Importance of Good PSUs

For most people, the Power Supply Unit (PSU) of a personal computer is just an afterthought, usually just getting a generic PSU when building a PC. Unfortunately, they’re missing a couple of important considerations when picking PSUs:

Generic PSUs always cheat on their “rated” power.

In other words, don’t expect a generic “500W” PSU to supply 500W of steady power to your computer. Corsair (who sells high quality PSUs made by Sea Sonic) even made a video of them pushing generic power supplies to just 75% of their limit:

Why a high-quality PSU is an essential purchase

Think it’s just a marketing trick from a PSU seller? Unfortunately, it’s not. Some power supplies, especially generic ones, do crash well below their rated power. For example, this power supply crashed at 75% load, with the second sample not even passing the 50% load test (another victim of HardOCP’s rigorous testing).

Cheap power supply makers usually cheat by put a lot of amperes (simply put, watt = ampere x volts) on the 3.3V and 5V rails of the power supply and allocating relatively less on the 12V rails. Now, modern PCs use the 12V rail for most of their components. Therefore, this technique allows the makers to rate the PSU’s power output higher than what the PSU can actually provide the PC.

You could easily verify this by comparing the label of a generic power supply with the label of a “brand name” power supply, say from Enermax, with similar rated power. The brand name PSU will have a much higher amperage at the 12V rails than the generic power supply.

In short, don’t even think of buying a generic power supply if you’re planning to build a gaming rig.

Cheap power supplies are less efficient.

Generic PSUs are cheap because they don’t have the same features as their brand name counterparts. They won’t have power factor correction and they will not reach the same amount of efficiency as the latter.

The thing about efficiency is that even just a 10% difference in efficiency of power supplies can affect your electricity bill, especially if that computer is on 24/7.

Cheaper power supplies are also more likely to fail than their counterparts because the former is made of lesser quality (cheaper) components. Reliability is an important factor for PSUs: anybody who has tried to troubleshoot a PC with weird problems (won’t boot up, suddenly shuts down) will know that it’s hard to isolate the problem to the PSU. (Not to mention that PSUs blowing up can damage the more expensive parts of the PC.)

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Let me end this post by saying that there is nothing wrong with getting a generic power supply if your PC is the stereotypical “pang-Word at pang konting Internet lang” family PC. But if you’re planning to add some power hungry components like video cards, or if you’re planning to have your computer run 24/7 downloading torrents, you might want to invest in slightly more expensive PSUs.

As a side note, if you’re planning to build a PC (or if you don’t have an APC UPS), you can use eXtreme Power Supply Calculator to estimate power usage. Just remember that the wattage there would only be applicable to non-“cheating” power supply makers who rate their PSUs properly.

Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition

Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt

The Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition is a valuable concept in teaching. The idea that people look at problems and new ideas differently depending on their skill level turns on its head the age old approaches to teaching prevalent in “modern” education systems.

Here are the five stages in this model in increasing skill:

1. Novice
  • “rigid adherence to taught rules or plans”
  • no exercise of “discretionary judgment”
2. Advanced beginner
  • limited “situational perception”
  • all aspects of work treated separately with equal importance
3. Competent
  • “coping with crowdedness” (multiple activities, accumulation of information)
  • some perception of actions in relation to goals
  • deliberate planning
  • formulates routines
4. Proficient
  • holistic view of situation
  • prioritizes importance of aspects
  • “perceives deviations from the normal pattern”
  • employs maxims for guidance, with meanings that adapt to the situation at hand
5. Expert
  • transcends reliance on rules, guidelines, and maxims
  • “intuitive grasp of situations based on deep, tacit understanding”
  • has “vision of what is possible”
  • uses “analytical approaches” in new situations or in case of problems

One important thing to note about this model is that it’s not only useful for teaching — it’s actually applicable to almost all phases in the “life cycle” of an employee. The model can affect recruitment, training/initial deployment, up to promotion to senior positions. I will be referencing the model in this context after I discuss the various aspects of Drucker’s “knowledge worker”.

Best Practices

While I was fixing my Google Reader feed for BusinessWorld‘s IT Matters site (they changed from http://www.itmatters.com.ph/RSS/itmatters.rss to http://www.bworldonline.com/RSS/itmatters.rss), one article caught my eye:

IT needs best practices, too!

My first reaction was, “No sh*t, Sherlock!” After reading the article and finding out that it’s not talking about software engineering practices (which I am sure isn’t being practiced by many local software houses) but the low adoption rates of best practices in Auditing and Risk Management in IT departments, my reaction was still “No sh*t, Sherlock!”. I mean, if you’re dealing with foreign clients and yet you’re not familiar with those processes then you have a big problem on your hands. Either that or you know a good place with steak and strippers.

Since we’re at the topic of Best Practices, I might as well cover it in this post.

Continue reading “Best Practices”

Few Quotes from Drucker

As mentioned in my Lifestream, I’ve started reading The Essential Drucker a few days ago.

The Essential Drucker is not an easy book to read especially in this age where management books are supposed to be simple enough to be read by managers in a single afternoon. It’s a dry read — humor and inspirational stories are usually just one or two sentences long. It is however filled with practical information regarding management. Every paragraph has a little gem of knowledge that you might feel that you could apply in your business.

In short, it’s more Art of War than In Search of Excellence.

I’m feeling lazy after hours of unlearning a good portion of my HTML/CSS knowledge so I’ll just leave you with a few choice quotes

Continue reading “Few Quotes from Drucker”