Power Efficiency - gold verse silver

[copenhagen69]

Ok, I just had a simple question, but I am sure it wont have a simple answer :shadedshu

Would you rather have a 1200w Gold rated PSU or a 1500w Silver rated PSU.


Now lets toss out some other variables.

Money does not come into play here
Neither does overkill.
Probably will be running 2 highend GPU's in SLI
Usage on the PSU's would be for medium usage and sometimes extreme usage


I am just curious, would you want the gold no matter what, or sacrifice a little for the the higher wattage on the silver?

 

[20mmrain]

For two highend GPUs if we are talking about GTX 580's you could get away with a good 1000 watt PSU.

But if your asking between Silver and Gold.... well of course Gold is better. But Silver or even certain Bronze PSU's would do just fine too.

For example I am running two GTX 580's that I can overclock just fine with a i7 2600k @ 4.5 ghz 24/7 on a Cooler Master Silent Pro 1000watt which is a Bronze PSU with a decent 80 Amp Rail.

 

[Fourstaff]

Be careful of the efficiency curve though, because at different power draw, the silver might actually be more efficient than the gold. More resarch needed, but between the two, the silver gets my pick.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80_PLUS

 

[jasper1605]

As an efficiency junky I would go with the 1200 watt even though the difference would only be a percent or two in terms of efficiency. That's just what i would lean towards.

 

[copenhagen69]

Be careful of the efficiency curve though, because at different power draw, the silver might actually be more efficient than the gold. More resarch needed, but between the two, the silver gets my pick.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80_PLUS

Maybe I should of phrased my question better because that is what I was more or less wanting to know.

Thanks I guess I will need to look around and see if I can find some charts.

 

[copenhagen69]

Ok found these on Johnny Guru... I covered the brands up so no bias comes in to play ...

What would you choose, just off these numbers? Lets, say you spent most your time in the test 1 and test 3,4 levels ...

It somewhat seems like an easy choice, but figured I would ask anyways ...

 

[happita]

There's a few threads on here about PSU efficiency. Here's one of the more popular ones by newtekie
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=129456&highlight=psu+efficiency

It's more or less tied into cost savings, but still informational nonetheless.

 

[copenhagen69]

that is a very interesting read.

 

[Fourstaff]

The gold looks like it has a better curve than the silver one, based on you getting 2 high end graphics card. They are still within 1% of each other though.

 

[copenhagen69]

the gold did stay noticeably cooler too once the wattage got going...

 

[Beertintedgoggles]

Going off what you stated, "Money does not come into play here" leads to these observations:

- The purchase price difference between the two does not matter
- The savings due to higher efficiency does not matter

However, the higher efficiency of the gold rated supply will produce less heat from conversion/power losses.

Besides that obvious statement, you could look at things like ripple, voltage levels during loading and unbalanced loading, fan noise (which still gets tied in with efficiency), um... color, whatever. I doubt that the future of computing will require a 1500W PSU (especially if you already have a 1200W PSU) but you never know.

 

[GSquadron]

Better take a 1000W platinum