GOOD powersupply for under $40?

[jeffc]

But again, where is this surge protector that solved power
factor problems. A question again because 1) what UPS/surge
protectors do and 2) what power factor is about are so basic
as to question whether you understand the concepts of PFC and
what a surge protector really does. To claim a surge protector
provides PFC is to either not understand what PFC is or to not
understand what a power strip protector does. Typical plug-in
UPSes don't even CLAIM power factor correction - since they
connect computer direct to AC mains when not in battery backup
mode.

Go on and on all you want about it - I never said that. You made it up just
to have something to argue about. When I said "redundant", I meant a good
UPS gives you the same actual PRACTICAL benefit of PFC, because the other
"benefits" of PFC are not helpful in a typical residential. environment.

Rather than get upset, admit the concept was not understood,
why and where PFC is important, and reliability that PFC
brings to a computer. Then move on.

Rather than ramble on and on, just admit that you never understood my point
to begin with. Now run along and ambush some other unsuspecting poster with
your supposed intellectual superiority. PFCs in a typical residential
computer is a waste of money, and you haven't given a single reason that's
not true, other than throwing around some technical mumbo jumbo and making
vague references to irrelevant "commercial environments".

 

[Ruel Smith (Big Daddy)]

The point remains - innovation is THE reaons for cutting
costs - which may have little to do with profits when other
games are played. Games such as GM still making profits when
they lose money on every car (which is why they so jealously
protect the 'truck as a car' loophole). (GM products remains
the most expensive to build. The source who says otherwise
invented his numbers.)

Where do you come up with this stuff? GM loses money on some cars due to
intense competition, but makes bundles on others. Overall, again, GM is
highest profit taker of the bunch. Now, again, the past couple of years may
be different due to the huge incentives driven by such a dismal market. My
information is about 3 years old. I didn't invent any numbers. It was
published in the local newspaper's Saturday car section just a couple of
years ago. I also was a car salesman for 6 years and privy to a lot of
industry info. Check out the Consumer Reports special auto edition and
you'll see that, while some models are less reliable than others (as with
all companies), GM has some very reliable automobiles (check out how
miserably unreliable most Mercedes are while you're at it...). JD Power
publishes their rankings every year. Check them out for yourself. You've
provided nothing but your perceptions which are not only entirely incorrect
and uninformed, but you go further breaking off onto tangents that are
rediculous. As a salesman, I hunted for ammunition to burn the
competition...

The only way to cut costs in power supplies is innovate - or
remove essential functions. How to sell a vehicle at up to
$5000 profit? Get government to not require essential
passenger car functions - and therefore no need for even 1990
innovation - a 70 Hp per liter engine. IOW eliminate defacto
world standard functions. Just like cheap power supplies.
Sell the supply at less cost and actually increase profits -
by forgetting to include essential functons.

And your economic credentials are???

I have news for you: GM did more innovation in the 1980's than any other
manufacturer. Remember all the electronics GM put in their cars? Successful
or not, they innovated. Japanese manufacturers were still putting
carburetors in cars after GM went exclusively with electronic fuel
injection. Heads up displays? Courtesy of Hughes electronics, a GM subsidy.
Notice how cars don't rust like they used to? GM, Ford, and Chrysler were
the first to use the phosphate coatings that give you this benefit.
Companies like Honda and Toyota don't really innovate at all. They simply
build cars on the idea of evolutionary development, in contrast to the
American concept of revolutionary development. The big 3 have complete
ground up redesigns and even models that drop out and others that are
introduced. The Japanese counterparts tend to gradually improve the
underpinnings, while reskinning them to give them a fresh look. There was
no big revolutionary leap in development and innovation from the 1984 Honda
Accord to today's 2004 Accord. It was a gradual improvement over the years.

You have absolutely ZERO CREDIBILITY...

It helps to first cite accurate numbers. GM will not put
both horsepower and liters on same sticker to avoid numerical
facts. 2003 Cavalier and Pontiac Sunfire - 2.2 liter outputs
only 115 HP (not a fictional 150) ... or 52 Hp per liter - low
performance - obsolete technology. Pay more money and get a
2.2 liter outputing 140 HP ... pathetic 63 Hp per liter.
Better. But base engine for world standard products - at no
extra money - is about 70 Hp per liter. A standard for at
least one decade and GM still does not meet it - which
explains their higher costs.

