Hello good people,
today I wanna discuss with you the topic of power supplies for your gaming. Mainly I will address the topic of a cheap power supply vs an expensive one.
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1. Power cost and efficiency
Well this topic can't be discussed world wide.For example here in germany power the 1 kwh is about 30 Euro-Cent = 0.35$. That about 3 times the price in the US. So for all you german gamers and all other gamers that live in area where power is that expensive... Go with an efficient power supply. It is a no brainer. Go with a power supply that has at least 90%. Moreover think twice if you wanna overclock.
For all the others: You have to do the math. I will do for you the math of the following example. Assume you have a 450 Watt gaming rig. That is about the power that is needed if you got a decent mid to mid/high range PC with some overclock ongoing. Let's assume further, you have a power supply that gives you 80% efficiency (the cheap one for 40 $) and a good one (expensive 100$) that gives you 92% efficiency. Here is a graph from corsair that shows you the efficiency depending on the levels and the usage. Attention! The load of the power supply is also a factor.
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The question now is, if it is worth spending 60$ for that gain in efficiency. Let's assume in your country the kwh is 0.12$. The watt that you draw from the wall with the 80% is 562.5 Watt. With the 92% you only draw 489.1 Watt from the Wall. That is a difference of 73.4 Watt. Assume you are a casual gamer and in average you game a modern game for 1 hour a day. With a calculator like this click me you get a annual cost of 3.2$. This means you have to run your computer for 20 years to get a ROI. So in this case it is not worth spending the extra cash. But power cost is not the only reason.
2. Security and warranty
The difference of an expensive and a low cost power supply is the warranty. A good power supply often comes with a 10 years warranty. A cheaper one with only 2 years. A power supply is smth that you carry from system to system. So a usage of 10 years is not unrealistic. Even more, the power requirement of systems haven't changes much in the last 10 years. Even my system 13 years from now had 450 Watt power supply. So if you buy cheap and the power supply dies in 3 to 4 years, the calculation from above is non-sense. At last there is the topic of protection. the circuits in cheap power supplies are often not protected. In case you have a failure (e.g. thunder strike) in your apartment, there is the chance some of your other components get damaged. My advice is. If you have a decent rig like a 300 $ GPU, choose a decent power supply.
3. Modularity and heat
At last there is the fact that cheap power supplies are often not modular. That means that there are many cables that my lie around in your system. A bif cable mess....
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This can influence your airflow and cause increased heat in your system. But not only this. There is also the fact that cheap power supplies have a worse efficiency, which means they produce more heat. Which again increases the temperatures in your system. Especially as a gamer you don't want that! Want to overclock our GPU and CPU.
Conclusion: Even if there is no ROI for the more expensive power supply... In my opinion, a gamer that takes his gaming rig serious should not save money for a part of his rig that will last probably over a decade. A good power supply nowadays will also be a good power supply in 10 years from now. Invest in your rig. Buy a good power supply. I am a huge fan of the Corsair series. That is one of the manufacturers I can highly recommend.
Cost is one aspect, but you need your powersupply to deliver at least over 150 watts of the average watt of the output of your system.
Investing in a moderate high power supply can even save you money as it can prolong the life span and maintain efficiency.
My rule of thumb was always to spend at least 10% of the total system cost on the power supply. There has been a lot of improvement in power supply technology over the last ten years.
The most important element of the power supply is its ability to deliver stable voltages along its rails. You don't want the +3.3v rail spiking to 3.5 or down to 3.1, or the 12v rail dropping to 11.8; this is what eventually kills components.
Stability should be the most important metric a power supply is measured on. :) Seasonic and Corsiar equipment are very good in this area.
Great post, I am currently about to buy a new PSU as mine keeps causing crashes for me, so this was a great post to read :) Keep it up!
The PSU is the part no PC user should ever cheap out on.
Great post! Would you mind if I included it in today's "best of gaming"?
Thx. Feel free
Awesome post! I'm planning on building my very first desktop pc soon (had only laptops throughout all my adult life) and had no idea about the efficiency factor and that PSUs lasted for so long. I'll keep these in mind.
Thank you for sharing! Keep up the great work and see you soon!
Shaden