balzi wrote:I'd be very interested in what people first thought this thread was about from the title.
I assumed it would be a goof thread linking to a story about some wacky 90-year-old.
MadManOriginal wrote:Got to pay for the R&D somehow, and that somehow is to release them in high-power high-margin PSUs first.
Yeah, but all the attention by the mfrs seems to be aimed at near-kilowatt supplies. While it's true those are the ones that benefit the most from increased efficiency and certainly that's the market that won't be dissuaded from paying a little extra for the latest features, it's a little annoying when they're way overkill for most modern systems (which, ridiculous multi-GPU setups aside, are getting
less power-hungry compared to a few years ago).
Anyway I'm glad to see this but a while ago I was thinking of replacing an 80+ 'regular' PSU with something 5% more efficient. It turns out that unless you're running a hundreds of watts 24/7, while the percent improvement is nice the absolute power change is not very much. Electricity would have to be a *lot* more expensive for it to make financial sense.
That's definitely true if you're thinking about replacing an existing supply that is otherwise adequate for your needs. If you're planning a new build, though, and you do plan to run it many hours a day and expect to keep the PSU (and perhaps case) for years while you swap in other parts, it does make sense.