I'm looking at buying a new case that comes with a 430W PSU (Antec NSK6580) - the PSU is an EarthWatts, so it has an 80 PLUS rating.
I calculated (using Antec's PSU calculator) that the most I'm every likely to require is about 300-340W depending on how many HDDs I might use in future - given the efficiency of the PSU, am I going to be using more electricity than I might be if I used a smaller PSU (e.g. 380W)?
Just not sure as to how efficient PSUs are when they're only running at say 50%.
Oversized PSU an issue?
Moderators: Ralf Hutter, Lawrence Lee
Typically PSU's are most efficient at around 50% load.
http://www.80plus.org/manu/psu/psu_repo ... Report.pdf
http://www.80plus.org/manu/psu/psu_repo ... Report.pdf
That's definitely not oversized.
Anything over 20% of the PSUs capacity is fine. Your PSU would be oversized only if you spent most of your time below that 20%, so if it idles at over 86W you have nothing to worry about.
My own PC idles at just under 40W, but oh the difficulty of finding a decent 200W PSU... I'm considering running the monitor off the PCIe power cable instead of its own power brick.
Anything over 20% of the PSUs capacity is fine. Your PSU would be oversized only if you spent most of your time below that 20%, so if it idles at over 86W you have nothing to worry about.
My own PC idles at just under 40W, but oh the difficulty of finding a decent 200W PSU... I'm considering running the monitor off the PCIe power cable instead of its own power brick.
As you are in the UK there is always LinITX.com, seeMoon GT wrote:My own PC idles at just under 40W, but oh the difficulty of finding a decent 200W PSU...
http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=10916
for example.