My experience with all sorts of Problems regularly mentioned here.

[Thatweirdinputlag]

@ChristophSmaul1337 As much as I hate reading longer posts, there is some sort of fluidity in your story telling, too engaging lol! It warms my heart to see that someone at least is having a break from this nightmare of inputlag "hopefully a permanent break". I know it might be a lot, but could you possibly keep us updated on weekly bases? Thank you or sharing.

[ChristophSmaul1337]

I know it might be a lot, but could you possibly keep us updated on weekly bases? Thank you or sharing.

Absolutely not asking for much here! You're welcome and I'll certainly do so. So far, nothing has changed and the problem hasn't come back, not even a little. But then again, I never had the problems of "creeping back in" in the first place, whatever I did to troubleshoot the issue never "fixed" it for a bit before problems reemerged. It has always been the same, miserable experience no matter of time, changes or any other influence. So I don't reckon problems will come back at all. But then again, you never know and I'm happy to keep you updated.

[Racord]

@ChristophSmaul1337 Thank you so much for your experience. I think it can help a lot of people. Please tell me, have you ever had any problems with mouse input lag or all the problems were only related to unsynchronization in online games?

[ChristophSmaul1337]

Please tell me, have you ever had any problems with mouse input lag or all the problems were only related to unsynchronization in online games?

No, I don't think I ever had some major input lag problem, except once very recently. The only times when I actually feel some input lag is present is when my computer isn't up to the task in terms of framerate. For example, if FPS values drop below about 250 in any game, I can feel strong input lag. But, I'm pretty sure this kind of input lag is caused by the lower FPS, and not anything else. Whenever the FPS goes above 300, there is virtually no input lag.

The only exception was very recently, when I could feel very weird inputs. The root of that problem I still can't explain, I have no idea what happened, what broke or what was the "solution". It went away as fast as it came. This incident was before the PSU change, and the only time in over 20 years of gaming I could tell that something with the input was seriously wrong.

Honestly, I would've killed for "only" input lag problems with no desync. In my experience, input lag is the far, far lesser evil. Input lag you can somewhat get used to, but being insta-deleted without any chance isn't something you can adapt to. It was a regular occurence that I would hold an unpredictable offangle, against literal silvers with zero crosshairplacement, yet still I got destroyed (on my screen) within under 200ms as if I were playing against prime s1mple in a major grand final.

So unfortunately, I always had only the desync problems with no input lag at all, but the desync was at an absurd level, often leaving me with <100ms reaction times, or - at the worst of times - not being able to see the enemy at all.

[Sandy]

It is not matter of being respectful. It is matter of being solid and reliably proving your case. 90% or more input laggers here were or are unable to prove that they face the issue. You don't know if they are good players or not. Once I saw a guy who cried about input lag and tried to share some tweaks and then I saw he plays on windowed full-screen.

Enough, buddy. OK?

EMI is an asterik exception here. Please read the above why.

I think the OP did an fantastic job following proper EMI "caveating" etiquette, that appears to be above reproach (so far), with proper caveats added.

Please study the Infinite Pie Chart closer, and the million-dollar budgets required for some ultra-thin slices. So the OP gets a free pass here, given the proper caveating done. My bigger concern are the fake (and well-intentioned) "universal EMI solution" posters here, because there are NO universal solution to EMI issues. EMI is a universe of infinite number of frequencies (that you cant see) and an infinite number of strengths (from weaker than a single slow-moving electron, all the way through supernova-league EMP bursts), and no computer can resist ALL of them.

There are NO one-size-fits-all solution. The chase for the EMI Holy Grail, means you generally need to block all those alleged "unversal EMI solution", and remember to be respectful to those people who managed to solve their difficult EMI problem. I know it's easy to be jealous and resentful of those people who did (successfully) solve their unique EMI problem, but sometimes it DOES require million-dollars worth of equipment for a much more broadband (>50%) EMI gamut coverage far beyond those cheap EMI meters. Most people who solve their EMI problems don't even know which frequency and which decibel-strength their specific EMI probelm was, just that they solved it by a change (e.g. component or location or whatever).

Due to the difficulty involved (false negative by cheap EMI tester, and only getting a true EMI positive via equipment costing more than the original rig) -- even providing even partial proof (e.g. swapping power supplies back and fourth) is very time consuming -- and will NOT solve most peoples' EMI problems.

