Enough already!

[Geo]

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTMzNSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

Is it just me, or is that product a poster child for the idea that we've crossed a line on power usage on enthusiast PCs? A liquid cooled psu? That just feels soooo wrong.

 

[SugarCoat]

Thats the first one i've seen built for retail sale, i was wondering when it would happen.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Well hey G, at least it's only $500.

 

[the maddman]

Eh, it's just for bragging rights. The watercooling at least.

It's kinda scary though, for that PS to push 1400watts out at peak load, it's going to be drawing nearly the 15 amp limit for a single house circuit. I can't imagine how much stuff you'd have to cram into a case to hit that.

edit: read more of the review, they actually got the powersupply to draw 1599watts at 100volts input. That is scary, that is more then 15amps @ 100volts. Ouch my calif. electricity bill.

 

[SugarCoat]

Eh, it's just for bragging rights. The watercooling at least.

Not really, that actually looks appealing to me, except the price. But if they made a 600-700Watt version that would be better. For myself or anyone else looking to remove as much noise as possible the PSU is basically the last hurtle. You can find silent ones and even passive ones of course but most arent high end and dont break 400-500Watt ranges and quite a few of those dont score well.

 

[the maddman]

Not really, that actually looks appealing to me, except the price. But if they made a 600-700Watt version that would be better. For myself or anyone else looking to remove as much noise as possible the PSU is basically the last hurtle. You can find silent ones and even passive ones of course but most arent high end and dont break 400-500Watt ranges and quite a few of those dont score well.

You can get normal powersupplies already with a 120mm fan cooling them. And without a pump to make more noise. They don't even cover the noise level in that review, I'm guessing at high loads, the fan has to step up to keep it cool.

Watercooling just adds an extra interface to the heat exchange (from component to water to air) it's when you can use a large radiator that you can make it quiet.

 

[AlNom]

Global Warming

 

[ANova]

As someone else stated, once the industry discovered they could market power supplies with high prices and people would pay they jumped on it like anything else, this kind of stuff is the result.

 

[Davros]

edit: read more of the review, they actually got the powersupply to draw 1599watts at 100volts input. That is scary, that is more then 15amps @ 100volts. Ouch my calif. electricity bill.

who in the hell has only 100v electricity supply ?

 

[the maddman]

who in the hell has only 100v electricity supply ?

Well, here in the USA, our supply is supposed to be 110-120 volts, but if you're the last house on the poles, the voltage can sag down to 100 volts. It's a stress test to see if the powersupply can handle working harder at the sub-standard voltage.

But it does happen, especially in places with old wiring.

 

[pcchen]

And, for some reason, Japanese use 100V.

 

[Blazkowicz]

you can simply check with a voltmeter, I had 245V from the outlet

I didn't bother going through the eight pages, but they most probably have to use testing equipment to draw all the amps from the PSU. off course a o/c ed SLI rig will consume maybe a third of that power.

 

[tabs]

Splitting the 12v into 4 rails is a bit of a dissapointment though, for that price.

 

[Rolf N]

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTMzNSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

Is it just me, or is that product a poster child for the idea that we've crossed a line on power usage on enthusiast PCs? A liquid cooled psu? That just feels soooo wrong.

Agreed! And I figure your choice of thread title might allow me to go wider here. There's a lot of "high end" gear being flogged to the PC gamer, and I loathe a whole damn lot of it. I hate how it became nigh impossible to buy a decent mobo without SLI for instance. Or a decent aftermarket air cooler for a CPU. Or a normal-looking ATX case.

I interpret it as a sure sign of where PC gaming is heading: for the snobs. The consoles have absorbed and continue to absorb a big chunk of the PC gaming audience, to leave the MMORPGers and the ultimate-powah elitists as the only significant populations. The middle-of-the-road gaming PC is a thing of the past.

That might swing back a little as the console generation draws on, but it is a huge problem right now. Very few games take proper advantage of the PC anymore, because they are all multiplat now, and then there's the nuisance with what OS to install, whose drivers to trust and all that. It's worse now than it has been with any console generation since the Place-Te-Shaun one.

Some things are still good. I'm happy that Asus still builds sensible, simple, solid motherboards for those who want them. And I'm grateful that NVIDIA designed another attractive mid-range SKU in the 40W range that is readily available with passive cooling. I love how Stalker, Gothic 3 and modern RTSes use all of the PCs possibilities. But these things appear to be minority interests in the wider landscape.
I don't want to come across as a console brat who poops on the gaming PC, because I once loved it very much, but that's an interpretation that works for me to describe what I've noticed in the PC hardware market.

 

[Frank]

Well, such a PSU nicely complements your Hummer.