I pointed out the Sufire GT and Cavelier Z24, both of which used a 2.4 liter
DOHC Quad 4 producing 150 HP. During the late 90's, it was the fastest car
in its class. An earlier version of the same engine had 190 HP in the Olds
Calais Quad 442 and Pontiac Grand Am. Get your facts straight. Many of the
4cyl engines that have high specific output (the exact name for what you
refer to hp/liter equation) have absolutely no torque to talk about. GM has
chosen to use a larger displacement to offset this. Check out reviews of
the Honda S2000 prior to this year's revamp. It's painfully slow for its
horsepower rating because the engine has to spin far too high to develop
enough power. The Civic Si is in the same boat. The Si, which makes some 43
more HP than the lesser EX model, is hardly any faster in acceleration
times. Also, engines that rev so high and make high specific output, are
often terrible on gas mileage for their size.

Superchargers should provide even higher performance.
Pontiac Bonneville - luxery with attitude - 240 HP from a 3.8
liter ... 63 Hp per liter. No better than an upscale
Sunfire! World standard supercharged engines output about 100
HP. Why does a supercharged Pontiac not even meet world
standard aspirated engines? Where is the innovation? Not
there once numbers are reviewed.

You're a complete idiot, aren't you? Pontiac Bonneville with the
supercharged engine now develops 280 HP, but the key factor is the torque.
There is a tradeoff for horsepower, often - torque. The supercharged
Bonneville has plenty of torque for such a small engine. Where are your
facts on the "World standard supercharged engines"? The superchargers in
the Bonneville SSEi and Grand Prix GTP use light boost to enhance the
power. This is similar to a concept used by SAAB a couple of years ago to
use light pressure turbochargers on their engines. The manufacturer could,
if they chose to do so, lower the static compression within the engines and
significantly raise the boost to produce staggering power. They just choose
not to. It's an age-old technique.

Also, stated HP by a manufacturer is not always accurate. The current Ford
Mustang SVT Cobra states its HP at 390, but 3rd party testing revealed it
actually produces 425. The, now extinct, Pontiac Trans Am and Chev Z28
(1998 and newer) listed HP at 305, but Car Craft Magazine found that at the
rear wheels, where there is typically a 20% reduction in power, the car
produced over 290 HP. It actually made more HP at the rear wheels than the
Corvette did by 6 HP. They concluded the engines in those cars were
actually the full 345 HP Corvette engines unaltered but stated at a lower
figure. This explains why a 305 HP Cobra of the same period got blown away
by the Z28, where a Ford Mustang magazine was able to burn through the 1/4
mile at 12.8 seconds with the Z28 while the Cobra completed it in 13.6
seconds.

One of the lines I sold was Pontiac. A customer compared a supercharged
Bonneville SSEi (when it was 240 HP) to other makes. I told him to just
nail the throttle on all the cars he was comparing. He nailed the
Bonneville with the traction control off, and it burned rubber. He couldn't
get those overhead cam engines in the others to spin the tires at all.
Guess what he bought? It's about TORQUE...

It's no secret the overhead cam engines make more HP per liter than a
pushrod engine. However, they tradeoff torque for it. What does that mean
to an everyday driver? Since on OHC engines the torque peak happens at
lofty figures like 6000 rpm, it isn't very usable to the normal driver. How
often in everyday driving does your car exeed 6000 rpm? On a pushrod
engine, the torque peak usually happens at a more acceptable 3000 rpm or
so. That means, for everyday driving, these engines are far more useable.
In the 1960's GM hired the legendary Smokey Yunick to explore the
possibility of going to all OHC engines. After a lengthy research, his
conclusion was that because of the high revving nature of OHC engines, it
isn't all that necessary in everyday passenger vehicles. They abandoned the
idea.

