Gadgetory

hey everyone i'm steve from gamers nexus donna and today we're talking about voltage ripple as it pertains to power supplies overclocking and component longevity this is something we've already published on the website it was written by Michael Kern's one of our writers and that talks about what voltage ripple is and how it impacts those two factors but we're going to dive into it a little bit more here for the YouTube audience so first of all what is voltage ripple voltage ripple is the fluctuation of the voltage supply down each of your three main lines of power your rails so your 12 volt your 5 volts and your 3.3 volt are not perfectly 12 5 & 3.3 volts if you read them out with an oscilloscope in fact the voltage of each of these different lines of power we'll talk specifically about 12 volt because it goes to the GPU CPU things like that the power supplied the voltage supplied down the 12 volt line is not going to be perfectly twelve point zero volts if you read it out with an accurate instrument like an oscilloscope or an otoscope you'll see that it might fluctuate between for example twelve point one twelve point one four it might drop down and this is called voltage ripple so this is the amount of fluctuation in the waveform peak to peak between the voltage levels as the voltage is continuously supplied to whatever it's going to and there's an ATX specification for power supplies this is the spec to which all power supplies sold in the consumer market must abide there's a much stricter server spec that is really not something you'll encounter in general in the consumer market so let's look at the ATX spec the specification for ATX power supplies for voltage ripple is that they must be less than 120 millivolts so you should see a fluctuation no greater than 120 millivolts down any of your 12-volt rails the specification for 3.3 and 5 volts is 50 millivolts so there should be no greater than 50 millivolts the fluctuation in those instances but some higher-end power supplies will target 60 millivolts of fluctuation which is pretty darn good and that's actually what Michael Kern's myself included we both kind of look for power supplies in that range when we're buying because we do a lot of enthusiast stuff like overclock and you want to make sure you have a very consistent voltage supply when you're dealing with any kind of very volatile components which is what happens in overclocking so that's what voltage ripple is it's the fluctuation of voltage down the supply it's very normal it's not something you can really have down to zero especially in the consumer market so you're always going to have some voltage ripple it's just a matter of how much and this impacts two main things as I've mentioned it impacts component longevity and it impacts the overclocking stability so if component longevity that is impacted because voltage ripple will increase the demand on the B RMS and the power supply itself to regulate the voltage supply and it also increases the heat of capacitors as capacitors heat up they are more prone to popping to failure and just leakage or damage over time so there is a an electro electrical engineering rule that states that for every 10 degrees Celsius drop in thermals the capacitor should be expected to double its life span if we're talking about a non solid electrolytic capacitor which is a fairly common type of capacitor on the higher end components you will see solid capacitors slightly different rules apply but that's the general idea so less heat is very good for capacitors helps them live longer and a healthier power supply means healthier components receiving the power so that's the the heat issue the component longevity issue if you have more voltage ripple you're putting your devices the power supply especially and the receiving devices the BRM all of that goes through more strain when trying to make the fine-tuned adjustments to keep your system running stable and then on the overclock inside we have a slightly different concern so let's take an example say your GPU at a strictly hardware level electrically requires 1.2 1 2 volts this is somewhat standard for some architectures so this is not the voltage that you're overclocking software says that you are providing this is the voltage that the GPU says it it's on electrical level purely Hardware level now let's step it back so now we're looking at the software if you start overclocking and you need to supply more voltage then you increase the voltage increment in your overclocking software that much we know the amount that it is incremented will depend on a lot of things we're gonna forget about most of them for now but the the one we're talking about here is a voltage ripple so if the ripple is 50 millivolts which is very reasonable then you will have to as a user effectively add in an extra 50 millivolts of overhead of room for fluctuation in the supply of voltage to the GPU because what happens is if you dip down below what the GPU needs electrically because of voltage ripple or really because of anything you'll exhibit instability and you'll see instability in the system you'll see driver crashing flickering black screens stuff like that stuff we've all discussed in our various articles on the website on gamers nexus net currents and I have both talked about this so that's where the overclocking impact is that's why you want a good power supply you want something that can eat the extra load and supply some stability to your system there's a lot more to power supply selection than this so if you are curious about power supplies how they work what the other specs me and what active PFC is and stuff like that check the website we have a specs dictionary it is at the top in the menu and you'll find a PSU dictionary in there we define several of these we're adding more definition soon and then the voltage ripple article is already live on the site so that's the basics of voltage ripple why it is important and how it can impact your system we do of course recommend high quality power supplies but it's not always possible and for budget reasons it's not always within budget so it is not the end of the world if you can't afford $100 power supply but even when you're looking at the low end you do want kind of a bottom line of how low you're willing to go and how low quality you are willing to accept so do consider a my overclocking am i planning to use the system for a very long time and other factors like that how much to spend how much efficiency do you need and that will all help in determining how much he should really budget toward a power supply if you are doing extreme overclocks definitely consider a higher end power supply because you need that stability so that's all for this time at check out our forthcoming ask a GN video we've been doing these lately so there's a power supply discussion on there actually where we talk about the wattage supply to components so that's all for this time hit the patreon link in the post role of this video if you like our content and want to support us we're up to nine backers now so as I keep saying start and small but it's helping us with removing some of our dependency on the regular advertising of the industry so that lets us keep doing some more free of criticism for manufacturers content which I know you all enjoy I will see you all next time