Did I screw myself over?

[ImperialHub2]

/I'm a noob in PSU talks so don't judge my actions /

I built my first PC about 7 months ago and I didn't think about upgrading back then and I bought a CX550M (550W) as I thought that would be enough. A week ago I watched a video about choosing the right power supply where the dude in the video said that whatever pcpartpicker says my wattage usage would be I should multiply by 1.5x. I was curious to see how much it'll be for me and I went to pcpartpicker and put in my parts. It said 369W, I multiplied it by 1.5 and it was 553.5W. Does that matter and would it cause problems in the long term? If I wanted to upgrade to a (for example) 5700xt in a couple of years what would be the best psu to pick then and would I need to buy a better one? And can I safely upgrade from a 80+ bronze to 80+ silver/gold?

 

My PC parts at the moment:

Mobo: B450 Aorus Pro

CPU: 3 3300x

CPU Cooler: Scythe Ninja 5

GPU: XFX 580 GTS 8GB

RAM: Flare-X 2x8 3200 CL16

PSU: Corsair CX550M

Case: P400A-D

 

 

[seon123]

11 minutes ago, ImperialHub2 said:

A week ago I watched a video about choosing the right power supply where the dude in the video said that whatever pcpartpicker says my wattage usage would be I should multiply by 1.5x.

You're fine with your current PSU, but I recommend staying far away from that channel, as it apparently has no issue spewing BS. 

12 minutes ago, ImperialHub2 said:

If I wanted to upgrade to a (for example) 5700xt in a couple of years what would be the best psu to pick then and would I need to buy a better one? 

That would depend on the pricing and availability of wherever you're buying from, at the time of purchase. 

13 minutes ago, ImperialHub2 said:

And can I safely upgrade from a 80+ bronze to 80+ silver/gold?

The 80+ rating is just for efficiency, and nothing else. Just ignore the rating. 

[ImperialHub2]

1 minute ago, seon123 said:

You're fine with your current PSU, but I recommend staying far away from that channel, as it apparently has no issue spewing BS. 

That would depend on the pricing and availability of wherever you're buying from, at the time of purchase. 

The 80+ rating is just for efficiency, and nothing else. Just ignore the rating. 

On Jayz's new video about PSUs he says that how good a power supply is depends on it's capacitors and components. If I were to upgrade to a 750W in a couple of years which one would you choose, what are the best options?

[ImperialHub2]

1 minute ago, WikiForce said:

that overall looks like a nice pc to me but yeah you might need a powerful psu for a some higher end stuff but i guess 550w quality unit like yours should be fine for a 5700 xt even with a decent moderate oc

Cool, thanks!

[electropical]

2 hours ago, ImperialHub2 said:

On Jayz's new video about PSUs he says that how good a power supply is depends on it's capacitors and components. If I were to upgrade to a 750W in a couple of years which one would you choose, what are the best options?

That video is garbage. As @seon123 was saying, Jayztwocents' advice is to be ignored/avoided, as he's very happy to produce garbage uninformed content, and gets a pass everytime because he's very popular.

 

As for your question, don't choose the 750w unit now. Once you'll be upgrading, come back to get recommendations that fit your needs. On top of that, the market will most likely be very different with better options. 

 

[ImperialHub2]

14 minutes ago, electropical said:

That video is garbage. As @seon123 was saying, Jayztwocents' advice is to be ignored/avoided, as he's very happy to produce garbage uninformed content, and gets a pass everytime because he's very popular.

 

As for your question, don't choose the 750w unit now. Once you'll be upgrading, come back to get recommendations that fit your needs. On top of that, the market will most likely be very different with better options. 

 

Noooo, It wasn't Jay who said the thing about multiplying by 1.5x. I really like his videos and he's helped me on multiple occassions with tech related problems I've experienced so I do not agree with you. 

[SavageNeo]

J2C is  cool but not really good at psus. He is right about the capacitors what not but he put the 80+ effiency on the "must have" while the effiency should not be mentioned at all, since it does not matter. 

