Power Supply
 

ok so im in the market for a power supply, and i dont know much. I know that i want 500 watts or more. the problem is though, i hear that no name brands can die in a year or fry your computer. The only good name i know of is antec, but they are kind of expensive. can you guys educate me a bit more on good buys and dependable names?

Antec, SilenX, Sparkle, Enermax...I'd choose any of those. Expect to pay a good bit. I paid $55 for my 350w Enermax PSU and it's fuckin awesome. It has 8 voltage rails and a nice sleeve coating for the big wires. It's also really quiet, even with the (adjustable) PSU fans turned all the way up (yes, it has two fans in it, both controllable).

What on earth would ya need 500 watts for? My brother has a 410w Enermax PSU and it powers his 5 hard drives, CD-RW, quad-cathodes, 4 case fans, floppy, etc. with room to spare. Unless you have like 10 hard drives, I can't see needing 500w, especially with a brand-name PSU.

-Lasereth

Wow, what do you plan to put in your rig to need that much power?

dont the new nvidia cards have high power requirements? and its sure that SLI will require more. maybe he wants to be ready for future upgrades

i think that is overkill getting a 500w powersupply for a workstation/home computer...nothing that i have heard of needs that much for home use

IIRC they have external power.

I was about to start my own PS thread but I saw this one. Here is my situation. Last summer I bought a crappy Raidmaxx case that came with a power supply unit. I quickly realized what a bad case it was and bought an Antec case, but I decided to keep the Raidmax PS because my power requirements were pretty low. Fast forward to THIS summer and the addition of two more hard drives and I am getting stability problems... sometimes when I access my slave HD's the system freezes from what I suspect is due to the PS not having enough power on hand to be able to run all three of the HD's at once...plus my radeon 9800.... plus my optical drive..plus a bunch of fans.

Some more evidence of the crappy PS is that when I look at my ASUS mobo monitor, the voltage reading for 3.3V is always around 3.1 and the 5.5V is always around 4.8. Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't the numbers for these volts supposed to be closer to 3.3 and 5?

I plan on getting an Antec PS of at least 400 watts to replace my current Raidmax. But here are my q's:

1. Are the "true blue" models better performers than the regular Antecs? I notice they are usually slightly more expensive and usually have less wattage. (For example a 430 watt True Blue costs $2 more than a regular Antec 450 watt on newegg).

2. Can someone explain the whole rail thing to me?

Thanks.

The Nvidia claim of needing 450 Watt PSUs with their new cards is usually bullocks. You'd need a 450 Watt *crappy* PSU to run their cards, or a 300/350 Watt *good* PSU.

At work we've got fully equipped game PCs with X800Pro or 6800LE cards (and athlon64s, gigs of memory, dual harddisks, etc), all running on 300 Watt Aopen PSUs.

If you need to get a new PSU, get a good brand, look at the 12v line, check the amps there (>18 at least), and then get one. Modern PSUs have two 12v lines, one dedicated to the video card, and the other to the rest of the system.

Roger that! Anytime ya hear PSU wattage recommendations, it's concerning shitcan PSUs (RAIDMAX, POWMAX, etc.). A 300-350w good PSU is the same as a 500w+ crappy PSU. A good way to tell how good a PSU is how heavy it is...this sounds amateurish, but it's the truth. Better PSU's have more heatsinks and more voltage rails which ends up meaning a heavier weight. You can tell how good the PSUs are at Best Buy by picking them all up and feeling how heavy they are. Some of them feel like a couple of wires inside an aluminum casing while others feel like a brick encased in aluminum.

For the average user, a POWMAX or RAIDMAX PSU will do fine (until it inevitably blows). I've had two or three blow out on me, and I only have 1 hard drive. If ya wanna go quality, get a good PSU at 300-350w. If you have lots of hard drives, get a 400w quality PSU. Further than that is a waste unless you're running some massive terabyte server.

-Lasereth

http://www.compusa.com/products/prod...200&pfp=SEARCH

some discussion about it.
Ive never had to do a Compusa rebate. I heard that they arent that reliable but i might have to pick one up for myself! In-stock at a store thats walkable distance to me! ooo the temptation!!!

ok, the reason i want the power is two fold, for one i am planning on getting current generation nVidia card for pc express x16, as i understand this will drain alot of power, i am also planing on running 6 fans, 2 hard drives and maybe some lights if i get bored, so i want the power: also i have heard that having a stronger ps will lower its heat output becasue it wont have to work as hard to put out 300W, so there fore it will be cooler, this is just stuff that i heard, and i want a reliable system that i wont have to replace the ps ever year or so

I'd say a 350w quality PSU will do really well for ya then. I wouldn't go over 350w unless you want to waste money, though!

-Lasereth

a cd-rw, dvd+/-rw, 2 hdds running a 350 that came with my case. max power?
absolutely no problems with power, however i'm running a ti4200.