Still -- power supply induced EMI problems may even be one of bigger 1% or 5% odds slices rather than one of those 0.001%-or-less EMI-cause slices, but it's still a major lottery what you do to try to solve EMI issues, and sometimes it's easier to do a shotgum approach (not even guaranteed either, since it's only merely one of the bigger slices of the infinite pie chart) like entire-computer-rig-replacements and offgridding (large power station), etc.

Why do we talk about EMI? He replaced his PSU and it has solved his issues, how do we know if it's even worth start talking about some EMI? I quit with EMI stuff already long time ago because there is nearly zero chance, that my PC would work exactly in the same shitty way in places located hundreds of kilometers from each other. What if it's just about high current load?

Every PSU has the sticker with current limits on each rail.
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How do you know if particular PSU manufactured years ago is capable of handling modern GPUs, CPUs and MBs in terms of high currents under heavy load (WITH NO PERFORMANCE DROPS)?

Brother, you should know that the anti-interference ability of the power supply is not written on the nameplate. Now almost all power supplies use the same design and are produced in China. Now I think back to the desktop computer I used in my early years. It has no input delay and uses a switching power supply produced by Taiwan Delta Electronics. In the past, the design and production of switching power supplies were not as unified as they are today.

[Sandy]

My reply is because just peeved at people pressuring a little too hard you to try to provide futher proof when you already provided a fair bit of detail that is reasonable for an end-user.

Got it, chief. I'm sorry to have bothered you, and dealing with this should've not been on your agenda in the first place. I could've - and honestly, should've - just not provided videos just to please one person who is sceptical. But on the other hand, I'm not a contentious person, so I just went with it to avoid more discussion.

In other areas, there's a need for scientific proof of a lot of the Blur Busters initiatives

Absolutely, that's totally reasonable and I would love to contribute to it, but sadly I'm a 27-year old basement dweller who simply enjoys playing video games a lot. I was working on PCs since I was 5 years old, so I do have some experience with it, and I've always had a deep interest for how these things work, despite never getting a degree. Most of the time, I find more fun in binge-watching some YouTube channel explaining how every single component in a PC works than to sit down in a university lecture. Heck, I've even built my very own working computer on breadboards. It's just fascinating and I would say that I do have a solid understanding of these things, even without visiting the university. But again, of course, for the real in-depth stuff like EMI, I absolutely agree that this would need at least a university degree to reliably diagnose and deal with. I actually contemplated buying some test equipment for EMI, but despite being in a lucky financial position to put it lightly, I'm just not willing to spend 5 figures on equipment that might turn out to be useless, as for all I know, the problems still couldn't be related to EMI at all.

So it's a very hard topic to moderate since I often lose-lose if I try to moderate one way or another. [...] The best solution I've found so far is to silo these into a Niche Issues forum, out of the main view area, rather than banning these topics altogether.

You're doing gods work here. I am eternally grateful for this forum to exist, because as you said, if you were to post topics like this in another forum, you'd immediately be dismissed as some sort of conspiracy nut, whos of the opinion that games, players, the electric company, the government, the ISP and the electricians of the world are all against you just so you suffer in a video game. I genuinely appreciate the effort that many people go through to make this work, like you and your moderation team, and I also appreciate the general friendly vibes in this subforum. Again, some loud minority doesn't speak for the well-behaved, vast majority of users. There have been a ton of good suggestions in here, and while none of them helped, they were still highly appreciated and could just as well have been the solution.

Let me know if you want this topic closed on a more positive note pre-emptively.

Will do, chief. When figuring out that my problems were gone, I thought it would be great to close the thread right out the gate, but now I'm more inclined to leave it open just a little bit longer. There are some good questions in here after all, and I'm happy to answer them and to maybe even find out why this was happening to my setup in the first place. Who knows, maybe someone can piece it together, the more info I can provide? Maybe this can also help others? And, if it does indeed derail, there's always the possibility to close it later down the line.

Yeah your calcultions are reasonably fine but you don't know if there was any serious leakage current.

Alright, I don't know what kind of "leakage current" we're talking here, so I'll cover the two things that came to my mind first.

