MartyLK

Anybody have an opinion on whether a Hiper 580 will run two 7900GS cards in SLI on a Core2Duo system?

Any opinions about a Hiper 580 PSU at all?

Thanks

Lowfat

It should. Are you overclocking the CPU at all? If so then you might want something a bit more powerful.

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MartyLK

Thanks for your reply. I probably won't do any overclocking even though these CPUs are perfect overclockers. I'm doing a C2D system to keep pace with upgraded media capabilities. No OC'ing needed.

Necrosis

It should be fine, I just had mine poop & die on me but a cap went. Honestly very good supplies.

CDsDontBurn

yea man, that would work just fine for those cards'

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niceguyrichy

mine's been awesome , I've had it for a good while now (it replaced an Antec and I'm not sorry).
great product. They even put a tray with little appartments in the top of the box it comes in so you can use it as a tool chest after
for the money, imo there's not much better

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MartyLK

Yeah, I'm incredibly satisfied with its appearance. Steller looking PSU and solidly built. It looks beautiful in my case, too. I bought it to take advantage of the price at Newegg - $80 + ship. This thing exudes quality. Even the owners manual, with its flat black with chrome inlays appearance says quality. And yeah, I love the tool-box it comes in. I store my zip ties, nuts & bolts tools as well as the spare wire for4 this PSU, in. Very handy.

Thanks to everyone for the replies

MartyLK

I just learned a disturbing fact about this PSU. A poster in another forum brought up the now proven fact that the dedicated PCIe coax connection on this PSU uses only 2 of the visible 3 pins for all six PCIe wires.

When the person brought this up I immediately got my Ohm meter out and did some testing. What I found has seriously clouded the perceived quality of this unit.

I took the dedicated PCIE lead...the one that has 3 pin sockets on the coax connector end and a 6 pin card connector on the other end. I checked for continuity between all of the connections. Only 2 coax pin sockets had continuity. One coax pin socket didn't have continuity with anything!

One coax pin socket had continuity with 3 wires at the other end and one of the other coax pin sockets had continuity with the other 3 wires at the other end.

It is certainly clear there is some amount deception be perpetrated but I'll reserve a condemnation till I see if the machine I'm going to build using this PSU will function correctly. I plan to do away the dedicated PCIe connections this PSU came with and use the 2 quality adapter my Ultra X-Connect came with. I'll be connecting them to one each of the 4 pin PSU coax connector...the auxiliary connectors. Thsi would make things look better and I'd also feel better about not using that ugly extra PCIe adapter that came with this Hiper PSU. It has a 6 pin PCIe connector on one end going into two molex connectors on the other end.

MartyLK

I thought I would grace anyone interested in a Hiper 580 PSU with this review link. Notice the 7th picture down on page one. It'll explain everything.

http://www.jonnyguru.com/review_details.php?id=26

MartyLK

There isn't as big a deal as I was in such a hurry to believe. Let me explain:

I'm starting to understand, the more it incubates in my mind the clearer it gets. I'm not going to excuse Hiper for the way they went about what they did but i do understand it, and it's very simple. A matter of mathmatics.

You have 6 conductors divided by 2. How are you going to divide 3 12v leads and 3 ground leads by 3? You can't very effectively. What are you going to do? You can't use the natural choice and divide them into 6, there isn't enough room. You can't use 4. That would present a possible misconnection issue since the peripheral connectors use 4 pins. They might run into possible resistance or voltage variance issues if they divide the 3 12v leads into 2...hmmm, there could be an explanation of the 5 conductor PCIe adapters here.

It's getting clearer and clearer.

I'm starting to think this 2 pin system isn't as big a deal as I was in such a hurry to believe. As long as the one pin is able to flow enough amperage there won't be a problem. It's when the wire connected to that one pin is too small is when there would be a problem. Example:

You have 3 - 22 gauge wires that flow a specific amount of current...whatever it is.

If you have 1 - 16 gauge wire flowing the same amount of current there wouldn't be a problem. There would be a problem if that 1 wire were 22 gauge and trying to pass the same amount of current.

It's all a matter of resistance. Electricity is like water. If you hook up 3 normal size garden hoses to a 2 inch faucet through adapters you'll get the same amount of water as hooking up a 2 inch hose to the 2 inch faucet. You can, on the other end of that 2 inch hose put a number of diverters to split the water into different directions but you'll still get the same amount of water as using 3 normal size hoses that happen to be split at the beginning rather than at the end.