Secondly, GM has purposely kept the horsepower figures lower on a car that's
considered lower in the food chain to their Cadillacs. It makes no sense to
outfit a less expensive car based on the same platform (Bonneville,
LeSabre, Park Avenue, Deville, Seville and former Aurora) with more power.

The innovation is how the superchargers work in those cars. Unlike normal
superchargers that rob you of fuel mileage, these superchargers use
bleedoff valves at low rpms. Essentially, they give you a normally
aspirated engine at normal city driving. Stomp on it, and the valve closes,
the boost rises, and you get a lot more power. The supercharged Bonnevilles
and Grand Prixs when I sold actually got better city fuel economy than the
normally aspirated counterparts, but worse highway by exactly one mpg for
both.

Again, I clipped the rest. Your points are completely uninformed, and no one
misrepresented anything.

I'm not a GM advocate at all. I own a Jeep Wrangler and am contemplating
purchasing a Honda Civic EX this spring. However, you're so far off base,
you're not even in the stadium...



--
Big Daddy Ruel Smith

My SuSE Linux machine uptime:
4:39pm up 47 days 1:25, 2 users, load average: 0.96, 0.92, 0.49

My Windows XP machine uptime:
Something less...

 

[Gordon]

Where do you come up with this stuff? GM loses money on some cars due to
intense competition, but makes bundles on others. Overall, again, GM is
highest profit taker of the bunch. Now, again, the past couple of years may
be different due to the huge incentives driven by such a dismal market. My
information is about 3 years old. I didn't invent any numbers. It was
published in the local newspaper's Saturday car section just a couple of
years ago. I also was a car salesman for 6 years and privy to a lot of
industry info. Check out the Consumer Reports special auto edition and
you'll see that, while some models are less reliable than others (as with
all companies), GM has some very reliable automobiles (check out how
miserably unreliable most Mercedes are while you're at it...). JD Power
publishes their rankings every year. Check them out for yourself. You've
provided nothing but your perceptions which are not only entirely incorrect
and uninformed, but you go further breaking off onto tangents that are
rediculous. As a salesman, I hunted for ammunition to burn the
competition...


And your economic credentials are???

I have news for you: GM did more innovation in the 1980's than any other
manufacturer. Remember all the electronics GM put in their cars? Successful
or not, they innovated. Japanese manufacturers were still putting
carburetors in cars after GM went exclusively with electronic fuel
injection. Heads up displays? Courtesy of Hughes electronics, a GM subsidy.
Notice how cars don't rust like they used to? GM, Ford, and Chrysler were
the first to use the phosphate coatings that give you this benefit.
Companies like Honda and Toyota don't really innovate at all. They simply
build cars on the idea of evolutionary development, in contrast to the
American concept of revolutionary development. The big 3 have complete
ground up redesigns and even models that drop out and others that are
introduced. The Japanese counterparts tend to gradually improve the
underpinnings, while reskinning them to give them a fresh look. There was
no big revolutionary leap in development and innovation from the 1984 Honda
Accord to today's 2004 Accord. It was a gradual improvement over the years.

You have absolutely ZERO CREDIBILITY...


I pointed out the Sufire GT and Cavelier Z24, both of which used a 2.4 liter
DOHC Quad 4 producing 150 HP. During the late 90's, it was the fastest car
in its class. An earlier version of the same engine had 190 HP in the Olds
Calais Quad 442 and Pontiac Grand Am. Get your facts straight. Many of the
4cyl engines that have high specific output (the exact name for what you
refer to hp/liter equation) have absolutely no torque to talk about. GM has
chosen to use a larger displacement to offset this. Check out reviews of
the Honda S2000 prior to this year's revamp. It's painfully slow for its
horsepower rating because the engine has to spin far too high to develop
enough power. The Civic Si is in the same boat. The Si, which makes some 43
more HP than the lesser EX model, is hardly any faster in acceleration
times. Also, engines that rev so high and make high specific output, are
often terrible on gas mileage for their size.


