Good at PIV calcs? What's this in Watts?

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11 May 2007
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it doesn't say, it just says you need essentially a standard 5v and 12v rail to run it. the ripple has nothing to do with current, without current you can't work out wattage.

either way, adding up every amp that your items SAY they use will give you a massive overestimate for what psu you need anyway.

99% of components list MAX current used at any given time. in most intensive usage situations you simply can not max out everything all along at the same time. if your cache/memory is maxed out its likely cpu is waiting for data and therefore not drawing its max currents. you're unlikely to be reading all data in memory so its not at its max. if you're encoding and using cpu as intensely as possible you're not likely to be using sound, if you're maxing hard drive you're unlikely to be in the middle of a game yet so gfx isn't loaded and so on and so on and so on and so on.

its been shown multiple times in lots of reviews, home testing. a high end overclocked quad core system with umpteen raptors in raid and a 2900xt will run fine on a 500W psu. a e6300 with a x1600xt with 38 drives will run fine on a 400W psu.

if its a buy cheapest decent psu you can, list specs and you'll be told, ,if you want the most efficiency you can get to save on leccy builds again list spec. but most of the high end psu's now aim to get 80%+ efficiency from 20-100% load of the psu.

so if you get a 1500W psu and run at 150W idle then you'll be at a lower efficiency. i think the thermaltake toughpower range is actually putting up some extremely impressive efficiency numbers( hardocp.com review ).
 
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Thanks for that

I've got one of these
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-023-OC

The sticker on the PSU says:
+3.3V(36A), +5V(30A), +12V1(18A), +12V2(18A), +12V3(18A), +12V4(18A)

12V1 = CPU1
12V2 = CPU2/PCI-e2
12V3 = Motherboard (ATX Connector), Molex, and SATA connectors
12V4 = PCI-e1

Is this what that means:
12V1 = is just for the CPU
12V2 = is more power for hungry CPUs and a second pci-e card
12V3 = is all molex,sata, floppy and everything else plugged into the board like fans, pci cards etc?
12V4 = PCI-e1 is for your primary graphics card
 
I rate my ThermalTake Purepower 680w extremely highly.

Overclockers dont sell them anymore :(



p.s if this god forbid was to ever fail, would I need the box and stuff to RMA it :o ?? I only have the psu now.


Also how long would my warrenty be ?
 
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