Power Supply

When choosing the computer’s components, we look at how performance will be affected, comparing the processor, graphics card, or even RAM. However, is it possible that other components such as the power supply can affect the computer’s performance? Let’s analyze it.

We have commented on various occasions that the power supply unit (PSU) is a very important component of the computer, since it is responsible for providing power to the other parts. In the event that it fails, some other component may break, which is why it is important to always choose a high quality power supply.

Power supply: don’t overdo the wattage

A tendency when building a PC by pieces is to choose a power supply with too high a wattage, such as any power supply of more than 600 watts. In my analysis of the Xiaomi Smart Socket I was able to check how much my PC was consuming at rest and in high performance mode, and the results surprised me, because I realized that I had bought a power supply with too high a wattage, and I could have taken advantage of that money to improve other components.

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It’s very common to spend hundreds of euros (thousands in many cases) on the components needed to assemble a computer, but usually choosing a power supply is left for the end, which means not a lot of attention is given to the component that’s supposed to give electrical power in a stable way and without peaks, and that could also cause permanent damage to the computer.

For that reason, you should pay special attention to which power supply you choose, and be aware that it’s a very important component.

The power supply you choose must have enough power and quality to provide stable energy to all of the components.

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Many, many times in this website have we talk about power supplies and each time, we have mention rails as something common without going to deep about them. Well, that ends with this article in which we are going to explain what rails are, how they affect PC performance and if it’s better to choose a power supply with a single and powerful rail or one with several.

In this article we’ll try to be as comprehensible as possible for people who don’t have any electronic or electrical notions, so we warn you if you do have this knowledge don’t be alarmed by seeing how rough this explanations are, since our aim is for this to be completely understandable for every user, having in mind that the purpose is to help choosing which option is more convenient whether a single rail or a multi rail power supply.

What are power supply rails?

First of all, let’s explain what a rail is. Rails are the channels through which the power supply feeds electricity to all the components in our computer. Generally we just talk about +12 V rails since these have the bigger impact in the computer but power supplies have also rails in the +3,3V y +5V channels of course.

Single Rail vs Multi Rail

Each rail of the power supply has an overcurrent protection (OCP) and is limited to one OCP per rail, this way if our power supply relies on just one +12 V rail, it will have one OCP as well. This means that everything we plug into the power supply will have the same rail and therefore just a single protection, so if any problem were to happen and the power supply protection fails, every component connected would be at risk.

In the other hand we have a multi rail power supply, which will have an OCP in each rail. So, not only can we divide the current by components (for example, on one rail the motherboard and processor, video card in another, and in a different rail hard drives) but also if something fails not every component will suffer the consequences, just the ones connected to that rail.

Pros and Cons

We’ll start by saying that you should not be alarmed; modern power supplies have lots of safeguards no matter how many rails they have. The first advantage of having a +12 V single rail power supply is that you will be able to feed more alternating current, and as you know, specially video cards need a minimum of intensity to work. For example a GTX 1080 NVIDIA graphic card needs a +12 V rail not only to provide certain power but also to supply a minimum of 30 amps of intensity.

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