The first, what I do understand of the term "leakage current", is when a device is drawing current from the mains but returns the current not over the intended neutral conductor, but rather over the earth/ground wire, for example when there is a ground fault. This isn't going to happen in my case, because german law requires something called a "FI Schutzschalter", a residual current device (or a ground-fault interruptor), to be installed and functional. These things measure the current going out on the live wire, and weigh that against the returning current from the neutral. If there's a discrepancy, the device will trip, cutting the power. My setup, the entire house in fact, is protected by this device, so there's no potential for this kind of leakage current.

The second meaning, although that's not what you'd call leakage current, might be the inefficiency of the PSU. Let's say my example computer needs 600W to operate under maximum load, and the PSU is happily supplying that power, but there is a higher power draw from the wall. This is because PSUs aren't and can't be 100% efficient, and every PSU has an efficiency curve. You can easily measure the power draw from the wall though, and in my practical case, it never exceeds 500W.

Let's take another look at the latter thought. Let's assume that my computer is under the worst-case scenario the whole time. Let's be generous and assume that to be 650W of continuous power draw. This power draw would be about 76% of the PSU's maximum certified wattage of 850W. Here's the efficiency chart for the example PSU you provided:


It's a bit hard to read, but the efficiency at 76% load is roughly about 92%. I'm basing this off the white 240v curve. This means that the PSU will draw 52W more power from the wall than what the components actually need. This would place the overall power draw from the wall at 702W, still comfortably in range of the certified 850W.

All of this is of course ignoring that the rating on the label usually is showing how much DC power the computer can draw, not how much AC it can safely pull from the wall. Which means, if the PSU would be running at 850W, and according to the chart it's 90% efficient at that wattage, it could safely pull 935W from the wall and still be within its rating.

One thing I find interesting is that almost all of the cases of input lag I've heard of have been with 850W power supplies... Is this a coincidence?

[kriegsnake]

One thing I find interesting is that almost all of the cases of input lag I've heard of have been with 850W power supplies... Is this a coincidence?

I have an asus 1000w , same thing

[ChristophSmaul1337]

One thing I find interesting is that almost all of the cases of input lag I've heard of have been with 850W power supplies... Is this a coincidence?

As mentioned in an eariler post, I have tested numerous different PSUs with different wattages. Depending on the system hooked up, either all PSUs (except the 1200W one) or none of them show problems. In my specific situation, that is. Again, it could be entirely different in another case.

[Sandy]

One thing I find interesting is that almost all of the cases of input lag I've heard of have been with 850W power supplies... Is this a coincidence?

As mentioned in an eariler post, I have tested numerous different PSUs with different wattages. Depending on the system hooked up, either all PSUs (except the 1200W one) or none of them show problems. In my specific situation, that is. Again, it could be entirely different in another case.

Actually, I suspected it was the power supply problem a long time ago because my input lag started after I changed to a very cost-effective 850W power supply five years ago... Fortunately, I can buy the same power supply as yours to test it because I can return it without any reason.

[ChristophSmaul1337]

Actually, I suspected it was the power supply problem a long time ago because my input lag started after I changed to a very cost-effective 850W power supply five years ago...

Could be, but depending on where you're from, it shouldn't. As you might know, in Germany there is a law for literally everything, and PSUs (switching power supplies in general, which also for example include phone chargers or similar) aren't an exception. These laws dictate what kind of and how much interference the PSU has to tolerate, while still working unaffected. I'm not as sure about the rest of Europe, but I'm mildly confident that there are some standardized laws. So, if you're from the EU and you've bought that "cost-effective" device from any kind of serious retailer with an imprint, it should have the necessary precautions for EMI and other interference. I think the US might have something similar, devices over there must? (can?, should?) comply with rules from the FCC(?). Whatever the rules are, it probably is pretty similar to the EU ones.

All that goes out the window of course in case you've bought and imported your 850W unit directly from china. And then again, it can't be that bad, because customs (at least in Germany/EU) would likely intervene.

My best guess is that unless you're from a country without any regulations or customs, your problem likely isn't PSU related and something entirely different than what I'm dealing with. But if the retailer you're buying from allows for trouble-free returns (make sure you don't have to pay a fee when returning!), then yeah, just try it, can't hurt. Much luck mate.