The pro version of the other calculator does that too, but it costs $2 to use (yeah, I know). Still better than one that offers such results, but whose results are completely off...

As for the other points, I'm not gonna quote them all...
P35 board << yes
Isn't that it will update and calculate itself? << it would, if your CPU is on the list, otherwise, you have to enter your wattage by hand -- it only has a handful of CPUs (47 vs over 750!) so you'll likely have to lookup the wattage of it with google first
WOW! So many SATAs. << I like/need my storage I'm looking forward to more/bigger drives still.
Anyway it shouldn't vary much from one to another. << precisely my point. Why offer countless options over something that essentially makes no difference? The same thing applies to fans, RAM speed, etc. It feels like say, if a there was a calculator for how much MPG you'd get using a certain car, this would be asking the color of the seats and type of carpet mats. They ought to just use a decent average value...
There's no PCIe x1 as a choice. (I selected 8600GTS as workaround, +20W than 8500GT) << it's more like 10W, probably less (extra NIC for VMware)
Don't RAM size and RAM speed have an effect on PSU/UPS? << it doesn't actually make a huge difference (power doesn't scale linearly with frequency), and again, it depends on the chips used, etc. Again, why not use a standard average i.e. 4 to 5 watts? And yes, 1.8v too (same story)
Normal case fans or...? how much watt/amp do those fans use? << same story again. They're whatever case fans came with the CM stacker 810 and the modules in it. There's just no way I'm going to waste time looking for the specs of each fan, when it'll only make a total change of a couple watts over the whole system build.
(I put 0.5 for both fans) << they don't use nearly that much power. That's 6 watts you've added per fan, so no wonder you calculator results are much higher. all the fans in the box combined likely use about 10 watts total.
You did take its recommended value (not the actual value), didn't you? << I'm going by "Recommended PSU wattage for decent brand PSU"
Your startup 12V1 draw needs a frightening 38.8A << non-issue This beastie has plenty of rails, and can handle 54A continuous on the 12v rails combined (more for a few minutes). This is exactly why the 367w figure it calculates isn't even close to being enough. (Also, if you don't enter 0.5A for each fan, it only calculates like 35A, not nearly 40)
So does your motherboard supports this technology? << Definitely not! But a $800 Areca ARC-1230 SATA RAID PCI-E controller would have it though... Been dreaming of one for ages, but it's a little on the expensive side

And even at 572W, it's not really what I'd want. A good 450w didn't work (it would at the very least need 500 or 550), so 572w wouldn't really have much left for upgrades, or to account for cap aging. I'd likely have to replace it within a couple of years...

Just saying. It's not exactly my fav calculator. It's not very convenient, asks for too much detail over things that makes hardly any difference, has very few CPUs, etc. And seeing the results, I don't really trust it. That's all.

This post has been edited by crahak: Jul 15 2008, 10:10 PM

Corrected the fan issues. I use 1A (12W) for the total watt consumption cost.
Updated result:


Thus it's 756W (Outervision) vs 508W (aanet).

========================================================



So do you pay for its pro version? Or you simply pick a PSU based on the total watt given by Outervision?

What's the brand/model of your PSU?




That's the problem of "free". It's free.

Can't really say it's my favourite or not. In effect there is no choice (except if I use paid service but I can't pay online). If we want more than just the total watt, it's the only one available on the net (so far). The choices left are "use it" or "not use it".

Just try to be cautious and add more headroom. Use the other one. Take the most conservative value.

This post has been edited by Wai_Wai: Jul 16 2008, 11:46 AM

Nah, I just use the basic. The results are perfect for "normal" boxes. This one said 750w, so I figured I'd look at the 750w PSUs at my usual shopping place, and the one I bought was on special for $74. I looked at the specs, and I knew 54A combined (4x 19A) on the 12v rails would be plenty (even if you remove 24A for the 12 HDs spinning up, that still leaves 30A for the CPU and such). The reviews were excellent, and it basically had everything I was wishing for (except perhaps being modular, but the cheapest good 750w modular PSU was like 3x the price, so too bad)


Cooler Master Real Power Pro 750w. It's powerful (it's not marketing lies -- it can actually supply 900w for a short amount of time, like drives spinning up), has ~85% efficiency, it has wires for everything (18 total; 6 of which are sata which I needed badly) which are plenty long (up to 31" long) even for a large full tower where the PSU is at the bottom, it has Active PFC, it's not missing a lot of the filtering stuff like many PSUs are, it uses a good design and quality parts (mosfets & diodes that can handle plenty of power -- nothing weak anywhere), it uses decent quality caps rated at good temps, it has excellent voltage regulation & low ripple, it handles brown outs just fine, it has pretty much every optional protection a PSU can offer, it runs quiet, etc. I'm sure there is even better out there, but not for $74

Thanks for your reply.

