power stabilizes
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maybe 3 to 5 minutes and then we will read the power wattage reader from the
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wall That's plugged in back here so I
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decided to change what test we were using I went back to my old school tried
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andrue Crisis 3 Skybox test because using Ida 64's system stability test and
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furmark gave me variations of about 374
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to about 405 so I'm going to continue
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onwards this is 351 Plus orus 3 seems to
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be pretty accurate within that range next up is the 450 W power
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supply let's see it's it's within range
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I'm just wondering how much watts it's going to use how many watts it's going to use English wasn't supposed to be a
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troubleshooting video
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huh oh so the monitor's power was
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unplugged that almost freaked me out all right here we go time to load up Crisis
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3 again do the sky boox test get our second set
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of numbers so the variance on the 450 watt was
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364 plus or minus 4 so a little bit more
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of a variance window there and more wattage but there's another interesting
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thing to look at here when you step up in power supplies your 80 plus rating
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almost always goes up our 450 W power
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supply is bronze this next one I'm going to test the 750 W is gold the 1200i is
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platinum the 1500i is titanium 80 plus
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rating they're more efficient we'll get more into the efficiency talk a little
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bit later on but for now time to step up to the
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750 all right our tests with the v750 are done and the results were
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345 Watts plus or minus one that's our
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lowest wattage amount yet but not our highest 80 plus efficiency rating on the
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power supply because just the rating is not the only thing that matters let's
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try the 1500i that's it's the titanium
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rated 80 plus power supply just look at it it requires a
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proprietary cable it's all about efficiency curves
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we're probably not going to land on the right spot one of the cool things about
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these videos is if you watch it and you're like oh my goodness you did this
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one specific thing in a way that I don't
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think is right for this test cool tell me in the comments I'll
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do a video and we'll see if it matters
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this whole series is about like answering questions that people might
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have or exploring different things all
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right so our last power supply is installed the X1 1500i is set up and
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good to go if you guys thought I was rough on it check out one of these
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videos where we massively abuse Corsair ax power supplies it's not because we
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dislike them it's mainly cuz they can take it all right let's run our last Sky
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Box test so the 1500i came down to 340
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wat plus or minus 3 it won in terms of
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their positions the 450 watt was in last place then the 1200i then the 750 watt
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then the 1500 eye little bit confusing
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why you might ask it comes down to efficiency charts which is actually
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listed on all of these power supplies which is great cuz it makes it really
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easy for visuals the titanium rated 1500
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IE its peak efficiency on American plugs
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so 115 is at about
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94% for instance if we move down to that
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bronze rated one its peak efficiency on North American plugs is around
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85% it limits things it doesn't mean that you can't be very efficient on a
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say bronze rated power supply it just means that to be very efficient you're
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going to need to be right on The Sweet Spot of the curve and something like a
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titanium power supply you're pretty much always going to be pretty damn efficient
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but it will be better if you're at The Sweet Spot of the curve and then that 750 watt had a little bit of an
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irregular curve it was a little bit earlier on where it peaked where most of
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them were peaking right around 50% so
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efficiency matters 80 plus is a rating of efficiency but you want to know where
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you are on the curve that also matters find The Sweet Spot for the power supply
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that you're buying and try to make sure that you're in it to save money on your
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power bill but ultimately do higher wattage power supplies use more power no
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that no they don't crun roll is a site created by
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world.com Linus and check them out
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