Picking The Right Power Supply: What You Should Know

How To Spot An Efficient PSU?

Guidelines, Rules And Regulations

One of the most important indicators of a PSU’s efficiency is whether it complies with the Energy Star 5.0 guidelines, and also if it meets the requirements of an 80 PLUS efficiency level. The latter applies primarily to computer power supplies and is recognized worldwide. Additionally, if you’re located in a European country, CE conformity and compliance with ErP guidelines are noteworthy.

80 PLUS PSUs Are More Efficient

The specifications, norms and guidelines we just mentioned all call for high efficiency, as well as improved power quality. Power supplies that conform to these demanding rules by passing a defined set of tests may then be marked with the 80 PLUS badge appropriate to their efficiency level. While the load/stress tests may not correspond to those defined by the ATX specification, that’s acceptable in this case. Here’s some good news for our European readers: since the tests are conducted using the lower U.S. voltages, these power supplies achieve even higher efficiency levels in the 230V grid.

80 PLUS: Titanium, Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze

The original concept of the 80 PLUS certification has been revised, adding new, more strictly-defined efficiency levels. The Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum certifications each come with their own requirements. Thus, a PSU certified “80 PLUS Gold” or “80 PLUS Platinum” is more efficient than one that's not. On the other hand, more complex circuitry needed to hit those levels generally results in a higher price tag, too.

Below you’ll find a table that shows what efficiency levels a PSU has to achieve at a given load to make the grade for a specific certification level.

At first the 80 PLUS organization only certified PSUs with 115V input, however recently it added 230V certifications as well, with increased requirements since energy losses are significantly lower at higher loads with this voltage input. In the table below you will find the 80 PLUS 230V EU Internal certifications.

When Off Isn't Really Off: A Few Words On Standby Power Consumption

When you shut down your computer, the PSU doesn’t really switch off completely. This is necessary for features such as Wake-on-LAN to work. The point is that the power supply keeps drawing some power (called vampire or phantom power), even when the computer is off. Newer PSUs, especially ones sold in Europe and certified to be ErP/EuP-compliant, draw less than 0.5W in this standby mode. If you’re serious about conserving power, go for a newer model with ErP Lot6 2013 support.

Which Power Rails Are Important?

That brings us to one of the most crucial points of modern power supplies: namely, the power they are able to supply at various voltages. Nowadays, PCs draw the majority of their power from the +12 V rail. By comparison, the other two voltages, 3.3 and 5 V, play a far less important role. That’s why you can use the following as a rule of thumb: if a PSU’s 12V rail can supply all of the required power with room to spare, then the lower voltages are sufficient as well.

However, the opposite is not necessarily the case. Let’s compare the spec stickers of two PSU models:

The difference is quite obvious. Although the second model is billed as a 550W unit, its +12 V rails only add up to 380W, and even that only holds true if the other rails aren’t being stressed simultaneously! Nobody needs 315W on the 3.3 and 5 V rails. In practice, this power supply would probably reach its limit at a load of 350W on the 12V rail.

Ironically, even a good 425W PSU could push more power than this model at 12V. Don’t fall for this sort of trickery. 

Initial Cost Vs. Energy Savings

Quality products cost more initially, but that doesn’t necessarily always translate into lower cost in the long run. That’s why we’ll take a look at a few specific components and their prices in a moment to determine the type of PSU makes the most sense in a given environment, and what kind of savings you can achieve, if any. Some of the results may surprise you!

It’s not enough to focus solely on the financial aspect, though, because we also have to consider durability, reliability and safety. We go into more detail on these points on the next page.