I like watching J2C's videos but I do not really learn anything new, they are just entertaining, that is pretty much all that there is.

[seon123]

3 hours ago, ImperialHub2 said:

On Jayz's new video about PSUs he says that how good a power supply is depends on it's capacitors and components.

You can get a shit PSU, even if you use good quality components. As with any other component, look at actual reviews, and get a PSU that performs well, is quiet, has any features you want etc etc.

3 hours ago, ImperialHub2 said:

If I were to upgrade to a 750W in a couple of years which one would you choose, what are the best options?

As I said:

3 hours ago, seon123 said:

That would depend on the pricing and availability of wherever you're buying from, at the time of purchase. 

 

[electropical]

1 hour ago, ImperialHub2 said:

Noooo, It wasn't Jay who said the thing about multiplying by 1.5x. I really like his videos and he's helped me on multiple occassions with tech related problems I've experienced so I do not agree with you. 

I know that it isn't Jay's video that's telling people to multiply by 1.5, because I've actually made the effort to watch his video before answering your question.

I do not slander people, what allowed me to call his video uninformed garbage is the fact that it is uninformed garbage.

 

But if you just want to blindly follow his recommendations, that is your own choice.

 

For example, you can follow his recent tutorial on how to stain your cutting table and poison your family.

[akio123008]

3 minutes ago, electropical said:

what allowed me to call his video uninformed garbage is the fact that it is uninformed garbage.

Just curious, what actual garbage is that? (about the power supplies)

[electropical]

10 minutes ago, akio123008 said:

Just curious, what actual garbage is that? (about the power supplies)

Did you watch the video?

Here's the link, if you didn't :

https://youtu.be/bUh2EZzJZRU

[akio123008]

6 minutes ago, electropical said:

Did you watch the video?

Here's the link, if you didn't :

https://youtu.be/bUh2EZzJZRU

ooh it's actually a brand new video. I have only seen the first few minutes. The video seems a bit rushed for sure. I don't think this counts as terrible advice though, more like sub-optimal or poorly explained advice.

[seon123]

1 hour ago, akio123008 said:

ooh it's actually a brand new video. I have only seen the first few minutes. The video seems a bit rushed for sure. I don't think this counts as terrible advice though, more like sub-optimal or poorly explained advice.

You might as well rename the video to "J2C spews BS right out of his ass for 17 minutes". It's not useful enough to count as advice

[akio123008]

1 hour ago, seon123 said:

spews BS right out of his ass for 17 minutes

The video:

- explains the basics of what a power supply does

- explains how you shouldn't buy cheap crappy power supplies

- explains that the power rating refers to the output power and not the input power

- explains the concept of efficiency

- explains modular vs non modular

- explains how components draw power rather than psus pushing it

- explains how the psu power rating needs to be higher than the combined draw of the components (and his personal preference to go overkill)

- explains how you shouldn't use modular cables between different units

 

and plenty of other things that are good to know as a beginner.

 

I don't think it's a good video, and I think he explained things in poor, sometimes even incorrect ways. For instance, how he called it a "transformer", which he then tried to fix by putting "rectifier" on the screen, which still isn't the right word. Or how he called the efficiency chart a "bell curve". (I could come up with plenty more things like this).

 

However, none of those things at the end of the day would cause any beginner watching the video to mess up buying or installing a power supply.

[seon123]

50 minutes ago, akio123008 said:

The video:

About a minute into the video, he says:

Quote

A lot of the things that make a power supply more expensive than another are must haves vs nice to haves. Now, must haves, in my opinion, are things like high quality capacitors, high quality power delivery components inside of the power supply. Remember the power supply is also regulating the power down from the power coming in from your wall.

Okay... Just like what makes a 5950X more expensive than an i3 7350K is higher quality capacitors, and high quality power delivery components inside the CPU. Notice that he said absolutely nothing that's actually relevant, and is clearly spewing BS out of his ass? Nothing about.... e.g. how it performs...?

