The Boring Blog

Watts the problem?

2010-07-25T12:59:00.000-07:00

No matter what kind of computer you use your computer uses a power supply(PS). It's a fact of life that electronics do not work without the flow of those pesky electrons. Even if you haven't thought about your power supply(PS) much, it's still there tirelessly providing and distributing power to your motherboard, hard drives and all the other components lurking in your computer's case. It's job is pretty simple: Rectify AC current into DC current, step that current down from 115/230v to 3.3, 5 and 12v(plus a couple of negative circuits), and distribute that power to all the different components.

Like most everything else PS's are not a 'one size fits all' product. They come in several sizes, brands, colors, connections and what-not but are all rated the same way: wattage. If you go looking for a PS you will looking for a particular wattage rating to make sure it will be able to feed you internet cruiser. Everything has it's limits and PS's are limited in the amount of current they may pass through themselves and safely sustain operation. For those that do not know 'watts' are determined by multiplying 'volts' by 'amps' and the amps are what can get you into trouble.

When you have a computer that runs a big motherboard, audio card, video card, several hard drives and maybe some on board controllers of some kind, you need a lot of juice(amps) to run all of that. Well, since the equation for watts is volts x amps(V x A) and since V is constant at 115/230v, then if we need more A though our PS then we need a PS with a larger wattage rating. Pretty straight forward isn't it? Or is it.....

The problem arises with the fact that the wattage rating on a PS is an "overall" wattage rating for all of the different voltage circuits(3.3v, 5v, 12v). That means that they take the wattage ratings of the +3.3v rail, the +5v rail, the +12v rail, the -5v rail, the -12v rail and the +5v sb rail and add them together to get a grand total of watts that the PS can safely run through itself without getting hot and buying the farm(it happens, trust me). The confusion is that a higher wattage rating will mean that you can run more stuff, bigger stuff, in your computer and be good-to-go. Hold on Jack, it's not that simple.

Most of your components like your processor, hard drives, optical drives, add-on trays, and the more power hungry video cards run off of that +12v rail, so, most of your wattage rating needs to be derived from the current on the +12v rail. More often than not with the cheaper PS's that is not the case. They will have there amperage running through the different rails more evenly than would be ideal. With a finite overall wattage you have to 'rob Peter to pay Paul', or, rob the +12v to pay the +5v. Do you see how the overall wattage rating given to a particular PS can be misleading and/or just plain ol' useless? I do.

What you need to do is first of all look for the more expensive brands, which as a side note is against most of my consumer instincts. They will be delivering more power in the correct places for modern computers and will be made of higher quality components than their cheaper brethren. More importantly, look on the specifications for each model and the manufacturer will list the different rails and their subsequent maximum amperage. Use this information to correctly size your PS for your computing needs not just the overall rating you get on the front of the box.

I have a couple examples sitting on my desk now:

300 Watt PS: 3.3v = 22A, 5v = 30A(wow), and the 12v = 14A

300 Watt PS: 3.3v = 15A, 5v = 29A(again, wow), and the 12v = 11.5A(really?)

385 Watt PS: 3.3v = 20A, 5v = 14A, and the 12v = 14A

400 Watt PS(cost as much as the others together): 3.3v = 20A, 5v = 20A, and the 12v = 30A

Notice how we went up in overall rated wattage by 33%(3% for the 385W) and was able to double our needed +12v rail amperage on each account? Ahh, learning fells so good.

