PC Restarting/ Shutting off abruptly.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: PC Restarting/ Shutting off abruptly.

Per Hansson

wikipedia articles can be written or edited by ANYONE.
- I've written a few of them myself.
The author of the blurb you are quoting no doubt has an unseen agenda because it's bullshit.

I was a power plant operator for 20 years [in up to 4 Gigawatt plants].
PF is EASY to correct even at the grid level.
- We did correct for PFC but mine weren't commercial plants, they were military.
Commercial power companies just don't want to pay for the equipment.

Regardless if you like it or not, if you take two PSU's that are identical internally except and that only one has PFC, the one with PFC will be 2 to 4% less efficient. - Published in a number of places under heading such as 'PFC Myths'.

ADVERTISERS claim that APFC power supplies are more efficient.
I qualified that when STATED that's what I was objecting to.
So, I suggest YOU read the whole thread instead of just skimming.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: PC Restarting/ Shutting off abruptly.

My concern is how much of a problem APFC will be in the US. I tried to show that the added power and heat is about twice that of the same power supplies in UK. Added heat means reduced lifetime for capacitors in the power supply. Possibly another BOOM.

As I understand the problem is less extreme [less likely] in countries without a 220v distribution because the multiplication effect of PFC feed a 120v stepped wave is less likely to exceed the 400v level on the bulk input caps. Problems are still possible, just less likely on 120v.

[Per Hansson]

Re: PC Restarting/ Shutting off abruptly.

PCBONEZ; I know Wikipedia is editable by anyone, but it is atleast a source so it should be easy to disprove it by a more credible source if it is wrong

Once again I have never stated that APFC powersupplies are more efficient, I don't know why you keep reiterating this, and I think I have asked you this 3 times in a row now (Actually I just counted, on the previous page I asked you indeed 3 times why you keep saying this)

So maybe before you tell me to "read the whole thread instead of just skimming" you should try doing it yourself?

[PCBONEZ]

Re: PC Restarting/ Shutting off abruptly.

PCBONEZ; I know Wikipedia is editable by anyone, but it is atleast a source so it should be easy to disprove it by a more credible source if it is wrong

Once again I have never stated that APFC powersupplies are more efficient, I don't know why you keep reiterating this, and I think I have asked you this 3 times in a row now (Actually I just counted, on the previous page I asked you indeed 3 times why you keep saying this)

So maybe before you tell me to "read the whole thread instead of just skimming" you should try doing it yourself?

I did it for a living for 20 years.
The first plant I was on had that equipment installed in 1961.
I really don't need a more credible source.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: PC Restarting/ Shutting off abruptly.

So maybe before you tell me to "read the whole thread instead of just skimming" you should try doing it yourself?

Yes but it's YOU that called me out for it when you are doing it too.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: PC Restarting/ Shutting off abruptly.

Guess what.
SATA 3.0 doesn't any faster than SATA 1.5.
[Except for maybe the first 4-5 milliseconds.]

Sorry, but it sounds like FUD. That's not true with a proper motherboard.

SATA 2 is at least about 200 MB/s.

And the first gen SATA (2003 to 2006) was mostly the same as UDMA 133 of the latest PATA standard.

And the first gen Raptors, even with SATA may have been slower in the interface than some PATA HDDs!

(With the readings no more than around 80 MB/s.)

[dood]

Re: PC Restarting/ Shutting off abruptly.

PCBONEZ and Per Hansson... calm it down a little bit. Wouldn't want to have a good thread go off-course.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: PC Restarting/ Shutting off abruptly.

Sorry, but it sounds like FUD. That's not true with a proper motherboard.

SATA 2 is at least about 200 MB/s.

And the first gen SATA (2003 to 2006) was mostly the same as UDMA 133 of the latest PATA standard.

And the first gen Raptors, even with SATA may have been slower in the interface than some PATA HDDs!

(With the readings no more than around 80 MB/s.)

Nope.
The INTERFACE is faster.
The DRIVES are WAY slower that the interface and the drives are, for all intents and purposes, only up to UMDA 100 thus far regardless of what the interface is.

You have a 2 entrances to a parking lot with one exit.
You add 10 more entrances and maybe make the parking lot a little bigger, but you still only have one exit.
-
The entrances are the interface speed.
The parking lot is the buffer.
The exit is the head-disk transfer rate.
.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: PC Restarting/ Shutting off abruptly.

PCBONEZ and Per Hansson... calm it down a little bit. Wouldn't want to have a good thread go off-course.

That was a over week ago.
Glad to see you're on top of it, HOT MOD.

