101–110 of 182 posts
This looks like some abomination of the ancient molex drive connection with part of an ATX main connection. At which point does the GPU get its own dedicated power supply?
This is true in many machines already for several years, if you look at the machines the hard to find GPUs are actually in.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that is a market force behind this new PCIe standard.
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Definitely agree that a kilowatt seems very high for gaming and starts to have an environmental impact. Still, driving a car at 100kph takes around 20 kW of power, so driving somewhere is still a bigger burden on the environment than gaming.
That's peak power. You don't run at 100kph straight for hours but you will run your gaming rig at say 500W for three hours in a day (particularly for people willing to shell out money for such a gaming rig). The total energy per day might not be that different, you'd have to account for how much is involved in commuting in traffic.
Very few people have computers capable of cooling a constant 500W.
Assuming you can install two GPUs using 600W, that's basically running a hair dryer in your desktop since most of the energy is converted to heat.
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It's funny because here in europe, power plugs with 16A (some are 20A) are actually the norm: at 230V they can deliver 3600W/4600W !
I wonder how hard it is to do a bottom-up conversion of the USA to 230. If the "all-electric" branch of the environmental movement are right, we'll eventually need to adopt the superior European kettle technology. Getting everyone on the same plug would be great.
It doesn't make any sense. Why do you need to have 600W to power a graphics card? Why do they need an independent power connector?
>>Why do you need to have 600W to power a graphics card?
You don't. There is no GPU currently that needs that much. But as cards are comfortably approaching 400W and more, a new connector is necessary so you don't end up with GPUs taking 3 or 4 existing PCIe 8-pin power connectors. This single 55-amp compatible connector allows for significantly easier routing of paths on circuit boards.
>>Why do they need an independent power connector?
Because the PCIe slot alone can only provide 75W of power. And if it could provide more you'd need to provide that power to the motherboard so you just moved your connector from one place to another.
This looks like some abomination of the ancient molex drive connection with part of an ATX main connection. At which point does the GPU get its own dedicated power supply?
You think in datacenters they are just stacking up PSUs? No, all of this stuff gets vastly more efficient and reliable if you can build just one big PSU to supply say 48V DC and distribute that everywhere.
I’ve always thought of gaming as a virtuous low-impact form of entertainment, insofar as it displaces real-world pursuits like foreign ski holidays, gasoline-powered road trips, or land-hogging golf courses. But burning nearly a kilowatt on a gaming rig feels like a step too far. Sure, the power could be sourced from wind or solar plants, but there’s still a level of excessive conspicuous consumption going on here th…