Cooler Master seems to be a "OK" brand only. Some people tell me not to pick this brand. I think, with some pre-cautions, we can actually find decent PSUs at a good price.


AFAIK you can't simply add up the amps to form the combined amps.

For example the antec neo HE 430w dual-rail, has 12V1+12V2+12V3 = 48A. But look at the 12V combined rating. It's 384w, or 32A (384/12=32 - amps is watts / voltage and the voltage is 12V in this case). So the combined amp is about 32A (not 48A). We assume that rating is accurate. There is a much more detailed but complex way to work out the combined total of 12V amps but I skip it here. -- Details.

However combined amps have some other problems. Your system may shut down sometimes even if your combined amp is over the amp required by the system. It usually happens when you system has high-end graphic card(s). They draws frightening amount of watt. The transient load can be the cause of evil. Single rail will not have such kinds of problems.

This post has been edited by Wai_Wai: Jul 16 2008, 08:37 PM

The thing is, like a LOT companies who sells PSUs, they don't actually make the units themselves. The low-end Cooler Master PSUs are built by a different OEM, which is of not so great quality. There's a large number of companies who sell products like that, ranging from low-end/not exactly great PSUs, to more expensive quality units. Then again, there is somewhat reputable brands (e.g. enermax) that makes some no so great products (I've seen so many dead enermax PSUs it's not even funny, and many of their designs aren't that great, like the 1000w galaxy, very high ripple on that) It all comes down to who made it, the design they used, and the parts used (if they skimped somewhere to save a buck). Whose name is put on it (rebadged) doesn't matter really, it's just a sticker.


I didn't 4x19A = 76A, but combined is 54A like I said (648W total -- the limit here is how much power the transformer's secondary can deliver). Like I said before, I'm not a complete moron I've built SMPS'es from Maxim ICs + International Rectifier's MOSFETs (good old IRF series -- great for H bridges too) and even classic chips like the ICL7660 (you know, back in the day when we still had ECG and NTE books?) Designing & building power supplies and audio amps was one of my hobbies in the 90's


Actually, not so much. Multiple rails is in fact better in most cases. This way, even if my hard drives spinning up suck the power so badly that the voltage went too low or such (not the case, but let's pretend), then the CPU is still unaffected, as it's fed from another rail (they have individual current limiters). So it all comes down to what you plug on which rail... I'm not too worried about the load of my totally l33t 8500GT that never sees a workload above 1% either

This post has been edited by crahak: Jul 16 2008, 09:44 PM

Why, everyone knows that cars with Red Connelly Leather interiors do eat a lot of gas....





jaclaz

Yes Antec does that too. It doesn't make any PSU. Theirs are built by different OEMs.

The problem is it's hard to know which model is produced by which OEM. Even the same OEM, it appears it can provide both good and bad PSUs to different companies / different product lines (perhaps they give budgets/orders to the OEM ?!).

Cooler Master has a mixture of mostly bad and ok and some good PSUs. That's why its fame is not good.

Achel creates its own PSU. The price is reasonable with long warranty. It produces PSUs for other firms too. But I have no ideas how good/bad their PSUs are.



LOL. It proves that either my math sucks or I was too tired when I read your reply.




Well it seems like they will not make any much difference under the modern technology. Either way fits both your and my non-gaming budget build.

The single rail can keep the voltage within the specified limits so I'm not worried about one big rail either. But single rail seems to be better to deal with transient load of ultra/very-high gaming build. So it seems it's slightly better upgradability-wise. Another option is multi-rail but no pre-rail current limits. Those are essentially no difference from single-rail.

This post has been edited by Wai_Wai: Jul 17 2008, 05:37 AM

Regarding who makes what power supply, you may want to take a look at : http://www.10stripe.com/articles/who-made-...ower-supply.php

If you want to read some really in depth, rip 'em open style, reviews of power supplies, you may also want to read about that here : http://www.jonnyguru.com/

I'm interested to know what makes such a huge difference so I started to take a close look at how they come with such a very different answer.
I even contacted the author of aanet and asked for explanations. I found something interesting between two calculators and I want to share what I found.

Capacitor aging
Outervision has this factor while aanet not. If we take this factor out, Outervision will be 582W vs Aanet 367W.