You're a complete idiot, aren't you? Pontiac Bonneville with the
supercharged engine now develops 280 HP, but the key factor is the torque.
There is a tradeoff for horsepower, often - torque. The supercharged
Bonneville has plenty of torque for such a small engine. Where are your
facts on the "World standard supercharged engines"? The superchargers in
the Bonneville SSEi and Grand Prix GTP use light boost to enhance the
power. This is similar to a concept used by SAAB a couple of years ago to
use light pressure turbochargers on their engines. The manufacturer could,
if they chose to do so, lower the static compression within the engines and
significantly raise the boost to produce staggering power. They just choose
not to. It's an age-old technique.

Also, stated HP by a manufacturer is not always accurate. The current Ford
Mustang SVT Cobra states its HP at 390, but 3rd party testing revealed it
actually produces 425. The, now extinct, Pontiac Trans Am and Chev Z28
(1998 and newer) listed HP at 305, but Car Craft Magazine found that at the
rear wheels, where there is typically a 20% reduction in power, the car
produced over 290 HP. It actually made more HP at the rear wheels than the
Corvette did by 6 HP. They concluded the engines in those cars were
actually the full 345 HP Corvette engines unaltered but stated at a lower
figure. This explains why a 305 HP Cobra of the same period got blown away
by the Z28, where a Ford Mustang magazine was able to burn through the 1/4
mile at 12.8 seconds with the Z28 while the Cobra completed it in 13.6
seconds.

One of the lines I sold was Pontiac. A customer compared a supercharged
Bonneville SSEi (when it was 240 HP) to other makes. I told him to just
nail the throttle on all the cars he was comparing. He nailed the
Bonneville with the traction control off, and it burned rubber. He couldn't
get those overhead cam engines in the others to spin the tires at all.
Guess what he bought? It's about TORQUE...

It's no secret the overhead cam engines make more HP per liter than a
pushrod engine. However, they tradeoff torque for it. What does that mean
to an everyday driver? Since on OHC engines the torque peak happens at
lofty figures like 6000 rpm, it isn't very usable to the normal driver. How
often in everyday driving does your car exeed 6000 rpm? On a pushrod
engine, the torque peak usually happens at a more acceptable 3000 rpm or
so. That means, for everyday driving, these engines are far more useable.
In the 1960's GM hired the legendary Smokey Yunick to explore the
possibility of going to all OHC engines. After a lengthy research, his
conclusion was that because of the high revving nature of OHC engines, it
isn't all that necessary in everyday passenger vehicles. They abandoned the
idea.

Secondly, GM has purposely kept the horsepower figures lower on a car that's
considered lower in the food chain to their Cadillacs. It makes no sense to
outfit a less expensive car based on the same platform (Bonneville,
LeSabre, Park Avenue, Deville, Seville and former Aurora) with more power.

The innovation is how the superchargers work in those cars. Unlike normal
superchargers that rob you of fuel mileage, these superchargers use
bleedoff valves at low rpms. Essentially, they give you a normally
aspirated engine at normal city driving. Stomp on it, and the valve closes,
the boost rises, and you get a lot more power. The supercharged Bonnevilles
and Grand Prixs when I sold actually got better city fuel economy than the
normally aspirated counterparts, but worse highway by exactly one mpg for
both.

Again, I clipped the rest. Your points are completely uninformed, and no one
misrepresented anything.

I'm not a GM advocate at all. I own a Jeep Wrangler and am contemplating
purchasing a Honda Civic EX this spring. However, you're so far off base,
you're not even in the stadium...

w_tom has a lot of opinions. He seems to know his power supply
information but he doesn't want share it. From his past postings he
would rather have a hobbyist test a power supply until it fails for
one to find the most reliable power supply. That's all well and good
for a manufacturer.
People come to this newsgroup for help and from him you get his
arrogant attitude and what appears to be an uninformed opinion on
cars.

 

[JAD]

do you care if anybody reads your informative power related posts? cause this kinda post most times (cause I feel I know ya) gets
you plonk'd.

 

[R. Anton Rave]

GM has long remained the world's highest priced
manufacturer.
GM assembly hours per car still remain higher than most
other manufacturers, as they have been for decades.

Again, you're ignoring recent changes. GM was the highest cost
producer, but their total assembly time (not final assembly) for a
car is now under 40 hours, Ford's and DamlierChrysler's slightly over
40, while the better Japanese companies needed less than 30. GM got
better after Bob Lutz came over from Chrysler.

