Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on November 11, 2013, 03:03:21 AM

Quote from: texaslabrat on November 11, 2013, 02:50:55 AM

Exactly, which meant that 850W PSU's were put into an over-spec situation

Nope. Power supplies are rated on output. At best efficiency would be 90% at high end of the curve. So 900W/0.9 = 810W.

Overspec would be 850/0.9= 944W AC.

Um, yep....why do you think those PSU's were shutting off? And your "spec calculation" is over simplistic, btw...just because a PSU is rated for an overall wattage doesn't mean that an individual rail is. In some cases, the total +12V wattage is less than the overall PSU wattage rating because they were coming in just under the wire, so to speak, to meet a "common" PSU rating cut-off and the lower voltages are necessary to add in to reach the overall number. For instance, the Corsair HX850 that was the center of the controversy is an 850-rated PSU but only rated a maximum of 840W +12V with apparently little to no safety margin built-in given the observed results.
http://www.corsair.com/en/media/cms/manual/corsair-psu-spec-table-091813.pdf

As for the "at best efficiency"...well, at near 100% load you aren't going to get that, now are you? Again, according to manufacturer's specs you could expect 87.73% @115V input. So put the lower actual rated rail wattage coupled even with lower real-world efficiency when running with a wall power reading of over 970W (and yes, those levels were typical prior to version .95 of the firmware for jupiters) and guess what? You are running that thing over-spec at time of KnC initial release and that's why those things were shutting themselves off and then coming back with a bang in some cases upon recovery.

Others PSU models/brands are actually under-rated in that the combination of the +12V rails actually oversubscribes the overall rating, and the rating itself has a safety margin built-in to it so that the PSU is rated (according to manufacturer documentation) to be able to deliver over the rating (which would be the one you would probably want to buy).

And yes, once again, machines with fully functional chips with initial firmware could very much pull that much wattage..hence the issue. With .94 firmware mine would peak at 945W long-term sustained at the wall according to my UPS readout with higher spikes depending on what cores were enabled/disabled at the time. I never ran .90 but I know that rev pulled at least as much. Was I the only one paying attention when all that was going down? When you actually have one to play with, try putting a pre-.95 firmware on it and let us know how much power you see it pull, k?

edit: clarified verbiage to better express thought chain.