Can't read the Bible

2009-12-13T19:52:00.001-08:00

Yep, I can't read the Bible on my Blackberry. I have an older model Blackberry phone, the 7290, and have had it for awhile but not that long(if that makes sense at all). I keep my phone on me pretty much all of the time and am rarely caught with out it at least near me. It's pretty cool as far as phones go even though it was made about 5 years or so ago because, hey, it's a Blackberry. It has a nice calender with lots of features, a full QWERTY keypad, a very nice alarm setup, a memo pad where I keep thoughts that pop up in my head, games, several applications(or 'apps' as they are most often called) that do just about anything and last but not least, it's a phone. Well I was on a website the other day that I frequent from time to time that's called Gutenberg.org. It's a project that makes electronic versions of books so that they may be downloaded to your computer quickly and painlessly and most importantly, freely. Now to get them free, all the books are under no U.S. copyrights and that tends to affect the age of the books. They tend to be old. That's fine 'cause there are some good ones on there especially the classics. Anyway, I saw on their mainpage a picture of a Blackberry and the caption said that you could now get ebooks on your PDA/phones. Cool! I found an 'app' that worked called Mobipocket eBook Reader; a beta program for Blackberry phones. It worked/works great and I have already read quite a bit of material on my phone at lunch time and break and any other time I am just sitting needing something to do. I decided that I needed to put a copy of the Holy Bible on there so I could read it whenever I got the chance 'cause it's the best reading there is. The only problem is that the only free ebook bible was the King James Version. Um, no thanks. A short seach on Mobipocket's website found me a New International Version for my phone and $14.99 later it was downloaded to my Wife's laptop. Then it happend; it would not transfer to my phone. Several attempts later I went to the Mobipocket support forum where I have yet to recieve any help with the matter. Crackberry.com forums were much more responsive but have yet to yeild a solution that I may use. I recently seen that Mobipocket now has techical help email capabilities so I sent them a shout telling them my perdicament. I hope to hear back soon after the work week starts and I won't have to chalk this up as one of those learning experiances. Like trying to download a large eBook to an older Blackberry PDA/phone that is running an operating system that is not supported by your eBook reader's latest software update. For now I will reside to downloading only free content as to avoid 'costly' mistakes in the future. Right now I'm working on 'The Science of Human Nature/A Pyscology for Beginners' and it has been pretty good so far.

"It only does everything"

2009-11-18T19:31:00.001-08:00

"It only does everything" is the slogan that they are using now to promote the new Playstation 3(PS3) that is capable of doing all sorts of neat things to do with gaming and a few that do not. It will play all of your Playstation games, dvd's, cd's, Blue-Ray discs, connect to the internet through a built in Wi-fi card and it even has a hard drive(up to 250GB) to store your music, movies, games and other knick knacks. Wow. That sounds pretty cool and all for just $349.99US? Amazing.

But wait, isn't there another machine that can do all of that for the same price and has actually been around for like, decades? Yeah, there is and I'm typing on it right now. It's called: a computer.

The home computer can do all of that and tons more. They connect to other computers and share files, play games and connect to the internet. They play Blue-Ray, dvd's, cd's, floppy disks and read flash drives of dizzying variety. They run programs made by, um, lots of people. Lots and lots of people. They are upgradeable, expandable, reapairable, updatable and even some are mobile. They store pics, movies, games, text documents, presentations, slideshows, spreadsheets, e-mails and pretty much anything else.

What do you think they use to design and build Playstation games and software? That's right, computers. Could you imagine them using a PS3 to make a PS3 game? The thought would make one giggle. No, they need something better, more in depth to make the games/software and then let the peons play them. That's right, you just bought a $349.99 peon. Congradulations.

The saddest part in the whole mess is that the one thing gaming consoles have been doing for years(um, gaming) is still second to the computers. Ouch. If you only can do one thing you might as well be good at it. Or at least tell people you're good at it. Or you could just move on to other stuff people like to do and start saying your product "only does everything". So sad.

Throw away products

2009-11-11T18:35:00.000-08:00

I don't like to throw away stuff. It bothers me to let go of something I just know I will need the next day after it has been tossed in the trash. Well, as you could probably guess that hasn't happened yet but the feeling still paralyzes me from letting go. However the industries of today are making my debilitating condition better with their introduction of throw away products. You know the stuff I'm talking about, the stuff that can't be fixed because there are no parts available or that the repair can't be done because of the cost. Pick out anything at Wal-Mart with a price tag of less than $100 and it will most likely fall into this category, especially anything in electronics. Your MP3 player quit? You paid $70 for it? Throw it away and get another one. It's that simple.

What it all boils down to is a time thing. People's time is getting expensive these days and that drives up the cost of anything they make or do. It's sad to think about the fact that in some cases you could get spare parts for free and it would still be cost prohibitive to pay someone put them in. Crazy eh? Well, it happens all the time. Buy a car that's about 5 years old and hit a good sized deer with it. The insurance company will take it and give you a check because fixing it would be almost as much as the car is worth thanks to the wonderful world of autobody shops. I could write several pages about those guys. Another time perhaps.

So what can we do about this inbalance in the system now that we have narrowed it down? That's easy: go to all the people you know, especially in the manufacturing field, and tell them to ask for a pay cut. Maybe in the 25-30% range should do it and pretty soon the savings will trickle down to us consumers. Don't think they will go for it? Me either so just go ahead and buy two of whatever you are going to get in the future so you can atleast save a trip back to the store when it gives up the ghost. Happy shopping!

The blog

2009-11-11T18:17:00.000-08:00

Well it should be pretty apparent right now that I have opened a spot to let my mind happenings sprout up in the form of type. I can't promise anything in particular with this thing other than variety. Here goes.