Topic: A D&T Public Service Announcement: All Seasonic PSU 15% off at Newegg Until 2/8 (Read 2672 times)

Coincidentally I had ordered an OCZ 1250W 80+ PS last week and hooked it up to that same rig today, changing nothing else.  Low and behold I dropped from 900W to 790W!  After looking a bit longer, the 950W PS I was running is apparently not 80+ as I had thought, lesson #1.

I also pulled out the monitor/keyboard and turned off everything as you mentioned and dropped another 10W.  A rough calculation puts that savings to be a little over $0.50/day with this power supply.  Not too shabby.

If you use Ubuntu 11.10 there are built binaries that you just unzip and run, assuming you have Catalyst and SDK installed. Kano has step by step setup. Or just put BAMT on a USB and boot it on your Windows machine. Everything is installed already, just edit one config file and profit. (sorry for not adding links, posting from phone)

i will if you can assure me of one thing; for cgminer in Windows, all i had to do was unzip the cgminer download and add a one line .bat file to start mining.  is linux that simple?

Dump everything, install linux.  'nuff said.

wow, google updater. why is that even on your machine?

Seasonic makes the majority of high end PSU.  Most companies like Corsair don't build power supplies.  They decide on things like how the cables look and what color fan.  Somewhat strange is that Seasonic makes all the AX series PSU for Corsair except the AX1200 which is made by Flextronic (another good OEM).

AX1200 is a good unit but you pretty much can't go wrong with Seasonic.  They have one of the best customer supports in the industry.  Usually I buy cheaper rebrands just because Seasonics tend to sell at a premium so finding a 15% off sale is pure win.

Did you buy them from Newegg?  If so, you can try seeing if they'll refund you the price difference.  It's kind of hit or miss if they'll do it but I've told a friend to do it once and they refunded him like $10 on the external drive he bought the week before a price drop.

Too bad this sale doesn't work on all PSUs.

How's this Seasonic compare to the AX1200?

Bumping for great justice.

Remove that link now and don't tell them it is 87% efficient at full load. 

Here's a 950w 80+ silver modular for $130 (after rebate): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817703028

Specs at 83.4 amps on the single 12V rail, and has a 7 year warranty.

Oh, and for those of you who have Win 7 and are trying to use less power, you can shut off unused cores in msconfig. Go to the boot tab, then 'advanced options' and tick the box labeled 'number of processors'. Reboot and enjoy your new single core machine.

Edit: its not modular, my bad.

Further edit: It feeds 3x5970 nicely, pulling 910w from the wall.

Nice catch, I will update the original post.

incidentally, any seasonics psu is 15% off with that promo code (so for this model it is a $40.50 discount): http://promotions.newegg.com/PS/028812/index.html

I honestly don't know and I am a windows software developer. 

Windows is great for a lot of things but not for mining.  I would imagine you could turn 90% of that off but three problems
1) it likely is going to be trial and error
2) no easy way to save a config and apply it to another system
3) there likely are dependency issues that may be hard to resolve (turning off x kills y but you need y but don't discover it till later).

If you are probably pulling 85% of peak DC load that could be costing you a couple %.  Most 80Plus-Gold PSU have a much flatter curve so the drop off isn't bad you might be burning 20W+ more here.  Probably not worth a new PSU, just something to keep in mind.   Also check the temp of your PSU.  The "80Plus" program is good because it gives us something to compare models but it is somewhat unrealistic.  They measure efficiency at 77F.  Even if your room is 77F it is unlikely the inside of your PSU is 77F.

I would like to see a 90Plus program measured at 85F.



Yeah it is the only time I hook up the keyboard and mouse.  Turning off the junk in BIOS can save you 20W or more.  Especially stuff like USB3, Floppy controller, onboard audio because they aren't part of the southbridge they are usually seperate ASICS.  5W here, 2W there, 1.5 here.  It starts to add up.

Last thing I would say is I used MSI 890FXA-GD70 board.  Different boards may have different system wattage depending on power configuration and components used.


I actually used cgminer before BAMT. BAMT adding cgminer is why I started using it (after I and other paid to have RPC support added to cgminer).  The learning curve is a little steep (just because cgminer has so many options) but once you got the config files set I think it is unbeatable.

you guys want a good laugh?  you stimulated me to look into my Win 7 msconfig file to see what Microsoft had hidden...

which of all this shit do i absolutely need to run for a dedicated mining rig?  in other words, what can i dump?

check - 950W 80+


check (bamt)


check - single core - load avg is around 5-10% max


nuts...now I have to hook up a monitor and keyboard ;-)  I'll do that later


I get 435MH/s at @950/300 - very stable.  Are you running with cgminer?  I'm using bamt, I haven't made the plunge yet (is it worth it?)

Hmm not sure but some ideas:
80Plus-Gold PSU?  What load%?
Linux on USB?
Sempron Single core CPU?
No CPU bug right?  What can be 20W easy.
Turned off EVERYTHING in BIOS?  (SATA, IDE, USB3, floppy, onboard sound, secondary Ethernet, serial, EVERYTHING.  Hell I turned off MB LED )

I will recheck my wattage this weekend.  IIRC when I measured it I was running 820 on core.  I am now running auto-gpu up to 835 so it could be 10 - 15W higher.

I wonder how much of a beast that 5870 w/ aggressive clocks is.  You could measure wattage with and without it to get an idea.

Thank you D & T!!!

I must be doing something wrong...I've got 2x5970's and one 5870 all @300mem and 835/950 respectively on a minimal open air rig and I pull 900W at the wall.  I can't imagine memclocks at 150 would drop me below what you're seeing on AC...though I will try tonight.

I have a GD70 with a sempron, 2GB ram, and would be using BAMT, and 5970's on the way.  Just have a 850W PSU though.  I'll just pick up one of these Seasonics.  Thanks.