Quality PSU?
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That was also my first thought, but at the price he got it for, unless it causes something to fry, I can't criticize it.
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I have been running it for almost 24 hours now and everything seems stable. For the price I am happy with it & to have something up and running.
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Lots of guys here have lots of money for tinkering so its always top of the line or nothing, which is a nice philosophy if you have the money for it.
I prioritize reliability first and foremost so if, for the money, I get super reliable but less efficient, I'm ok.
But when buying new components I do try to get both efficiency and reliability. I have several of those old style psu running also and am quite happy.
Have some of the new ones also and am also quite happy. I'm easy.
Plus I'm not going to toss out all my old/reliable proven gear just because someone somewhere got a better number on a benchmark.
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Having worked on computer since a young child as both hobby and some decent money, how I afforded my Voodoo2, I'd rather go without than have to waste my time with crap hardware. I've been bitten way too many times.
A lot of crappy hardware operate in a grey area where you get random problems from time to time with no perceivable pattern. High quality hardware tends to be binary, it works or it doesn't.
An example of something like that is some low end PSUs will attempt with all of their might to keep supplying power, even if the voltage is out of spec. Higher end PSUs like to maintain voltage and if it drops too low, it cuts off all power at once and shutsdown. During my time as IT, I've seen times where many computers with cheap PSUs would cause corruption by allowing voltage sags through and not turning off.
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Lots of guys here have lots of money for tinkering so its always top of the line or nothing, which is a nice philosophy if you have the money for it.
I prioritize reliability first and foremost so if, for the money, I get super reliable but less efficient, I'm ok.
But when buying new components I do try to get both efficiency and reliability. I have several of those old style psu running also and am quite happy.
Have some of the new ones also and am also quite happy. I'm easy.
Plus I'm not going to toss out all my old/reliable proven gear just because someone somewhere got a better number on a benchmark.
Re-using old stuff is perfectly fine in most cases, I have an old 2008 ion/atom netbox computer that I still use as a small HTPC hooked up to a monitor for when I do my nightly cardio.
But when it comes to powering something 24/7 and looking for a "quality PSU," as was stated in the subject of this thread, then no, that is NOT a quality PSU. That's a cheap PSU that was considered low quality when it came out 7 years ago. If OP is fine with hooking it up to his system, that's his choice. I'm just saying I wouldn't have taken it for free, nor would I put it near a new $300+ motherboard/cpu combo.
In the end it's your equipment and your decision. I'm not suggesting you buy something top of the line, but just about anything modern is better than that PSU.
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Other than being an old design I don't think there is anything wrong with the PSU - If he had a $50 budget for a PSU, maybe he would gotten a newer one.
I'd be interested to know what the total cost of this was so that we can put into proper perspective how much money is at risk if the PSU were to fry his hardware.
Seems like it will be a super super cheap system in the end.
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Other than being an old design I don't think there is anything wrong with the PSU - If he had a $50 budget for a PSU, maybe he would gotten a newer one.
I'd be interested to know what the total cost of this was so that we can put into proper perspective how much money is at risk if the PSU were to fry his hardware.
Seems like it will be a super super cheap system in the end.
Cheap capacitors, bad voltage regulation, probably terrible ripple filtering, low efficiency, probably lacking in overcurrent/overvoltage protection, overrated rails, etc. The same stuff that plagues all cheap PSUs. He posted his motherboard on the first page, it's one of the supermicro atom boards which are $330 a piece, plus whatever he put in the build for RAM and storage. That motherboard/cpu alone deserve a minimum $50 PSU considering you can get a quad core xeon and motherboard for a similar price.
PS: I keep forgetting to respond, but my recommendation is just to turn off watchdog unless you're having issues with the computer hanging. It's rebooting because you don't have the proper software installed, that's its purpose. The software essentially resets the watchdog timer so that the computer doesn't reboot, it's like a dead man's trigger. Once the computer hard locks, the software can no longer reset the timer, and watchdog hard reboots the computer.
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I prioritize reliability first and foremost so if, for the money, I get super reliable but less efficient, I'm ok.
for the record, less efficient supplier are more expensive in the ling run, specially if run 24/7
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When you're talking about a 10% difference on 30watts of power, that's 3 watts. I wouldn't be concerned about pennies per month so much than the risk of wasting time or damaging hardware from something cheap.
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When you're talking about a 10% difference on 30watts of power, that's 3 watts. I wouldn't be concerned about pennies per month so much than the risk of wasting time or damaging hardware from something cheap.
it is more than pennies, it added up quick, but yes reliability is important
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I have this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817256097&cm_re=silverstone_SFX--17-256-097--Product one for a couple months with zero problems
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A 3 watt diff is about $0.20/month @ $0.10/KWH. Even if you pushed it to 15 watts, you'd have to be averaging about a 150watt draw 24/7, and you'd still be looking at a $1 difference per month. The biggest benefit to higher efficiency is reduced heat output.
But then again, I'm that guy that is obsessed With quality: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16817151088 Wife's PSU
This is on my radar: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151121
But I already have a bronze Antec, which is just a rebadged Seasonic.
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why I enter the BIOS config and turn on "Watchdog" why does my pfsense keep restarting after about 1 min after it boots up. If I turn off watchdog it runs fine.
That's what it's supposed to do.
When you enable the watchdog timer you get a countdown that runs on some low level device, often the SuperIO chip or Southbridge but could be a dedicated microcontroller. If that timer ever gets to 0 it hard resets the system. The idea is that you enable something in software that runs at at higher frequency, say once every 30s, that resets the watchdog timer. This in known as patting the watchdog. That way if the OS crashes or suffers some other failure the system automatically reboots after a minute.There are FreeBSD drivers to allow you to do that in combination with the cron package in pfSense though I've never tried it myself.
Edit: Missed Pylor's response already. ::)
Steve
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I prefer to muzzle the watchdog by turning that annoying shit off (-:
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This is on my radar: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151121
Slightly off topic, but that's the PSU I have in my main gaming desktop, and it's a beast. They get down to $100 now and then on the American side of amazon.