Moving on, he seems to think that the only way a PSU can kill other components is through a catastrophic failure, and nothing about e.g. ripple killing components over time?

 

At about 2:40 into the video, it should be painfully obvious how little he actually knows about PSUs.

 

And a bit later:

Quote

Now, the only way you can get more efficient with your power supply is with being better in doing its job.

That.... should also make it obvious, and make you literally cringe.

 

And so on. Spewing random BS out of his ass for 17 minutes does not help anyone. It does not matter if he happens to get some (mostly completely irrelevant) things right, because how would someone less knowledgeable be able to tell what is BS, and what is actually true?

 

 

Watching J2C for entertainment is fine. E.g. I remember finding this video to be fun to watch. But don't ever watch J2C if you want actual advice.

Edited March 13, 2021 by seon123
Something something

[mariushm]

My advice is to NOT get a power supply that's rated much higher than what your components need.  (unless the price is really good(

 

Historically, the power consumption of components goes down, as the manufacturing process goes down. So you get same or slightly better performance for less power, or way more performance for a bit more power.

 

For example, a RX 580 needs 225 watts to work, and the current video cards offer more performance while consuming maybe 120-150 watts.

 

Modern power supplies are quite efficient, and they get close to peak efficiency quite fast and stay within a few percent of the peak efficiency for most of the output range.

For example,  a power supply like yours has an efficiency curve similar to the picture below.

You can see that even at 50 watts (about how much your pc can consume when you're just  typing some stuff in Word, or watching youtube) the efficiency is already 82%-ish  and from around 150w and up the efficiency is gonna be over 85%. It's not a bell curve.

 

If the price difference is not big, it would be worth going for a gold efficiency power supply, simply because the increased efficiency means less heat produced.  But, don't make this your focus especially if your budget is tight ...you could be better off with a bronze efficiency psu with 5-10 years warranty, instead of a lesser known brand gold efficiency psu with only 3 years warranty.

 

 

[akio123008]

19 minutes ago, seon123 said:

But don't ever watch J2C if you want actual advice.

I don't watch the channel regardless.

 

19 minutes ago, seon123 said:

and make you literally cringe.

It did at times, yes. But sometimes you have to try and look beyond that. Just because from the way he explains stuff it's obvious he doesn't know a lot about the subject, doesn't automatically mean what he says is wrong. You do have to give it a chance, and if you look at what he says, objectively, there isn't much wrong with it.

 

19 minutes ago, seon123 said:

he seems to think that the only way a PSU can kill other components is through a catastrophic failure

Here again; "he seems to think". I agree that he probably does indeed, but he never explicitly said that PSUs can't kill components in other ways. You just assume that. He never even mentioned the type of failure situation anyway.

 

The only thing you can blaim him for is that he doesn't know that much about psus, which can be painful to watch for people who know more. He's struggling to explain things and messing stuff up, but he's not straight up telling lies either.

 

[electropical]

4 hours ago, akio123008 said:

The only thing you can blaim him for is that he doesn't know that much about psus, which can be painful to watch for people who know more. He's struggling to explain things and messing stuff up, but he's not straight up telling lies either.

 

Actually, we can blame him for harming people with his catastrophic advice.

 

By the end of the video, he is presenting himself as a teacher that knows his stuff, and that corrects the rest of people who spread misinformation :

"So here's what this video is designed to do : to give you guys some help. [...] Share this video with someone that maybe you've seen sharing misinformation about power supplies so maybe you can get them on the right side of the conversation, spreading proper information rather than misinformation". 

 

Misinformation is exactly what he is doing, and as I'll explain, he doesn't help "newbies" in any way, he's actually harming them. 

 

What he tries to do in the video is tell people how to differentiate a good power supply from a bad one. And he failed at that. Miserably. 