Actually, in all reality, if the one pin can safely supply the needed amperage for the one card. I absolutely see no problem. Electricity coming out of one wire is the same electricity that comes out of another wire. There is the slight possibility that the one pin scheme might even be better because the source would be the exact same as far as ripple and other electrical factors are concerned...all depending on it's size, though.

Grace

That is somewhat misleading. As long as the connector can take the amperage, you can connect 50 wires to it and it will still work like a charm. Modern PCIe connectors (for example) have 3 12v cables and 3 identical ground points because the average power lines on a VGA PCB can transfer 4-5A max before breaking apart, not because the cables are not able to transfer enough power. You need several separate power lines for the components to work properly, not because the power cannot be transferred to them effectively but because they cannot take all of that power from a single point.


Hell, a single typical 12v PSU cable can transfer about 15-20A all by itself without any trouble!


I used to have a Hiper 580W unit; very nice power supply, well made, very pretty, but I would still prefer others for the same money. Then again, I don't care about fancy looks that much...

MartyLK

Very true. What got me was a post by another person in another forum bringing to my attention the seemingly deliberate attempt to hide the 3 pin PCIe configuration. Hiper made the deliberate attempt to hide it, there is no doubt about that. And, without further and deeper thought, I assumed the rest of the PSU was a fake.

Why the deliberate cover-up, I don't know but what I do know, they didn't have to go through all the trouble of concealing the 2 wire scheme and making it appear as a 3 wire scheme.

Also the review I read stated this PSU was one of the lowest powered PSUs tested comparared with many others...Antec, Ultra, Enermax and so on.

All of this combined to give me the impression I got taken.

MartyLK

You seem to be very knowledgable about these matters. What do you feel about a single molex pin? Would it be capable of transfering enough current to a PCIe connector? Also, how current do you believe a PCIe connector would draw for a 7950GT card?

What I'm getting at is:

A 4 wire molex plug has 1 - 12v pin, 2 ground pins and 1 - 5v pin.

The PCIe adapter, the one with a molex connector and a PCIe connector, uses just that one 12v molex pin to provide power to a PCIe card connector.

I've been trying to work out whether or not a single molex PCIe adapter would provide the necessary juice for this specific card.

Grace

The maximum possible power consumption of a 7950GT is around 80W; less than 6.7A. Not exactly an immense amount of power. Since a typical Molex pin can transfer over double that amount of power, there shouldn't be any problems. Except of course if the PSU is of extremely low quality and the connectors are purely tin with no trace of copper inside them. Nowadays, even 30$ PSUs have some copper in their connectors, or better material.

An adapter should work fine, as long as we are talking about a good PSU which is not overloaded.


PS. There is no such thing as 'cover-up'. They just offer their PSU with sleeved cables and propertiary connectors to make it look better, as many other companies do. No company would bother covering up such a thing; they could use normal connectors if they wanted to, it would actually cost less!

MartyLK

What I was trying to get at was the amount of effort involved in concealing the lack of a third conductor wire. There is actually a contuctor in that useless third hole on the cable end. Effort and expense was made to put that metal conductor in the hole. The cable itself, the coax stye end, is covered so well that a person cannot determine, without taking it apart, there is only two cmetal concuctors in use. To look directly head-on at the coax style end of that cable you see 3 metal conductors.

They could simply have left the third conductor out and have given the excuse, if an excuse ever became necessary, that the third pin and socket was there for proper connection or as a guide pin. They didn't. It is absolutely clear they wanted people to think there were 3 separate conductive wires present on 3 pins.

Lelisevis

To be honest knowing the average PC user it was probably easier just to add the third one. It's probably saved them thousands of RMA's and tech support calls from angry customers wanting an explanation. On top of that it would have made hundreds of technology website headlines potentially putting unknowledgeble users off buying.

Grace

Actually, the answer to this is extremely simple.

The third hole is used as a guide. Prevents people from inserting the connector the wrong way. It is circular anyway, someone could force the connector inside the hole the wrong way if he/she was blind (stupid) enough!

And they don't actually have to explain everything, it would be outrageously funny to see in a manual something like "hey, this hole is a dud, it is only used as a guide!".


Every person on the planet that knows even the basic about electronics would understand that with two lines (12V and Ground) someone wouldn't ever use 3 wires on a single connector, there is not a single reason to do that.

MartyLK

LOL...ahhh, you made my day! Your a funny person! Hehehe