[everell]

Re: PC Restarting/ Shutting off abruptly.

As I understand the problem is less extreme [less likely] in countries without a 220v distribution because the multiplication effect of PFC feed a 120v stepped wave is less likely to exceed the 400v level on the bulk input caps. Problems are still possible, just less likely on 120v.

I did not understand this reply at all. Power supplies with APFC do not have 115V/230V switch. Instead, the APFC circuit acts as a voltage booster. To keep the voltage and current in phase, the voltage is boosted to about 385 volts to the "main" cap. Not the "mains caps"...there are not two caps in the APFC circuit. So with 115 volt input, power supply plugged in but computer NOT on, the main cap in USA will charge to about 160 volts. When you turn on the computer, the APFC boosts this voltage to 385 volts. In Europe with 230 volt input, psu plugged in but computer OFF, the main capacitor will charge to about 320 volts. When computer is turned on the APFC circuit will boost this to about 385 volts. With either input, 115 volts or 230 volts, the APFC circuit is acting as a regulated booster to bring the voltage on the main cap to about 385 volts.

Therefore.......in the USA the APFC circuit must boost the voltage to the main capacitor 225 volts whereas in Europe it would only have to boost the voltage 65 volts. Therefore.....the APFC circuit for the same psu would have to "consume" more power in the USA than in Europe.

It also means the peak to peak voltage rating of the FET transistors would have to be higher in the APFC circuit.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: PC Restarting/ Shutting off abruptly.

What is that? 2+ weeks old now?

Read the sentence you quoted again.
Do you see APFC anywhere in it?

[Rulycat]

Re: PC Restarting/ Shutting off abruptly.

I find this discussion quite interesting, and have some questions:

The idea of APFC seems to be to save power companies money. Alright, I get that.

Now, if I remember correctly, PFC means the electricity companies need to use less copper, is this right?

So, if they're using less copper, surely that's more environmentally friendly. Also, the cost of the extra copper is likely to come in higher electricity bills. Now, assuming it is an extra few pence a month WITH APFC than without, that's slightly extra cost. But is it as much as the extra cost to a consumer from the electricity company because it has to lay more copper cables?

Sorry about continuing a weeks old discussion, I'm just intruiged.

Thanks.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: PC Restarting/ Shutting off abruptly.

It doesn't let them use less copper. - That's a bogus political 'story' to rationalize it.

The size wire [and hence amount of copper] they use is set by the codes that they have to abide by under law.
-
An x-many amp service box on a building is required to have x-size wire feeding it by code.
OBVIOUSLY the actual load will be some margin less than the capacity of the service box or you will continually trip the main breaker.
PFC isn't going to change the size of the service entrance box so the size of wire they use isn't going to change.
-
PFC -might- allow them them to add more meters [customers] to that same section of grid because the average load per customer goes down. But, that puts them at risk of dumping that whole section of grid if too many customers start sucking loads of power all at once. [Kind of the same problem that LA already has in the summer necessitating those planned brown-outs. The grid can't handle the total load.]
-
More customers per square mile is their real motivation and that doesn't sound like anything 'green' to me unless: green = money grubbing.
- And it usually does if you look close enough.

Back in the 90's CA made it a law that recyclers HAD to handle glass along with everything else they did or else lose their business license.
[This may have been exclusive to the counties around San Francisco vice State wide.]
They HAD to take glass if you took it to them.
Problem was there wasn't enough market for the amount of recycled glass produced so prices the dropped and the recyclers were loosing money doing glass.
Well, the "green heads" didn't want to let go of the recycling so the quick fix was a tax hike to subsidize the recyclers and pay them with tax dollars to recycle the glass.
But, there still wasn't a market [no buyers] for all the cleaned and crushed [with tax dollars] glass produced so the recyclers started sending the cleaned and crushed glass to the land fill by the dump truck load to get it out of their way.
[I'd pass one or two 20 yard dumps full of crushed glass on it's way to to the land fill on my way home every day because part of my route took me on the main road to the land fill for a few miles.]
As far as I know they are still doing that.
So tell me,, is using all that fuel to haul and water to clean that glass that gets buried "green"?

Ahem,,, Glass is made out of sand. One of the most common and cheap substances on the planet. If you crush it you essentially have more sand.
- Why would anyone in their right mind recycle it?
That's like grinding bricks into powder to make dirt.

