Single Rail vs Multi Rail PC Power Supplies as Fast As Possible
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2015-05-07
·
989 words · ~4 min read
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Single versus multi-rail PC power supplies. In truth, it's actually pretty
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simple. Don't worry about it. It doesn't matter. If that explanation is good
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enough for you, click here to watch videos of my cats instead. If you'd like
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to know why it doesn't matter, then you can keep watching this video. At the
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most basic level, a power supply converts AC current from the wall to DC
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current that your CPU and other components can use. And then that
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octopus of wires carries 12volt, 5volt, and 3.3 volt current to your graphics
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card, motherboard, and etc. Cool, Linus, but how do rails enter into it? Good
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question. A rail is just a fancy name for a PCB trace inside your power supply
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that the octopus wires are soldered to. A single rail power supply has all of
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those external connectors essentially coming off of the same output. While a
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multi-rail power supply has some, let's say a couple of your PCI Express
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connectors running off of one and some others, let's say your EPS CPU connector
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or your SATA connectors running off of other ones. Okay, so why would having
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everything plugged into one spot be considered good? Great question again.
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Basically, multirail power supplies had the misfortune of showing up at a time
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when NVIDIA and ATI were both having like a, you know, junkwaving competition
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to see who could build the fastest graphics card without much regard for
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power consumption. And these early multi-rail units were sometimes designed
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with an underpowered rail for the graphics cards or not enough PCI Express
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connectors, which forced the user to use Molex adapters that were sharing with a
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bunch of other stuff. either of which meant that the power supply would
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overload a rail and simply shut off in the middle of an intense gaming session.
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Lionus, that sounds terrible. I want a single rail power supply. Whoa, don't
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get too amped up there, Whiz Kid. Good power supplies are all about going fast,
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lasting a long time, improving efficiency, and looking good while doing
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it right. Well, sure, but none of that stuff would matter one lick if they
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weren't first and foremost about safety. Any power supply that you should be
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using in a computer includes a variety of safety cutoffs that will detect
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dangerous operating conditions and force a shutdown to protect the PSU, the rest
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of your PC, and even your house. The main ones we're concerned with here are
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shortcircuit protection and overcurren protection. The issue is that if a power
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supply fails in some way that your shortcircuit protection doesn't catch,
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overcurren protection is what will trigger your power supply to turn off. A
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high-capacity power supply designed to deliver all of its power over a single
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rail could melt away the insulation on its wires and cause a fire. Yeah, that's
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tasteless, but deal with it before its overcurren protection was triggered. But
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don't go throwing away your single rail power supply just yet. The chances of
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all of that happening are really very small and funny story, but especially
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nowadays, many power supplies marketed as single rail are multi-rail internally
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anyway. So, it all comes back to what I said before. Don't shop based on how
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many rails a power supply has because it doesn't really matter these days. The
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way you should shop for a power supply is by reading a credible review site
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like johnnyguru.com and finding a unit that meets your needs and performs well
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with the features that you want. The number of rails doesn't make your PC run
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cooler. It doesn't make it faster. And even if it did do any of those things,
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many manufacturers are just making this all up as they go along. Anyway,
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speaking of making it up as I go along, I've been doing sponsor spots for
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