Greg Sevart wrote:
While it is indeed true that increasing temperatures drop a power supply's rating, I think you may take efficiency's role too far. While my 80+% SeaSonic runs cooler than the ~65-70% supply it replaced, it still doesn't run _cool_. There is still a lot of power being dissipated as heat. The real advantage, as you point out, is that the SeaSonic units (at least the M12) deliver rated power at 40C, and 80% at 50C. While I agree that a 500W quality power supply is sufficient for his single-GPU machine, I advocate buying more capacity than needed now to allow for expansion in the future. While C2D stunted CPU power demand for a while, the addition of multiple cores is causing that demand to increase once again. GPU power consumption is in near runaway mode. Even chipsets are starting to pull a not-insignificant amount of power. Of course, my PSU strategy is to have the supply last through several machine builds...so if you have different objectives in that regard, sizing should change accordingly. Greg
The notion of 500+ Watt PS in PCs is insanity. The notion of these power-hungry GPUs is also insanity.
STOP THE INSANITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
