"The spec I was going to go for was an 8-core model, with 32 gigs of RAM, a 1 TB flash drive, additional external storage, two D700s"
Unless I missed something.
Also, I've often wondered who needs a 700+ watt power supply? How many video cards, drives, CPUs, etc etc could that handle?
While I believe that power supply longevity is better than for hard disks/fans and other mech components, power supplies are still prone to failure and also damage caused by line voltage irregularities. That's part of the reason why serious servers have two redundant power supplies, its not just for battery back-up. Power supplies do fail, that's why they're FRU's (field replaceable units) in datacenter equipment.
Warranties are more about getting people to buy stuff than they are about actual longevity. Very very few consumers will bother to warranty a power supply from a 10 year old gaming rig, for example. Few people excercise warranties period. But they do create a warm-fuzzy feeling for buying decisions and if the margins are high enough for the MFG its not a big risk anyway.
If I can avoid that by not pushing the limits, it's worth doing.
That's why I always invest in a great PSU.
I could suspend that sign overhead with one extremely high quality aerospace serial numbered M2 bolt or six M4 bolts from the hardware store, financially I'm better off with the hardware store bolts.
Do you have any statistics or other sources on that? (honestly curious)
I'd like to see the numbers too.
The way I read English the "was going to go for was" part acts as a conclusive delimiter.
As in: I was going to go for an 8-core CPU but went with an i7 4770K instead.
The machine has two older graphics cards, 16 drives, an E5-1650 and a fairly power-hungry motherboard (X99-E WS). Also, lots of 200MM fans - it is nearly silent at full load.
...but who gives a f? It's a desktop, no battery to drain. And of all the appliances in your home, the computers surely don't mean that much as a percentage of power usage. Yeah, other things are probably wrong too, but I think you picked the wrong detail to care about here :) Better to have a bigger power supply and be sure it'll handle whatever you might add to the machine in the future than to care about replacing it. And from my (and everyone else I talked to) experience, inefficient (power-wise) electronics tend to last way longer than efficient ones, so I prefer them (since my time wasted finding a replacement or a repair shop is worth more than the price of the extra power), even when it comes to fridges and washing machines.
(Commenting mostly because all this insane obsession with energy efficiency is getting on my nerves.)
It's the first time I can hear that oversized PSU leads to more power consumption - how come?
Additionally, many power supplies are worse at load regulation if their load is too low.
Additionally up to around 35% load the fan is off, passive cooling is enough.
It's probably here nor there, shame about no real curve though. Could be crapola at 10%, who knows.
You aren't the only one to post something like this. Where are y'all getting this idea from? Efficiency is very flat in switching power supplies once load gets above about 10% of rating. Plus, computer power supplies have multiple voltage outputs, so in theory one output could be running near full load while another is basically idle[1]. The power output rating is calculated by increasing load current until the voltage drops unacceptably, then calculating the power output at that point. A 750W power supply is just as efficient running at 250W as it is at 750W.
[1] Not that this happens much at all in practice, but it could.
It really isn't. Sure, the engineers who design the power supply do that test, but that is not at all what determines the advertised rating of the final product. At 100% of the advertised load, most computer power supplies are still delivering nominal voltage or slightly above, not 5% below as allowed by the ATX spec.
> Efficiency is very flat in switching power supplies once load gets above about 10% of rating. [...] A 750W power supply is just as efficient running at 250W as it is at 750W.
Yes, on either side of the peak efficiency, you'll have points of equal efficiency. And in the middle, you'll have a few percentage points higher efficiency. But more importantly, at the ~30W a typical desktop will actually be drawing most of the time, a power supply with a smaller rating will be substantially more efficient.
Buying 750W and larger power supplies just doesn't make sense for single-CPU, single-GPU systems. Power supplies with lower ratings already have plenty of headroom both built-in to their rating and in the difference between 500W and what a real desktop actually uses on real workloads. To the extent that having excess capacity helps longevity, a 550W or 650W model is already well past the point of diminishing returns and going up to 750W is pure vanity. If you want reliability, shop for PSUs that use high-quality fans and capacitors, don't just stupidly add an extra 30% on top of what's already for more PSU than you really need.
I assumed power supply manufacturers would want to slap the peak power number on their supplies for marketing purposes. If they are actually being conservative, then you are correct.
> Yes, on either side of the peak efficiency, you'll have points of equal efficiency. And in the middle, you'll have a few percentage points higher efficiency.
My point is that efficiency is a plateau, not a "peak". Once in the plateau the fluctuations of efficiency from one load point to another are not significant. Below a certain minimum load and past the peak power "knee" is a different story, but that plateau is very large.
> But more importantly, at the ~30W a typical desktop will actually be drawing most of the time, a power supply with a smaller rating will be substantially more efficient.
I never disputed this. I disputed the nonsense that power supplies have a meaningful "peak" efficiency, and that it is a function of it's rating. 30W is probably not enough of a base load for efficient operation of larger computer power supplies, but once that point is hit it no longer matters what the actual load is.
I'm also not suggesting it is a good idea to waste money on a larger supply than you really need.
The fan is off if the load is below 30% which is neat if you are into silent builds.
~ 230W = 30 % Load (760W) ~ 135W = 30 % Load (450W)
The idle draw of such a system is below 100W (okok.. max 100W ;) ) so you won't hear any fan even with a smaller PSU.
This is something to start with. But i don't know why they don't go with a NVMe SSD? Clover supports it and it's way faster. But overall these are relatively good guides. I still would make some minor adjustments but that doesn't matter.
Motherboard: Asus Maximus VI Gene - 57 - 123
CPU: Intel Core i7 4770K 3.5 GHz Haswell - 70 - 80
RAM: Kingston HyperX Beast 4 × 8 GB DDR3 2400 MHz - 12
SSD: Kingston HyperX 3K 480 GB (×2) (Striped) - 1 - 4
HDD: Western Digital WD Black 3 TB (×2) (Mirrored) - 16 - 20
GPU: Radeon R9 280X - 15 - 257
Cooling: Corsair H80i - 4
Fans: Noctua NF-S12A (×2) & Noctua NF-F12 (×2) - 4
Sound: Bowers & Wilkins MM-1 - 12
Other: Bluetooth LE & Wi-Fi PCIe Module - 2
Actually it has 8 logical cores and 4 physical cores. For all practical purposes, you have 8 cores at your disposal. I build workstations for 3D rendering and I have yet to see a tool that cares whether the cores are physical or logical, as long as you have enough RAM for each core, you can use each one to it's fullest extent.
On average, a setup with 4 logical cores and 4 physical cores performs 15%-30% faster than a setup with just 4 physical cores.
Regardless, my point is that the article didn't specify if he meant logical or physical cores, therefore saying that the article is wrong, is partially incorrect (and seems like an unnecessary attempt to nitpick for the sake of nitpicking).
All Hackintoshes require the FakeSMC kext (to bypass DSMOS), that's it. Some systems require more kexts, for example, to have networking, etc.
Clover doesn't patch or install kexts, but it patches the ACPI tables (especially DSDT). Maybe that's what you mean?
FWIW I use a MBP 13 non-Retina mid-2012 with 16 GiB and two SSDs. Good enough and no weird compatibility issues.