External vs internal PSUs *spawn

[Scott_Arm]

"I would of bought a XB1 but it had an external PSU, so I bought a PS4." is a justification thats probably never been used.

If it had its probably somewhere between. "because 4 is bigger than one" and "because I am Peter Simons the fourth" in terms of relevancy on the impact of overall sales.

If you had to eat 1+ billion in losses on your last product and you've only designed a handful of CE products, you might go with tried and true methods versus trying to get fancy.

Is someone really going to buy a PS4 because it has an internal PSU vs an external one? I can see a frequent traveller buying the PS4 because of the input voltage range, but the internal vs external thing is pretty much a stupid argument to have. Some people prefer one over the other, but I doubt anyone would would seriously consider it into their decision to buy either platform.

It may be shocking to some here, but companies can contract out design work. For a company like Microsoft, they don't really need to have internal talent for hardware. There are tons of capable people working for capable companies. Cheap and easy is sometimes desirable for companies, not because of lack of talent, but because it's ... well ... cheap and easy.

 

[eastmen]

Your house must be pretty awesome. I don't even have 9 rooms to put 9 360s into.

Wish it was my house. Still saving for a wedding and a house ( jersey is hella expensive where we live)

The set up is like this. I'm on the top floor and I have the htpc. The floor under me has my parents bed room with a 360 , my little sisters each have a 360 (although they are over 21 now so guess not little) my fathers office has a 360 for the tv. So that's 4 on that floor. The main floor we have a nice 60 inch tv with a 360 , the kitchen has one along with the den. So that's another 3.

We then have one in the basement which we my niece and nephew use a a room when they stay over and the other side of the basement has one for when the girls work out... though they never do.

Oh yea the pool has one . In the summer we project tv on the side of the garage and have movie nights while relaxing .

I wired every room with cat 6e so bandwidth isn't an issue except for the one outside.

 

[Scott_Arm]

It will be interesting to see what design works better for the long haul.

The small fans of the original 360 are extremely loud now in my launch unit, the ps3 40 gig I had got even louder and I had to open it and clean out the dust multiple times. The slim xbox 360 hasn't been a problem yet although I think its what 4 years old at this point so may be a while yet. I can't speak for the playstation redesigns

The problem with small fans is they're usually high rpm and the bearings wear out. I haven't had any fan issues with any of my consoles. 360s, PS3, Wii were all fine. Disc drive noise is a different story. 360 disc drive was awful. Game installs were the best feature 360 added, just to avoid the damned disc noise.

 

[eastmen]

I don't hear the psu on my one so I doubt its spinning very fast.

 

[Dave Baumann]

I'm troubled by the fact that some people were brainwashed into thinking that it's as simple as "it's bigger, so it can be less noisy".

I don't think people think that the size is making the difference, rather the power and acoustics tests showed it.

 

[Grall]

Is someone really going to buy a PS4 because it has an internal PSU vs an external one?

I did.

Well, not only because of that of course, the bone isn't even available in my country yet, but it did factor in heavily. I hate external power bricks, especially huge power bricks with thick unwieldy power cables going from them like the xboxes have had.

Power bricks lay about on the floor taking up space, looking unsightly, sucking up dust and generally being a blight to my eyes as well as my general disposition, merely knowing it's there. The wuu is particularly egregious in this regard, considering it needs TWO power bricks, which is just insanely stupid, but hey - Nintendo!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Would you have not bought PS4 if it had an external PSU?

 

[MrFox]

Personally, it's not enough for me to skip the PS4, there are too many more important reasons to buy it. But if there were two SKU of PS4, one internal and one external power supply, I would have paid $50 more for the internal one, and $100 more would still make me seriously hesitate.

 

[Scott_Arm]

You're weird.

 

[MrFox]

You're weird.

You have no idea.

I'm sorry you made poor choices in furniture that don't allow you that luxury that my $40 entertainment stand from Lowes affords me.

It's not a question of money, but a question of layout.

My equipment rack is an open stand, it's like shelves standing in free air. I like this layout but there's no place to hide the power supplies behind anything, it looks good as long as I can route cables to the sides. It also has to be placed on the side of the room, because I need all the front wall area for my projector which I don't want to pollute with lights from the equipment. I don't want a cabinet because I think it's ugly.

- Receiver
- Subwoofers power amps
- Parametric EQ/DSP for subs
- PS4+PS3
- Wii, Network equipment, Router, Modem
- Gaming PC
- Charging shelf with a big bunch of short mini/micro USB on a hub, where I charge my phone, tablet, ebook reader, DS3, DS4, Move, BT headset, wireless Mouse/KB... everything except the Wiimote and Gamecube controllers that are using crappy AA batteries.

