Posted 11/08/2007 at 04:40:27pm

Now the 76 year old lady who walked into the comcast office with a hammer to vent has my support. One very unhappy customer. RON

Posted 03/28/2007 at 08:49:39pm

Well time to jump in. I tend to lend myself to no more than two rails of 12 Volt power. I only say two in keeping with the PSU Design Guide. Looking at main motherboard PSU connector. The earlier 20 pin versions allowed for a single 12 Volt line on pin 10, and the newer 24 pin versions allow for only two 12 volt lines on pins 10 and 11. Cheaper PSUs use AWG 18 wire with a rating of about 9 Amps and better units use AWG 16 wire having an 11 Amp rating. Bottom line the maximum current on a 20 pin connector for 12 Volts is between 9 and 11 Amps and on a 24 pin connector 18 and 22 Amps. The latter exceeding the typical 18 Amps of most PSU 12 Volt rails. The only other 12 Volt power hungry devices in the machine are the GPU and CPU each generally having additional 12 Volt connectors. We are seeing the number of individual wires for each of these connectors growing recently. OK, I can see a seperate 12 Volt line for the processor simply because the specification calls it out, however, I can see no need for additional individual 12 Volt rails. For what reason? There seems to me to be just too much hype surrounding all these multiple 12 Volt rails not to mention the hype in general as to PSUs and how much power is really needed. In many PSUs I have taken apart all roads seem to lead to Rome meaning all the 12 Volt rails lead to one or two diode bridges and often a single transformer. The rails offer at best overcurrent protection. No magic and nothing special. One rail, maybe two. That is my story and I am sticking to it! Ron