| Saving the Globe One Power Supply at a Time |
| Written by Nino Marchetti | ||
| Wednesday, 08 August 2007 | ||
 With eco-friendly hard drives coming to market it seems to make sense other computer components would follow suit. One company getting on the green bandwagon for green components is Corsair with some new environmental leaning power supplies. The Corsair VX Series of power supplies are geared towards mainstream do-it-yourself computer enthusiasts. The power supplies support the Energy Star 2007 standard as well as the 80Plus efficiency rating and incorporate a single +12V power rail which Corsair says delivers continuous power under heavy loads. The manufacturer estimates the VX Series can get 80% or more energy efficiency under a wide range of loading conditions while generating minimal heat as it operates. The VX Series is available in 450W ($86) and 550W ($100) models. Corsair says these models are ideal for home theater PCs because of a quiet fan design. We just like that they are relatively cheap and may help save a few trees. The question, really, is whether we will ever need the 450 watt peak output. Even at peak efficiency at 50% load, that's over 200 watts...which my PC hasn't seen in a long time even with a fancy graphics card. See Also:-Google Working on Power Supplies- -How to Build a Green PC-
Comments
(2)
fancy graphics?
written by Brian , August 08, 2007
Hrrmmm
written by Hank , August 09, 2007
Maybe I should have said "fairly fancy." My PC idles at 110 watts, and hits 200 during startup. So, yeah, I need (and use) a 300 watt power supply. It's not a quad core, but it's a nice PC that breezes through HalfLife2 without any problems.
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Also, the biggest period of draw on a power supply is right after the system starts up. Hard drives actually draw quite a bit as they push their motors to maximum to spin the relatively heavy disks up to speed. So while you PC may idle at 200w, at startup it could easily draw twice that. And you'll notice the peak efficiency for those power supplies is right at 50% load... how convenient.