It's pretty full, I'll add a WiiU eventually, and still keep my Wii for gamecube games. The PS3 and PS4 on top of each other is the cleanest setup. If all of these equipments had a large external power supply it would be a big fucking mess.

 

[djskribbles]

Is someone really going to buy a PS4 because it has an internal PSU vs an external one?

External wouldn't be a deal breaker, but it's definitely not my preference. I mean if the brick was the size of a laptop brick, then I'd be OK. But the XB1 brick is fairly big. It'd be a pretty big eye sore in my setup.

If PS had a history of reliability issues from heat, then I'd maybe prefer external. But I have yet to have any PlayStation die on me, and I've had them all. The PS4 is relatively small, but mine is quiet and I haven't had my system lock up once (got it at launch).

 

[zed]

Why doesnt my (non mobile) PC have an external power supply?
My last mac mini had an internal powersupply and it was tiny

Does anyone have a list of what previous consoles had internal/external power supplies?
What does the wiiU use?

 

[Grall]

Would you have not bought PS4 if it had an external PSU?

I might have bought a bone instead, for the kinect, which is kinda cool in a way, I dunno. Except MS seems to have killed that now, so... *shrug* Anyway, I have no particular allegience to any console manufacturer (except nintendo, which is pure nostalgia because I loved their games as a kid/youth, even though they're complete and utter morons these days.)

The small, elegant casing and internal PSU of PS4 completely chinched the deal however. The bone's case is enormous, not particularly well designed (IMO) with those irritatingly un-symmetric diagonal vents which trigger my non-existing OCD, and that power brick on top of the already enormous case - forget it. Not when PS4 is tiny in comparison.

My last mac mini had an internal powersupply and it was tiny

Apple even has universal internal PSUs for their access points and routers, which is like, awesome. Too bad their networking hardware lacks other fairly vital stuff such as a decent firewall for example, QoS and things like that, but hey - that's Apple for ya.

Does anyone have a list of what previous consoles had internal/external power supplies?
What does the wiiU use?

Almost no (modern) consoles pre-original playstation had internal PSUs AFAIK. I'm not totally sure about Neo*Geo. Probably not. Megadrive, Master System, SNES, NES all had external PSUs. NEC's PC Engine probably had external brick, considering how small the device was, and their other consoles probably had external ones as well considering it's easier and cheaper to do it that way. I can't remember how the Atari VCS did it. Again, probably external.

IIRC, original Playstation and PS2 both had internal PSU, and Saturn too. PS One (or whatever the slim version was called) probably dropped that; the PS2 slims all had external bricks I think.

N64 was - oddly enough for nintendo - a hybrid. It had an external brick that physically mated to the ass of the N64 main console itself, forming a cohesive whole.

Gamecube, Wii - external both of them. Wii U, one external for the console, and then another, separate-yet-smaller one to charge the gamepad, because why take up just one power plug when you can use TWO?!

 

[holsty101]

iirc they eventually revised the ps2 slim with an internal psu.

 

[Reznor007]

Gamecube, Wii - external both of them. Wii U, one external for the console, and then another, separate-yet-smaller one to charge the gamepad, because why take up just one power plug when you can use TWO?!

To be fair, I actually like that the gamepad has it's own PSU. I keep mine on its charging dock by my chair where it's convenient to pick up, rather than having to walk over to the console and unplug it.

 

[Rurouni]

To be fair, I actually like that the gamepad has it's own PSU. I keep mine on its charging dock by my chair where it's convenient to pick up, rather than having to walk over to the console and unplug it.

Or they could just use micro usb connector. I assume the charging/data port is proprietary? And it is not compatible with any connector out there (including Nintendo's own connector from their previous console/handheld)?

 

[Grall]

It's such a terrible burden having to walk over to the wuu base unit to unplug the pad charging cable... Talk about first-world problems!

And yeah, it's a proprietary connector, the charger outputs 4.75V, which seems like kind of an oddball voltage to me; isn't the battery in the pad like 3.6V?

 

[Reznor007]

I would have to assume they used a proprietary connector because the included adapter is rated for 1.6A and most USB chargers are lower than that. The wii-u pro controller does use USB though.

And in a thread about internal psu vs small external box behind the system I thought first world problems were assumed

 

[MrFox]

The new (2007) standard for USB chargers is 1.5A @ 4.75v - 5.5v. So they are perfectly on specs.

It's a power supply spec that is produced by the millions per week, for almost every imaginable portable devices (other than Apple, of course). I wouldn't be surprised if they simply ordered some $2 USB charger circuitry from China and put a custom connector on it. Just because Nintendo is being Nintendo.

 

[Reznor007]

Not everyone follows the standard apparently, as I have a 2010 LG USB charger that only does 0.7A.

They are probably just playing it safe.