Power crisis in Japan

After the massive earthquake on 11th of March 2011, the Fukushima Number 1 nuclear power plant got destroyed and Japan started facing some power issues. There were planned power cuts for certain areas. Luckily we didn’t get any at Nakanoshima, the town where I am living. The biggest effect of this power crisis was to the trains. All the trains are electric, and power cuts means they cannot operate. Some were stopped to save power as well. No trains means some people cannot go to work. There is no bus service from Nakanoshima to Kosugi, where my workplace is situated in. We have to walk to the next station (Noborito) and take the bus to Mizonokuchi, and then take another bus to Kosugi. I have never taken that route. On the first Monday after the big earthquake, we went to office by bikes. It was a 1hrs ride to the office. Not very exhausting, as the weather was great. (But weather got worse after that. Now it is very cold. Impossible to ride a bike for that far.)

I think a lot of people know about the situation over at Japan, but this post if not actually another replica of a story. This story is completely different, but ironically similar as well. My PC lost its power supply unity on the day after the earthquake. It was a Aqtis 550W PSU, no idea who the OEM is, but seems to be only sold in Japan. But it says on the label that it is made in China.

Yes, the PSU has warranty left, but the problem is, if I waited to claim warranty, I would be PC less for a long time because of the crisis in Japan. I cannot go to Akihabara to the shop where I bought the PSU, not only because of the irregularities of the train service, but because I didn’t want to go out much because of the potential radiation crisis. So I ordered a new PSU. This time I wanted to buy something good. Last time I couldn’t get a good one because I had a limited budget. But not the case anymore. Besides, the HD5870 I recently bought must not be starved, and if there is a possibility of me adding a second HD5870 for the extra power, I would need a lot of power in my hands.

Good thing about Japan is, you can find almost all the high-end stuff you find in USA in online stores. Sometimes the prices are even less than US stores, and I don’t know how that is. But that is the truth. Sometimes the prices are crazy high. I searched for Seasonic, Corsair, Silverstone brands, and they were crazy expensive. But then I found a Corsair TX850, which was actually cheaper than Newegg price. It was listed at JPY10980. Yes, I know, that is pretty expensive, but it is about USD139 at Newegg store, and this came to around USD133 which is cheaper. The only issue with this PSU was that it didn’t have modular cables. TX series comes with cables all attached to the PSU. HX series is the same, with modular cables, but it was considerably expensive. So I bought the TX850.

The exact model number is CMPSU-850TXJP. JP, because it is made for the Japanese market. So what is the difference? The power pins. That’s all I could figure. But it supports 230V.

It didn’t arrive on Sunday although I ordered it on Saturday. It arrived on Monday when I was at work, and luckily I could check the status of the order online. I asked them to redeliver it on the same night. And it arrived after I got home from work. Wow! It has a lot of cables, and looked like the Antec 300 was too small for it.

I didn’t get much time to play with it. I didn’t want anything to go wrong in these bad days. And I came to Sri Lanka on Saturday. So sad to leave the PC behind all alone in the darkness! Cannot wait to get back and play Crysis 2. XD