|
|
|
Understand what ‘pure power’ means to PC
Every time you go for computer shopping, you search for the most suitable hardware that could meet your requirement best. You choose your desired CPU, motherboard and all cool stuff, but probably one component which most people at least in Pakistan write off their lists is Power Supply Unit (PSU).
You may be wondering what PSU has to do with PC. Sure you all are happy buying the $15 casings (made in China) with built-in PSU’s and fit in all the expensive PC components in it and you live happy ever after. Well, you’re dead wrong. Can you imagine a Formula-1 car running on diesel? Your definite answer would be “Of course not! They are not designed for diesel.” Following the same anology; the old and lame PC’s of yester years could do the economy job by consuming less energy just like any ordinary road car. But when you are building a PC powered by AMD Athlon FX or Intel P4 3.4 along with the monstrous next generation AGP cards such as Geforce 6800 Ultra or Radeon X800 XT, you need to power these hungry beasts with absolute purity.
It doesn’t mean that only the newest and hottest components drain power resources. For long-term reliability and an even longer lifespan, you must get your hands on some quality PSU’s even with the most affordable and average PC’s carrying a P4 2.4Ghz or AthlonXP’s with a standard AGP card and a few burners.
Is it a serious issue?
Most definitely it is! Every PC is a delicate piece of art, if you don’t take care of it, it will serve as a problem creator rather than a problem solver. In this article I’ll be pumping out some very interesting facts to help you understand what pure PC power means.
Reliability and lifespan of every PC component is crucial. Only in rare circumstances would you buy a new PC and sell it six months later, after all when you are spending so much buying a new extreme PC you want it to serve you as long as life itself. It’s a pity many have to send their motherboards for warranty replacement without even knowing the fact what caused the motherboards to fail in the first place.
Even with the most reliable manufacturers such as ASUS, ECS, ABIT, MSI and Intel, it’s a shame you can’t feed your goodies with pure power. For all those who previously had hardware problems especially with the RAMs and motherboards know what I am talking about. To add more, under over-clocking, a bad PSU, “those which most of us have” can damage components even more rapidly.
I know most of you are aware of the fact that the China-made PSU’s flooded in our market are unknown brand names with false reading or defective parts. These are probably the worst PSU’s in the world. It doesn’t necessarily mean that China makes bad products; we are the ones playing tricks on ourselves. These unknown PSU’s which we buy for a mere $12 rated 300Watts in Pakistan, in the US a quality PSU with the same rated power starts from $40. So what is this all difference about?
AC TO DC conversion: The power supply we get in our homes is known as Alternating Current (AC) which changes its direction several hundred times per second. It helps in bridging electricity through large distances with high efficiency. Before you even think of using any electrical item in your house such as TV, PC, etc., this current must be converted into Direct Current (DC). All electrical items contain their own circuits to do so but what counts here is the efficiency. If you ever look at the AC graph, you’ll find tons and tons of fluctuating waves at every single instant and you know the electrical items require constant power than fluctuations. It is thus essential to minimize the immense variations of AC current to a fixed stand still or DC.
Unfortunately, this mad AC graph can never be contained to a real straight line or pure DC current. Very small variations better known as ripples always exist. For instance, if your item requires a 12Volts power supply, it won’t be receiving pure 12 Volts but rather a continuous fluctuation, which may vary from “1 per cent to over 12 per cent.” The larger the percentage fluctuation the more is the risks and the less is the life span and reliability of the item especially computers. Since PC is the most delicate of all electrical devices, small voltage fluctuations can damage it permanently.
Safety limit: Fluctuations in voltages exist at all times. There is a safety limit in which your PC components can run at optimal level. If voltage fluctuations are within three per cent of the original prescribed voltage than consider your PSU to be a highly efficient one. For the unknown China brands which are also popular in Pakistan exceed the fluctuation by over eight per cent up to abnormal and critical levels of 15 per cent, which is bad, really bad. Even eight per cent is abnormal for any modern motherboard or processors today.
Power consumption: Difficult to tell yet easy to guess. An average PC with a decent CPU and AGP card and a couple of hard drives and a burner are likely to consume around 160-230Watts of power. Familiarize with the word “average, “ running 3D games will pile up more pressure on your AGP-CPU resulting in the consumption of more power by each respective component. So it depends on what you’re doing. The more you want from your PC the more power hungry it gets, of course not by a very big margin but this is something which is highly visible on higher end PCs. So if you are planning to buy an extreme PC carrying a 6800 Ultra/9800 XT which may consume as much as 100+ Watts alone, consider seeking for a Genuine PSU.
Power ratings
The peak or maximum stable power, which can be delivered by a PSU, is its power rating. Unbranded PSU’s (rated 350Watts) are only good for 200Watts. With minimal voltage fluctuations, a good healthy power rating defines the real picture and separates the men from the boys. Every cheap PSU try to act as a fouls play by mentioning false power ratings. Be aware of this fact. I have mentioned the difference here between a quality PSU and a cheap PSU.
A quality PSU is likely to have minimal volt-fluctuations, and is likely to have overload protection and would deliver pure power as advertised. On the other hand, a bad PSU will generate more ripples and is likely to blind you to death advertising half the power from the one printed on its back.
To summarize things a bit, less voltage fluctuation with “pure power” make an efficient combination. What is even more astonishing is the fact that even quality PSU’s may be rated 400Watts but theoretically are somewhere found to be 220-280Watts but are way much better than any other ordinary PSU.
