ChristophSmaul1337 wrote: ↑24 Jun 2024, 00:29
Chief Blur Buster wrote: ↑23 Jun 2024, 19:22
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.
Chief Blur Buster wrote: ↑23 Jun 2024, 19:22
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.
Chief Blur Buster wrote: ↑23 Jun 2024, 19:22
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.
Chief Blur Buster wrote: ↑23 Jun 2024, 19:22
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.
cursed-gamer wrote: ↑23 Jun 2024, 20:28
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.