Here in AZ they expect people to wash everything squeaky clean before putting it in the recycle can.
I think there's even a fine for not doing it.
Seems to me it would waste MUCH less water to use a machine to wash [say] 2000 pounds at a time than it wastes when 2000 people wash a pound each at home. [Particularly as the machine can recycle it's water and the home owners can't.]
So, the objective is to save the recycling entrepreneurs money at the cost of the consumers collective water bills and these 'green' businesses [and the State] don't give a shit about wasting water IN A DESERT STATE.
.
AZ gets most of it's drinking water from wells. [Even city water is from wells.]
Supposedly most of them will be drying up in about 100 years.
Shouldn't the Gov't be more concerned with saving water than people cleaning glass to make recyclers more money?
Fortunately I won't live that long and my kid lives in CA.

Obviously some things that are 'green' are good but what 'looks' green at first glance often isn't green at all when you really look.

.

[Per Hansson]

Re: PC Restarting/ Shutting off abruptly.

top_cat; yea, it's not that simple as PCBONEZ says
It is a way to provide an example, say for easy calculation that there are one hundred million computers in the US, on average drawing 100w each 24/7
If they all have no PFC that means the apparent load on the power grid of our theoretical PSU's with a PF of .50 will be 5000000KW (5 million kilowatt)

Now if all those computers used active PFC with a PF of .99 it would be 100000KW (one hundred thousand kilowatt) apparent load instead

Of course it is a silly example, but there is another such example, I have not done the math on it;
It says that all of those linear AC/DC power adapter you find in linksys adapters etc, which due to their simple design draws power even if no load is connected to them.
If they where replaced by switchmode powersupplies the efficiency would go up so much that one nuclear reactor in the US could be shutdown due to the power savings
It is an equally absurd example but it helps to convey the big picture so to say...

Final disclaimer; I just barley passed the math exams in school, and that was many years ago

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: PC Restarting/ Shutting off abruptly.

Nope.
The INTERFACE is faster.
The DRIVES are WAY slower that the interface

What you're talking about is the platters. The Seagate U-series usually sucked when it came to platter speeds.

And back in 2005, before Maxtor got bought out, they has some of the fastest HDDs, second to a Raptor.

And Samsung had HDDs with high sequential transfer rates around that time.


But, at first, it sounded like you were talking about the SATA fiasco of 2003 to 2006. People reported the interface being no faster than PATA.

[Per Hansson]

Re: PC Restarting/ Shutting off abruptly.

Only have time to skim this right now.
At least everell isn't lost...

severach and hansson [as per quote] say no PFC is less efficient and [get this] "The thermistor does it"

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhh hahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahaha

#1: Unless there is an over-load condition, a thermistor dissipates something like 1/8 watt,, which is why they can heat-shrink them without causing a fire.
#2: APFC PSU's -do- have thermistors unless they are some crap unit.
#3: The is NO WAY a thermistor is going to dissipate more heat than two+ transistors, a diode pack, an IC, a coil, AND A THERMISTOR.

APFC in a PSU with a 500w load will dissipate between 20 and 25 watts. [And a thermistor around 1/8w.]

.

Looks like Seasonic and Corsair felt the thermistor dissipates enough power to build a clever circuit with a relay taking the thermistor out of the input stage once the PSU is up and running
Just read this review by Jonny linked below

The way this relay is utilized is pretty clever. A thermistor is used in series with the AC input. This thermistor is used to measure and protect against inrush current. Once the PSU is already up and running, the relay is energized and the path to the thermistor is cut off. This increases efficiency by not including the thermistor in the primary circuit.

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php...tory4&reid=197

[Toasty]

Re: PC Restarting/ Shutting off abruptly.

CRT TV's & monitors were doing that at least 15 years ago in the degaussing circuit.

Hummmmm *click*

[everell]

Re: PC Restarting/ Shutting off abruptly.

The APFC circuit does generate extra heat. But there is a way to resolve this problem. The solution is to provide more air flow and to modify the heat sinks. The workaround for this involves sending some bullets through the power supply. Then the power supply is definitely more efficient!

[PCBONEZ]

Re: PC Restarting/ Shutting off abruptly.

The APFC circuit does generate extra heat. But there is a way to resolve this problem. The solution is to provide more air flow and to modify the heat sinks. The workaround for this involves sending some bullets through the power supply. Then the power supply is definitely more efficient!

That's not a solution to lost power.
It just uses more power to blow the heat losses somewhere else.

[everell]

Re: PC Restarting/ Shutting off abruptly.

pcbonez: you just don't appreciate my sarcasm. I was referring to the "final solution" for a power supply with APFC problems (or any other problems for that matter!). The attached photos show what I am talking about ...... the three bullets that resolved problems with a low power Fortron power supply.


Air circulation is MUCH better, and notice the clever job of modifying the heat sink!