The Mother Board

Your killing me here..

First off the psu calculator that I speak of is not of the led variety so there are no concrete numbers, just stop watch and pencil and paper. (the led version such as from conrad electronics guestimate the power draw from high to low and can be misleading). We compared draw and readings for the same system about 8 to 20 times (the OS/system has a major impact but every time the higher end psu still sucked power after the system was idle)

I actually had my father help me work out the data, this originally came about to try to figure out some compaq proprietary psu's.

He is the one that stated this,
If uneven power is given to these power supplies the power supplies have their own short term power output to deal with that.
Not sure if it was a semi conductor, etc... Basically to say that the large output psu's hold more power.
I take his word as my own and have seen other comments similar to this from several sites, toms hardware guide for one.

Lets say you use an effiecent high end psu.
2 systems that are identical, one has a lower output psu.

After coming out of a high use 'cycle' the higher output psu keeps sucking power so it can feed the system for power fluctations.
Remember that a good psu not only cleanse power given to it it outputs it just as evenly.

No matter how effiecient those psu's lose power do to heat and resistance, this again make the higher output one more prone to suck more power to simply keep up.

Higher wattage alone creates a ton more heat which then cause a loss of effieciency and resistance. (since the higher watt psus hold more power they lose it as well)

Thats probably the best I can do, as I said I hate electronics (since I dont understand how to build a semiconductor) but have investigated power usage personally and have seen input to perpetuate that claim.

Will the Antec 550EPS12v with a 24 pin connector work with the newer PCIe motherboards such as the Abit AA8 even though they are ATX mobos? Really don't to make a fried board.

Antecs site says they are server psu's and not ATX.

I also looked at ABITS AA mobos, couldnt find that particular one but the photos do show a 24 pin psu block connector.

Since the 24 pin is reserved for mostly server systems and neither company has this as a proprietary system I would say go for it.
You can contact each company though to find out for sure, both have really good tech support.

The Tagan I bought came with a 24pin connector with an adaptor to bring it down to the ATX 20pin.

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It seems that the motherboard does have a 24 pin input i think...

Antec is really good at their support as I said and does offer what their pinouts are and can be rewired.

Its a server 12v power supply, is the motherboard?

tech support stills seems to be the best option for this question since I dont have a clue

I think the 20 pin is ATX 2.01 and 24pin is ATX 2.2. All the 24pins should be the same but it does not have the information to confirm on the Antec website.

From the AA8 motherboard manual.
"NOTE: This 24-pin power connector “ATXPWR1â€

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Nothing like a non repeatable experiment to prove a point.

What are you referring to

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Handmade equipment, no #'s but needed paper & pencil. I used a Micronta 22-161A V-A meter and a Craftsman 11-600V line splitter on 6 power supplies, 2 of different wattages from each of 3 manufacturers. The more powerful of each pair consistently drew a mere 0.1 to 0.2 amps more than its lesser brethren. The spread between manufacturers was 0.6 A. The largest difference was the initial surge as the capacitors loaded, varying by 7 A.

It depends on the brand, I was speaking more or less of the quality of construction, there are many more poor quality psus floating around that say they have a "total" output of 400 watts and you only pay 30 bucks for it and a case included. These cheap power supplies can easily suck an extra amount of X watts per month and cost you a great deal of money in the long range.

The cheaper no name PSU's with all of systems settings turned off use and lose power in 3 different ways.
Heat
Poor quality parts
Spikes

The spikes is the most interesting of them all. when a power spike or a abrupt shortage of amps these psu's dont handle it well. Bad circuitry or whatever 2 things happen.
The caps break/bleed further reducing their efficiency. A lack of power does the same thing, but it causes the caps to discharge to quickly then drawing more power then is needed in one shot which further damages a psu with poor quality parts.
Simply adding a heavier gauge wire which cost like 20 cents may make some of these cheap psus a bit better....
The resistance caused by heat which is caused by power draw will add a few dollars onto your electric bill, using a cheap PSU will double that ..