Corsair VX450W and low power consumption systems

[xfirenoob]

For a new build based on an Intel D201GLY2 board, I am looking for a PSU.

 

Your VX450W looks like it should be able to do the job with its hands tied behind its back, but the 80 Plus rating makes it interesting for me.

 

My only question is, will this PSU power up in combination with a low energy use system? A lot of forums - for example silentpcreview - have posts from users having trouble booting their system because the total load on a given point does not exceed the threshold to power up the PSU. Do you have any record or mentions of the VX450W having this problem?

 

Edit: Think I may have found my answer already... In the review SPCR did they mention the PSU had no trouble starting at all with low loads. Sorry about that, I had read the review but with a different mindset, should have read it again.

 

Thanks for your time.

[JoeBob]

Let us know how it turns out (if you get the VX450). :)

[xfirenoob]

I'll try to let you know when I build the system, not sure when I get around to it.

 

One thing still confuses me though, maybe someone can explain this to me.

 

From what I can see the system I am considering will not use more than like 50 watts at most. I already have a case and all that, so I am just looking for a PSU to power the entire system.

 

But, with loads of around 50 watts, what would be more efficient in terms of power use?

 

The Corsair VX450 promises 80% efficiency, though the image of the graph on the website (product information page) starts at 20% load. Roughly that would be 90 watts, which is more than I would ever need. Would the PSU still be at 80% efficiency with loads less than 20%?

 

An alternative I have come across is a PSU that provides 100 or 150 watts, mostly a combination of a print to be build into the computer and an external power brick. The efficiency of these seems to be around 70-75% at optimal loads, down to 60 and 55% at non optimal loads.

 

Will a 450 Watt PSU with at least 80% efficiency use less power than a 150 Watt PSU at 70% efficiency?

[EliteKiller]

Will a 450 Watt PSU with at least 80% efficiency use less power than a 150 Watt PSU at 70% efficiency?

 

Yes. If your rig is only drawing 50W, the difference between a 70% & 80% efficient psu is ~9W at the wall.

 

9 / 1000 (kWhr) * 24 (hours in a day) * 365 (yr) * .15 (cents per kWhr) = $11.83

 

At that rate the Corsair will pay for itself in 7 years. :D: The Corsair will obviously offer more headroom for future expansion, and it should also provide better build quality, quieter fan, better voltage regulation, and a 5 yr. warranty.

[Yellowbeard]

I have jumpstarted all of our PSU models with only an 80mm fan attached. I don't think you'll have any issues with the low power system.

[xfirenoob]

Promised I'd get back on this post, and remembered :)

 

I did get the VX450W and build the machine a couple of days ago. Everything is running great. PSU is nice and quiet and the energy use is less than the previous builds I made for this purpose. Some specs:

 

Mainboard: Intel D201GLY2 (onboard video, nic, sound and cpu)

1 GB memory (sorry, not Corsair this time, was on the QVL but couldn't order it on short term)

I disabled the onboard nic and added an Intel Pro 1000GT PCI adapter in the only PCI slot of the board.

Corsair VX450W PSU

2x WDC 5000AAKS sata drive (kinda overkill, but I like the drives)

Antec P182 case

3 Nexus 120mm fans (1 bottom for the hdds, 2 in top for the mainboard/cpu each with a fanmate)

 

My main goal was to create a small server that I could use to host my music collection (slimserver), that I could run backups on (via the network) and that I could use to do some development testing on using Apache/MySQL/PHP while having a low energy consumption.

 

Initially planned to try it with Windows Home Server, but due to all the issues surrounding that, I went with Ubuntu server. I'm very pleased with the systems performance. The cpu on the board does not have a lot of processing power compared to todays standards, but it performs better than I had expected. Replacing the 10/100 onboard nic by a gigabit pci card was a good choice too. I can run a full backup of my workstation on it in about 15 minutes (about 15GB of image files are created on the server).

 

The Corsair VX450 PSU is great. Although the mainboard is micro ATX size, I put the whole lot into an P182 case anyway. It looks silly, but I had 2 other cases like this, and I wouldn't know where to put a smaller case. The 20/24 cable as well as the 2*2 cable for the cpu were long enough to go behind the board all the way to the top and connect to the mainboard. Excelent.

The mainboard has a 20 pin connector, I had a little trouble figuring how to disconnect the 4 pins I wouldn't need without the risk of breaking something. The manual should have an illustration for this. Figured it out after a few minutes, all though I expected the 4 pins to "break off" completely, they remained attached on one end and "folded" away from the main connector. This did not cause any problems, the mainboard had enough clearance around the connector.

 

I did some primitive measurements regarding the energy consumption of the system using a kill-a-watt device. Most of the times the system draws about 45 watts, up to 65 when loaded. I could probably reduce that more by picking parts that are more energy efficient, but for me this works. It uses less energy than my previous builds that I dedicated to this task, and even less than an old Pentium III based solution I used in the past. All in all the system should earn itself back in about 3 years time compared to the others, which is pretty good in my opinion.

[RAM GUY]

Thanks for the update and the review!