 

________________

Before I start explaining why his video is so detrimental, let me first give here the answer that I wish he would have given to his audience. Then we can compare my answer (decent enough, hopefully) to his. 

 

What makes a good power supply (the "must-haves") :

- Qualitative power delivery (good voltage regulation, low ripple, good transient response, full delivery of rated power in hot environment [=< 40°C at the very least], ... ) 

- Safe to use/reliable (enough protections, effective protections that are properly set, good-enough cables, line filtering, good-enough hold-up time, appropriate range of voltage input...)

- Durability of the unit, build quality

- Low noise output

- Properly priced 

 

Nice things to have :

- Environment and electricity bill friendly (=efficiency)

- Monitoring

- Compact

- Cables that are easy to use

- Esthetics (special colors, RGB, nice-looking cables...) 

 

How to know whether you should buy a PSU or not :

1/ Establish your needs

- how many watts do you need?

- how qualitative does the PSU need to be?

  -> read what knowledgeable people have to say about your system's requirements 

 

2/ Does the PSU satisfy your needs? 

- read trustworthy professional reviews

- learn how to interpret the results of the testings

- read what knowledgeable people have to say about said unit 

 

3/ Make sure it's the best option that you have

- see if there are other options available

- ask knowledgeable people to help you choose the best option 

 

________________________

 

Now let's analyze what Jay was saying in the video. I'll only mention the purely harmful stuff, and not quote all of the incorrect stuff, because my point is to explain why his video is harmful. 

 

1'10'' :  "Cheap power supplies are not so much more prone to blowing up your system as they are prone to blowing up their own components". 

 

This is not poorly explained, this is straight up false. Wild ripple will not just harm the PSU, it will also cook the hardware to which the power is delivered. And there's more to this. Voltage regulation is critical as well. If you buy a cheap power supply thinking : "it's bad, but Jay said it will only harm itself, not the expensive GPU that ate all of my budget", you're being mislead. 

 

2'35'' : So, a must-have, imo, is a good quality power supply with good components. Now how do you know if it's a good quality component? How do you know if it's a good power supply? Well, there's something called 80+ rating. [...]  But the only way you can get those ratings and the efficiency higher is just having a power supply that's better at doing its job, and by doing that, you're talking about a much better design and component inside". 

 

Again, not poorly phrased/explained, straight up false. Efficiency has nothing to do with the overall quality of the PSU, as you can design an efficient PSU that's utter garbage. 

 

AND THAT'S ALL HE HAD TO SAY ABOUT THE QUALITY OF THE PSU.

He directly switches to the "nice-to-haves" right after that sentence (4'37'').

Therefore his conclusion is : Qualitative PSU = PSU with high efficiency rating (from a reputable brand). 

 

He proceeds to say (7'23'') that "gold efficiency is the baseline, the main standard".

How is this harmful? People who "learn" from the video will reach the conclusion that an 80+ gold PSU from a "reputable" brand is good enough, and they end up buying units like the Gigabyte GP-PGM and the Deepcool DQ-M-V2L to power their midrange GPU. 

 

Most importantly, by saying "in order to choose your power supply, 80+ gold from a reputable brand is good enough", he's saying : "that's all you need to know to choose your PSU, there's nothing more to it". Which leads people to do zero research and just spend their money on the wrong units. 

 

Same thing with his final recommendation :

15'28'' : "Jay, I just want you to tell me what to get. Fine, I can tell you right now : 80+ gold, 850w power supply from any reputable brand". 

 

Flagship Ampere GPUs have proven to cause issues with a number of 80+ gold 850w units from "reputable" brands. 

 

How salty would you be if you had been convinced to buy something like an 850w Prime GX for your 10900k - 3090 FTW3 combo, only to find out that the thing isn't good enough? 

 

Him explaining a few things doesn't cancel out the wrong stuff. The goal of the video, teaching how to tell the good units from the bad ones, is not reached by any mean. That video is not just useless, it's harmful.