W520 power supply rating vs. performance question

I have had a W520 with the i2820 processor option and the quadro 1000 video for over 3 weeks now. I bought several spare 170 watt power bricks for it, but in one location I kept the 135 watt brick from my W510.
When I moved from the w500 to the w510, when I used a 90 watt w500 brick, the w510 would boot with a BIOS level message that said that the power supply was not adequate and that the machine would be stepped down to a slower speed. The reduction in performance was dramatic and noticable. (The w510 had the 45 watt consumption i920 chip and the more power hungry graphics)
When I use or boot the w520 with the 135 watt supply, there is no message. My benchmarks do not change from those registered when on the 170 watt power supply, starting with the Win 7 system benchmarks for processor and video. Further, the 135 watt brick is cooler to the touch than the 170 watt one under sustained usage (3 hours plus).
The question: given that the w520 in my configuration seems to draw less power than the hot and hungry w510, is the 135 watt supply going to work "as well as" the 170 watt one? As a briefcase lugger, any way to shed weight is valued.
Other considerations: I have no WWAN card installed, and have the CD/DVD removed and substituted with an SSD. The main drive is also SSD, bringing down somewhat the power requirements.
David Gleason. Every T from the T20 to the T61p, W500, W510. Current system: W520 4270-CTO i2820 8GBx4 (corsair), FHD(1920x1080), NVIDIA Quadro 1000M and 2 Samsung 830 512gb SATA III SSD.

I remember another post, that I can't seem to find now, which refers to a software utility that displays wattage being consumed by the system. This would be quite helpful.
Couldn't that be used to study what is being used, and how much of a power adapter is needed to operate the system?
I am trying to come up with a solution for vehicle usage, and I am afraid, it will have to be a 12V to 120v power inverter with a brick plugged into it.
Another factor will be the amount of power consumed when recharging the internal 9cell battery and the external 9cell slice. Doing this while operating the system with WiFi / WWAN active will increase the demand.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
W520 4276-2QU i7-2720QM quad core, 4GBx1, FHD(1920x1080), NVIDIA Quadro 2000M, 500GB-7200, 6205WiFi, 720pCamera, Bluetooth, vPro, 57++9cell, 27++9cellSlice, Win7Pro64
IBM R50 WinXP for backup.

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1) crazy levels of noise - I wear woodworking hearing protectors when I surf the web. Listening to music on itunes is fine so long as you like a background of low level blow dryer noise!
2) I'm still running OSX version 10.2.8, I have been too cheap to buy the latest OS. I'm tempted to go out and spend the $119 on 10.5 but I only have the original 256mb of ram installed and since the min requirement of ram is 512, I know I'll need to spend an extra ~50$ on a 512mb PC2700 ram chip. My price tag to do a minimal update is rising...
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Bill,
Carl has some pretty good points that I'd agree with - trying the replacement PSU and fans should quiet it down somewhat and replacing the stock main fan with a newer, quieter unit will also help. But I'm going to disagree with him on running Leopard on the G4's with a few reservations.
As you might notice from my profile, I'm running Leopard on my dual-867 MDD and find the performance acceptable; perhaps a little slower than Tiger in some respects but it does run well enough within the limitations of the G4's capabilities. The reservation I have about recommending Leopard on a G4 is the graphics card - without Core Image support (which you won't have unless you upgrade the video card) Leopard is going to tax the CPU more and may bog down in some tasks like Quick Look and Cover Flow.
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Hi all,
I don't know if I am the only one complaining about this, did not found other post about it.
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I can no more grab the cable and shove-it in, I need to look at it and find the perfect alignment!?!?!
After all, it is only 2 circular contacts
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Solved!
Go to Solution.

To plug it in without looking:
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Taaaa Daaaaa!!!!
ABeaulieu wrote:I can no more grab the cable and shove-it in, I need to look at it and find the perfect alignment!?!?!

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This is my system
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Power supply reuse

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Power supply in X

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Does the HP 5500-24G-PoE+ (JG541A) come with a power supply?

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When you are configuring the switch for purchase it is also a time to select the power supply.
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****Please click on Accept As Solution if a suggestion solves your problem. It helps others facing the same problem to find a solution easily****
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Power supply question or Firewire issue

Hi
I have a workhorse Dual g4 with three internal video drives, three self powered Firewire drives and an internal Gina audio card. Recently I added a USB2 internal card and swapped my Viewsonic LCD for an Apple where the power is coming off the video cable. For the last 2 days my Firewire drives got balky. They mount but when I try to open them I get the interminable spinning beach ball. So far I am able to connect the FW drives to my G4 laptop and they seem to mount ok.
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Hello,
I have a new P700 30A90012US with a 650W PSU and that didn't come with a video card. I am planning to use it as a DAW and for occasional gaming via a dual boot.
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Your config isn't really power hungry (and the 85W CPUs help a lot). Though technically outside of the official spec, I think you could easily go to a 225W card for graphics if you had the connectors available to support it. I'll double check the current when I get a chance, but it's probably really low risk if you want to convert your single 6-pin connector to dual 6-pin or a single 8-pin (via a dongle) to get to 225W TDP if you wanted to.
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KT3 Ultra2 Power Supply Fan Question