Asking aanet to include this factor into account, the author told me that he had included this into consideration in the calculation. He explained the 'generic' style of psu has already accounted for this with the huge headroom figures. Decent brand psu's use proper capacitors that last for a very long time before reducing in a capacitance/ESR enough to impact on psu's performance, so he don't add any headroom for this.

Take a typical 'low end' but not junk capacitor like a Teapo sm. Teapo are very popular, from pcp@c to low end thermaltakes. It's rated for 3000 hours at 105 degrees C @ maximum rated ripple current before 20% change in capacitance is noted. It will last for 192,000 hours at 45 degrees C. This would mean 21.92 years of 24/7 usage.
Ref: http://www.cbs.it/acrobat/teapo/sm.pdf, http://www.low-esr.com/endurance.html-ssi .

In other words, as long as you buy a decent brand of PSU which uses proper capacitors, you can use your PSU over 10+ years easily. Capacitor aging is a bluff. Adding 30% is utterly unnecessary.

However if you want to use "this factor" for other purposes (eg as a way to add headroom for future expansion), you may do it. But you don't use it simply because you are worried about "capacitor aging".


Specs vs Actual Consumption
I tried to compare the value given in each component by each calculator. I found something interesting. Outervision is trying to be very conservative and will usually take the extreme/max values. It does what other simple PSU calculator does (trying to be way overestimate just to be safe).

Aanet is very special in that it tries to be as realistic as possible (while being safe not to underestimate). It uses the actual wattage from the test results to do the calculation. It breaks down the steps and does not give only one single answer. Instead of reading the recommendation only (which is a wrong way to do), you should read all parts in "Actual System Power Consumption"!!

Some comparisons:
Outervision = (OV)
Aanet = (AN)

Product ======================== OV ===== AN (Difference)
CPU:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (Manchester) ==== 89 ===== 47 (-42W)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (Toledo) ====== 110 ===== 70 (-40W)
Intel Core2Duo E6300 (Allendale) ======= 65 ===== 44 (-21W)
Intel Core2Quad Q9300 (Yorkfield) ===== 103 ===== 58 (-45W)
Intel Core2Extreme QX9650 (Yorkfield) == 130 ===== 85 (-45W)
[Note: Regarding the watt usage in AN, the default wattage used by AN is the peak wattage at heavy/full load from actual tests]

Graphic card:
ATI HD2600Pro ================== 25 ===== 22 (-3W)
ATI HD3650 ==================== 45 ===== 37 (-8W)
ATI HD4850 ==================== 99 ===== 99 ( -- )
ATI HD4870 =================== 144 ==== 124 (-20W)
nVidia 8600GT ================== 38 ===== 38 ( -- )
nVidia 9600GT ================== 54 ===== 51 (-3W)
[Note: Regarding the watt usage in AN, the default wattage used by AN is the peak usage. The actual value is adjusted a little to be closer to what the graphics card would be continuously drawing in gaming]

Hard disk drive (HDD):
SATA HDD: 24/HDD (OV)
Generic HDD: ~7.875/HDD [when gaming], ~11/HDD [for fileserver] (AN)

Others:
RAM DDR2 (800) ================ ~4.5 ==== ~1.5 ( -3.0W)
Floppy drive =================== ~4.6 ===== 0.0 # (-4.6W)
DVDRW Drive ================= ~26.8 ===== 0.0 * (-26.8W)
Blue-ray Drive ================= ~28.8 ===== N/A
PCI (average) ================= ~13.4 ==== ~2.0 (-12W)
USB device ==================== ~2.3 ==== ~0.5 " (- 2W)
Firewire ====================== ~7.2 ===== N/A
#: The author excludes the option of FDD because seriously they only use power when accessing the floppy drive, so unless your running crysis off your floppy drive it's not going to make a difference.
*: Only the 5V Amp is changed (+0.3A).
": Low-powered USB device consumes 0.5W, high-powered USB device consumes 2.5W.

Reference Power Consumption:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/power-...ide,1611-4.html
http://www.behardware.com/art/imprimer/670/

Comments
Outervision is a conservative calculator. Expect to buy an overwatt PSU that you may not need. In addition it appears this site has partnership with various PSUs (ads!). I don't know if it's part of the reasons why it is considerably conservative.
- CPU: It simply takes the values from the manufacturers'. It's the safest but the manufacturer usually overstates their watt usage. For example Intel states 65W TDP across many Core2Duo products. In reality it is very normal that the actual wattage is a lot different from the quoted TDP value of the CPU
- Graphic card: It's ok. However the wattage when both cards run in SLI/F is inaccurate. It's wrong to simply multiply the wattage by twice. The actual wattage is more complicated, depending on the card, motherboard etc.
- HDD: 24W per SATA HDD looks crazy. I think hardly any HDD needs over 20W. As an example, WD Caviar SE series needs less than 10W while reading/writing according to the manufacturer specifications. Slightly less (~0.5W) when it is idle.
- Others: It goes too far when measuring the possible watt usage under "Others". They are way over-estimating. For example, there are few USB devices consuming 2.3W. Devices like USB keyboard, mouse, RAM stick etc. usually need less than 0.5W.