Lower costs do not come from 'economies of scale' nor from
lower wages. It comes only from innovation.

I work for a company whose primary business is showing other companies
how to compete against Third World labor, so I'm very biased in favor
of productivity through innovation rather than low wages. But lower
costs do come from economies of scale (up to a point, as you
mentioned, and that point tends to be very low for service-oriented
businesses) and lower wages.

Innovation is the missing factor in GM which is why they still
don't have a 70 Hp per liter engine in every vehicle and
therefore must sell V-8s that only equal the competition's V-6.
70 Hp per liter technology was ready for 1975 GM products and
stifled by anti-innovation GM MBAs - as the Vice President of
drive train development bluntly stated in the early 1990s.

Despite its love of pushrods and just 2 valves/cylinder, GM is
actually not the worst when it comes to power output, Ford probably
is. But I agree 100% about MBAs stifling innovation because every
cost study "proves" that the wisest financial choice is against
investing in new designs and new equipment and always in favor of
maintaining the status quo. Actually those studies tend to show that
the wisest choice is to immediately shut down then liquidate the
company. In other words, Intel has been running its business 100%
wrong.

Possible that list price of an "$80 power supply" benchmark
has dropped again due to innovation from those Asian power
supply manufacturers. We know more powerful transistors with
less cost exist. We know that switching power supply
frequencies are increasing. Innovations cut costs.

I'm sure you've seen many power supply designs, new and old, but can
you show me where the cost-cutting innovation is? As I mentioned, a
PC supply from 1980 looks almost the same as a one from 2004, right
down to the lack of surface mount components (except on secondary PC
boards), the same component counts, and no more than a 100% increase
in frequencies (one of the best quality makers, Fortron/Source, has
upped the frequency only 33%). So unless the factories are much more
modern, I have to credit the lower prices to better currency exchange
rates, lower labor costs, and economies of scale.

 

[R. Anton Rave]

A similar Pontiac Grand Prix is priced a few thousand dollars
less. Honda prices are slightly lower than Toyota, but they're
still high. However, despite this, GM has remained the most
profitable manufacturer of automobiles. My info is just a couple
of years old, but GM was #1 of all manufacturers in profits on
a per vehicle basis at approximately $850 per copy.

GM is now the most profitable only among GM, Ford, and
DamlierChrysler, and even 5-10 years ago they were losing $1,000 per
vehicle (yet accusing the profitable Japanese of dumping). The most
profitable manufacturers are some of the luxury car makers, but for a
while Honda was equaling Porshe, but now the leader is probably
Nissan, at around 6-9% per vehicle, followed by Toyota.

It's funny that the perception of GM's quality is so low, but
year after year when JD Power evaluates 5 year old vehicles for
reliablility, both Cadillac and Buick rank in the top 5. But
they're just soooo bad, aren't they? To the contrary, Mercedes,
who enjoys almost universal acclaim for quality, ranks miserably
in reliability in both JD Power studies and Consumer Reports
surveys. Perception is the key.

JD Powers surveys give strange results that probably don't jibe with
reality, according to warranty costs during the first year and surveys
done by Consumer Reports and Popular Mechanics. One anamoly with
Powers surveys is that they've long included at least one British
brand in their top 10, and Cadillac quit having good reliability after
Elvis quit buying their cars.

Ex-Chairman for Chrysler Lee Iacocca once said that it amazed
him that 3 cars go down the same assembly line with the exact
same parts, but one gets a Plymouth badge, one gets an Eagle
badge, and one gets a Mitsubishi badge. However, both public
perception and journalistic reviews always proclaim he one
with the Japanese brand is a better car. Perception...

Popular Mechanics and Consumer Reports surveys have shown no bias
based on nameplates, but consumers are another matter, and GM-branded
versions of the Toyota Corolla have always had worse resale values
than Corollas.