The inside story
To give you some really important facts on how to distinguish various PSU’s. We have to go deep inside to find out and know certain things mentioned below:
— Every modern PSU is likely to be divided into 3 Voltage Rails.
— The three voltage rails are 3.3Volts- 5Volts and 12 Volts.
— The sum of the power delivered in each rail gives the total rated power.
— The theoretical power is the sum of the first two rails.
— Actual power is likely to be half of what is advertised.
— Quality PSU can peak their prescribed power while sustaining heat-ups.
— They may also prevent interference with other components inside a PC.
Now comes the tricky part, since the rated PSU power is the collective sum of all rails, you must know the function of each rail and how much power does each should have. The 12Volt rail will be used up by your motherboard. To power the cooling fans and I/O devices the 5Volt rail may comes into play, while the 3.3Volt rail is probably used up by lets say the AGP card.
Generally its up to the manufacturer how much power it goes for each rail but the larger share would always be in the 12Volt rail then the 5Volt and the least in the 3.3Volt rail. If your PSU read numbers in Amperes, which is the rated current rather than power, utilize the formula (P=Ampere x Voltage) to check the power ratings of your PSU in watts.
Mentioning again that is highly unlikely that the numbers will be correct but it’s worth looking at the figures just for fun. The major price difference lies in the small components inside a PSU.
For instance, if a Pakistan-made capacitor is rated 5Volts, we can think it can burn even on 4Volts. Similarly, a branded capacitor with same rated voltage can be pushed beyond its prescribed voltage. Quality PSU’s contain better circuitry and are efficient. Despite the fact, the efficiency under load conditions still remains to be seen near the 70 per cent mark.
Checking voltages
Your motherboard probably has this feature in its BIOS or in Windows through special software whereby you can view the temperatures of your CPU and the voltages of individual rails. Last but not the least, there must be a graphical display to explain the faulty voltages. Keeping in mind that small variation will always exist. Enable the voltage alarm with in the 5 per cent mark, and hopefully experience the good all “beep” sounds all the way.
If by chance you don’t have any hardware monitoring option on your Mobo, I believe you are running a P-III or a even a P4 with cheaper Mobo’s. Anyway, every latest cheap Mobo supports this feature so that shouldn’t be much of a problem.
Preventing heat-ups
How poor, each of these Unknown PSU’s only come with one lazy 80mm fan and that’s it. Opening the PSU reveals the low quality aluminum heat sinks and the whole cooling system is totally inefficient. Have you ever noticed how hot your PSU runs. To get a rough idea, run your computer for a while specially under games and place your hand in front of the power exhaust fan, the air feels really hot and temperatures inside the PSU are greater than 48 degree with an ambient room temperature of 33 degree.
The general idea here is to make a better understanding on how cooling can be helpful and how it can improve efficiency. It is therefore a must to ensure you have a good ventilation system inside your PC to keep the temperatures down. You can never keep your PC cooler than the room temperature using standard air cooling but if the ventilation inside your PC case is good, efficiency can drastically improve.
To add more misery of the one fan cooling of these non-standard PSU’s, open your casing and check that the CPU sits just under the PSU, since most of the heat is produced by the CPU itself, a lot of heat is sucked up into the power supply making thing unbearable for the $12 piece of crap.
Since these PSU’s don’t offer any warranty, you can do what ever you want than cut a large hole on the opposite side and the bottom side and add another cooling fan (if possible), due to the position of some components in the PSU you may have a hard time selecting a perfect position for the fan placement but after some time your efforts will pay off.
When I bought my Geforce 4 Ti 4200 128MB some time back, I didn’t know the importance of Power consumption. I was happy with the cheap PSU I had until one day when my Mobo started sounding alarms, it died, after replacement I tried my new Mobo and kept having the same problem. With my Geforce plugged in, the 3.3Volt rail would drop to 2.9 Volts (over 13 per cent) and my BIOS sounding alarming beeps all the way. Plugging every other ordinary AGP Card fixes the problem. Finally, I got a new PSU rated 350Watts (only good for 200Watts) but it had enough power to feed my 3D card.
An even more weird problem I faced was with my P3, the Windows would halt just before the desktop loads up and no matter what I did, install a new copy, format the hard disk, I never managed to run Windows again, until I experimented using a branded PSU on my P3, to my astonishment, my computer started working as if it never had any problem and I was left scratching my head. Don’t laugh, the same can or has happened to you too.
Final verdict
When it comes to quality coupled with good sets of features, things don’t come cheap. But that’s the way it goes. A quality 400Watts PSU in the US will cost you from $45 to $75. Some of the best PSU manufacturers include, Thermaltake, Antec, Zalman and enermax. Each company has its own reputation, while some companies like Antec can provide very stable voltages, Thermaltake provides Smart Fans and temperature monitors, Enermax may provide as much as four cooling fans while only Zalman provides almost any cooling unit without a Fan while still guaranteeing express cooling.
Though there aren’t many brand names available in Pakistan, you might manage to find PSUs by Dell and A-Open in the local market. For any ordinary system if your current PSU is working fine and providing stable voltages and pure power, I can say you are the luckiest person on the face of this earth.
In the end, if one can spend as much as $300 just on a P4 3.2GHz, why can’t he spend $40 on buying a quality PSU. A good PSU will help resolving most of the unexpected problems faced by rookies and they get confused and waste money in replacements and stuff.
The writer
|
|
|
|