What is the connector PSFAN1 used for? I thought the Power Supply Fan comes on when you turn on the computer. Seems strange that you would have to route the power through the motherboard....I am sorry for the newbie question. I do have a newer Enermax case that seems to have the correct connector coming from the wiring harness out of the power supply. Do I plug that wire onto the PSFAN1 connector?
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Yeah, you will be fine if your plug it in. I have an enermax as well and it is plugged into my mobo and all is well. There is usually a fan in the bottom of the power supply (facing the cpu) and another on the back. The one in the bottom sucks air away from the cpu and the one in the back sucks the air out. You may want to look and see if there is a fan control on the back of the power supply as some let you control the speed of the out blowing fan. Oh, by the way, I just saw that they have three fan power supplies now!

Power Supply Cooling Question

Well, I've been up and running now for the last week or so with no major issues.
I'd like to thank all of you that answered my previous questions during my search for parts and helping me put a good plan in place so that the building of this system was painless.
I have a question though that kind of concerns me.
I noticed one day that what should be an exhaust from the power supply is not an exhaust at all. The air flow is actually into the power supply. I thought this was very unusal. Years ago I actually did have a power supply that had a fan mounted backwards, but that was some cheap case/ps combo in the P2 days.
My power supply in this system is an Enermax EG465P-VE. I said to myself "no way could it be mounted backwards". After checking things out very closely I found that when I removed the side case cover, the power supply started exhausting in the right direction. Put the case cover back on and the air flow went into the power supply again. Ifinally came to the conclusion that the 120mm fan in the back of the case about 2-3 inches below the power supply was actual exhausting so much air out the case that this 120mm fan was actually drawing air against the power supply's fans and causing a slightly negative flow of air (in the wrong direction) through the power supply. I hope I have clearly described the situation.
What concerns me is that the negative flow results in very little air flowing within the power supply, which could potentially result in the power supply overheating and failing resulting in a MoBo and processor frying.
To clarify again, the power supply is trying to push air out, but the 120mm fan is slightly stronger and is more than neutrallizing any flow through the power supply.
Just a little more info... I do have one 80mm fan in the front of the case sucking air into the case, blowing over the hard drive.
There is another spot for a second 80mm fan in the front, but since I'm not over-clocking and really not producing a lot of heat I didn't think I needed two fans in front.
The only other solution that I can think of is to somehow rig up a verister or sensor on the 120mm fan, but to cover all temperture combinations could result in something very complicated for something that shouldn't be that complicated.
Maybe someone has noticed the same problem and has a solution.
Thanks.
//PantherFan

When you see the specs on a cooling fan it says so many CFM. But really what it should be saying is how many CFM at a given speed and at a given pressure ratio (exit to inlet pressure ratio). For a given speed the relationship between flow rate and pressure ratio is on a negative slope. That is if you reduce pressure ratio, flow rate goes up and vice versa.
Using your example suppose I put in two intake fans that on spec each draws 10 CFM and one exhaust fan that does 15 CFM and lets assume that the case is so sealed that air can only enter and leave the case via the intake and exhaust holes. When you turn this system on both intake fans try to pressurise the case but as the case pressure goes up, so does the pressure ratio acrsss the fans. Recall the slope relationship. What happens is that the flow rate drops across the two intake fans. Similarly as the pressure inside the case goes up, it become a lot easier for the exhaust fan to do its job because its pressure ratio is dropping. So what does really happen in this situation? Well the overall system reaches an equilibrium condition where the two fans deliver just enough air that the exhaust fan takes out. You can also consider extreme cases where you have massive intake fans and a weak exhaust fan. In this extreme case you'd be better off by removing the weak exhaust fan because the pressure across it becomes so low that you would not need it. You can take the argument around and make the case for a powerful exhaust fan and obviate the need for an intake fan.
Then why do we need so many fans if all we need is one powerful exhust or intake fan? This happens because as air enters the case, it follows its least resistance path inside the case. This implies that you may end up with "dead air" areas in some regions of the case which won't be good for heat duild up. Now this does not mean that by a careful rearrangement of the components you would not be able to come up with a configuration that only uses one fan. To that you'd need to use computational flow techniques and mathematically model each component in terms of blockage and the amount of heat being put out. This is quite expensive to do so but this is how its done for the high power computers.

W520 power supply rating vs. performanc​e question

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W520 power supply rating vs. performance question