"Automotive journalism" is largely just PR and fashion for guys, and
David Davis, who edits Automobile and formerly another car magazine
(Motor Trend? Car & Driver?), once said that he'd give a speech to
anyone who paid him $5,000, meaning if a car maker bribed him, he'd
write favorably about them. The most blatant example of bribery
affecting coverage came in the mid-1960s, when Motor Trend named a
Toyota Corolla or Corona its Import Car of the Year - after Toyota
paid for all the issues for that year.

 

[w_tom]

Ford, which was once far more productive than GM, suffered
terribly in five years under Nasser. Starting in 1981, when
Americans got patriotic (patriots believe in free markets and
not in 'buy American') and stopped buying Fords, then we voted
out Henry Ford. We stopped buying the crap products.
Engineers then started designing Ford products. First car
designed by an engineer at Ford since the 1965 Mustang? 1987
Ford Taurus. Starting in 1981, Ford saw amazing increases in
productivity because top management 'came from where the work
gets done' meaning that engineers - not cost controllers - now
designed and manufactured product. But in only five years,
Nasser undermined that entire advantage putting Ford back with
GM.

As a result of Nasser, Ford (like GM) also has low
performance engines. It may be one reason, on two occasions,
security was called by secretaries during confrontations
between Nasser and Clay Ford. They disagreed that greatly.
Nasser, a classic MBA, major stifled innovation in Ford during
his five years - which is apparently why Ford still does not
have 70 Hp per liter engines in every vehicle.

R. Anton Rave's hours for vehicle assembly are consistent.
Back in the late 80s, GM would take something on the order of
120 man-hours to assemble a car when most manufacturers took
80. GM touts major improvements - and they have improved.
But so has the competition. Some Toyota factories are now
said to require only 20's of manhours to assemble a car. GM
has improved but their costs remain higher. GM is not the
world leader in innovation - too many MBAs in top management
without auto industry experience simply stifle innovation.
When it comes to innovation, benchmarks are Honda and
Toyota. Honda is probably the most profitable manufacturer
per vehicle and Toyota is the fastest growing automaker.
Innovation is the source ofl long term cost reductions - five,
ten, and twenty years.

For power supplies, innovations that could lead to cost
reductions may be in how components are now made. Higher
frequencies also mean smaller transformer - more cost
reduction. It could be that manufacturer's employees are
getting smarter - more efficient - and yet wages have not
risen accordingly - yet. A short term effect. I cannot say
with certainty. If the $80 industry standard power supply is
now selling for $65, then innovation happened somewhere - as
it must over time.

The $80 power supply was selling for $100 only five years
ago. And those supplies don't look much different either.
Costs were reduced. One difference may be fewer semiconductor
parts. But then I did not count parts. Don't have multiple
open supplies side by side to compare. Not enough samples to
make a valid statistical estimation. Problem being plenty of
$40 supplies fail and are ripped apart. But the $80 supplies
rarely fail. Few reasons to rip apart a superior and working
supply.

Why would the $80 supply now be selling even less? Cannot
say with any certainty. Only that based upon numbers provided
here, there appears to have been another 10 or 15% price
reduction. This while the dollar recently has remained stable
or decreased in value compared to many Asian currencies.

"Economies of scale" would not be a factor. Those power
supply manufacturers have long since cross beyond where
'economies of scale' make any difference. Many Asian
factories have been shipped to mainland China where labor is
equivalent, but wages have not yet increased to justify the
worker's value. That shift has occurred only in the past few
years - would not explain why the $100 power supply could sell
for $80. Cannot say where the innovation is happening. Other
factors such as low regional wages and exchange rates can have
short term effects - a few years. But the drop in power
supply prices has been consistent over time - over decades.
And yet power supplies 'appear' to be same. Only innovation
can explain that kind of cost reduction.

 

[Uncooked meat prior to state vector collapse]

First power factor creates many problems - the least of
which is power efficiency. Power factor problems can cause a
computer to 'hickup' and can even create fires on 'interior
wall' neutral wires that normally would have been properly
sized. Just a few things that PFC solves. PFC solves enough
problems that EU requires it. It is a solution important in
commercial environments and not always necessary in
residential power (warning: some residential power really is
more 'commercial').

If my WALLS are on FIRE, the quality of my computer parts becomes much less
of a concern.