Aanet is an aggressive calculator. It wants to get as close to the max watt usage our system really needs, with some headroom on top for safety.
- CPU: It is much more realistic and accurate. The values are the peak values at 100% load taken from the actual tests.
- Graphic card: It's slightly better than Outervison's. However the wattage when both cards run in SLI/F is also inaccurate. It's wrong to simply multiply the wattage by twice. The actual wattage is more complicated, depending on the card, motherboard etc.
- HDD: the values are taken from actual tests. The values are most realistic if your HDD is list. Otherwise you can select "generic hard disk" or any specific HDD close to yours. But then it is safer to add a few watt per HDD above its calculation, especially when your computer uses a lot of HDDs, acting as fileservers or having heavy hard disk activities. 10-15W would be a safe while realistic range of figures for 3.5" HDDs. It would be 3-5W for 2.5" HDDs.
- Others: It is being more realistic on the actual consumption of the components under "Others". It even takes RAM overclocking into account while Outervision lacks it. Although it can cover most typical or normal situations, it may get too aggressive in a few cases (eg non-typical systems which are heavy on PCI bus). Fortunately nearly all decent PSUs can accommodate your system with more than enough watt from 3.3V/5V rails, though the total watt required (in the worst scenario) will be slightly underestimated.

This post has been edited by Wai_Wai: Jul 23 2008, 05:04 AM

Except, you can't even do that. Not only they use bad caps, but most of them extremely overstate their specs (and dies at half the rated watts in a test), use junk parts that will soon break regardless, are often rated at unrealistic temps, and you just can't account for that kind of stuff. And often at the very first time the line is non-optimal (e.g. brownout) they die.


Even the best caps age, albeit not as much.


Yeah, @ 45C perhaps. In real life operating conditions, with some load temps are gonna be higher than that, especially on a lower wattage PSU that's always running nearly maxed out. And that "life" is rated for a 20% loss in capacity, which again might be too much on a barely sufficient PSU (i.e. you didn't actually add overhead for this). Plus, if every cap loses 20% capacity, in the end, your total power available likely isn't just 20% less. In real life, you see barely sufficient PSUs failing MUCH quicker than that (often only a year). Very, very few PSUs make it anywhere near 20+ years of 24/7 use without breaking down.


Simply not true.


Like I said before, they DO underestimate. On the 367W they calculate for my rig, it likely wouldn't even POST! (it just might put on a pretty fireworks show) A quality 450W has proven to be insufficient.


They let you change the % of TDP to anything you want if you think a conservative value of 85% is too much.


It's not crazy at all. You have to look at when the drives spin up. And at that time, they easily use 24W (in the very first few miliseconds, it's a lot more than that actually, like for any motor start current) Using anything less than 20W for this is plain wrong.


And the results come to LESS than what your system needs. How good is that?

Again, how good is a calculator that severely under-estimates how much wattage your system needs? And he claims to have included "headroom on top for safety" LOL. With a quality PSU ~100W more than what they calculate, my computer didn't even work right, so there... 550W perhaps might have sufficed (then add a minimum for cap aging, and some room for expansion, and 750W isn't really that overkill), but 367W isn't ANYWHERE NEAR what it needs. I don't go as far as doubling watts, but using aanet's as-is is a great way to buy something inadequate. You can try to defend them all you want, but that still makes their calculator fundamentally broken and 100% useless as far as I'm concerned. I'd sooner pay $2 for the outervision pro calc than rely on aanet's...

At this point, I'll have to borrow jaclaz's line: "Go and buy your 300W PSU" I'm not going to waste further time arguing over a broken/useless calculator...

This post has been edited by crahak: Jul 23 2008, 03:25 PM

Not to chime in and come off as arrogant but using wattage as a basis for your arguments is a complete waste of time as it doesn't paint a true picture. Wattage is the sum of voltage times amperage and anyone with some basic math skills knows that in a formula such as x * y = z you can have different values for x, y and still equal the same z.

To quote one of my replies in a previous thread that discusses this same issue:

This post has been edited by jcarle: Jul 23 2008, 04:27 PM