Power Supply woes

[Summo]

Hello peoples! Hi!

I've just ordered myself a 6800GT and realise that I need to buy a beefier PSU in order to run it as my current one is only 300w. I've been looking through various sites and been GODDAMN SHOCKED to find prices around £70! For a PSU! What the HELL IS HAPPENING?

I was wondering if any of you could recommend good PSU manufacturors (tempted as I am by the eBuyer Value 500w PSU at about a tenner, I know I'd best avoid that) and the wattage I can reasonably get away with. Is 400w enough? 450w? Maybe 480w would be safer, 500w is best, clearly but I really don't want to spend more money than I have to on a PSU.

My system currently has an AMD XP 3200, two DVD devices, SATA hard drive and, of course, a floppy.

Help me!

 

[Lazarus]

Tagan

 

[Gray]

I was actually gonna bring up one of my old threads about PSU...

Ages ago i got an Enermax 485w, which was fine, but after a month or so it just died for some unknown reason (Shouldnt have been power surge).

I got a replacement from Enermax, but i didnt want to actually fit it (Mainly, because i was scared of a repeat happening) so i left it.

But when playing a few games, my graphics would become jittery, so took out my graphics card, gave it a blow, let it cool down, but when i put my PC back on, the display didnt load up :s. Thats when i decided to try the Enermax (I was too scared to use) from months ago.

After a second.. it blew up. I was seriously "WTF"ing at that point, 2 485w Enermax blowing up for no reason. I called Enermax again, and the guys over there said we'd send out a third one (and instead of me sending it, they actually got a courier to pickup and deliver).

This one DID work, but my Geforce 6800GT did _not_. All im getting is a standby screen . Even tho this is my third Enermax 485w (Noisetaker) i do like it, im just forever worried about a possible surge happening. Hoever, if a surge does happen, Enermax said they would replace it for a high wattage one . Good things may come out of this after all....

 

[Cask]

I'd be really suprised if you needed more than 400W, considering that my 550W UPS can power 2 PCs (one with a 400W PSU and one with a 380W) and a 19" LCD monitor off the battery while staying around 61% load.

Not really sure on make except eveyone told me not to buy those £15 Q-Tec ones. I've bought Antecs for the 3 computers that I've built and none of them have blown up yet but I could just be lucky so far.

 

[Embattle]

You'll tend to find its stability that counts for more than raw power.

 

[SheepCow]

I've got an Akasa, 'tis yummy. PSUs are quite expensive but they seem to be you get what you pay for. My current Akasa (about £60) is lovely, I've had Dabs Value ones (about £15) die or have dodgey voltages before.

 

[Gengi]

I have a couple of Antec trupower 480W ones, my machine has a 6800GT in it and runs fine. There are enough Molex connectors to run the GT off its own lead.

Later

Gengee

 

[inactionman]

I suggest the Antec TruePower 2.0 430W PSU, it's available on OCUK for £45+ VAT this week, you may be able to get a better deal elsewhere though.

Basically the psu is one of the most important components in a PC (as Grey pointed out, a bad one can take most of the pc with it, if it blows), and with psu's you get what you pay for! Those really cheap one, say the q-tec's or the 'ebuyer value' one's, are only rated at that value for peak power (i.e. a short burst of say 500W) whereas the expensive one's are rated at that for continous power.

Basically a good indication i've found of a quality power supply is the weight, crap one's tend to be light, good ones tend to be heavy (all the extra components).

 

[Summo]

I suggest the Antec TruePower 2.0 430W PSU, it's available on OCUK for £45+ VAT this week, you may be able to get a better deal elsewhere though.

Aha! This looks reasonable! Antec keep coming out as perhaps the most solid and reliable manufacturer.

Thanks very much for the assistance guys!

 

[xane]

I have 4 PSUs in my "dead pile", 3 of them are Enermax, read into that what you will.

I'd consider noise to be an issue, splash out a bit on something a bit quiet rather than powerful.

 

[SheepCow]

The Akasa I have has 1 120mm fan, so it's cool but quiet, 460W or 480W I think

 

[inactionman]

I have 4 PSUs in my "dead pile", 3 of them are Enermax, read into that what you will.

I'd consider noise to be an issue, splash out a bit on something a bit quiet rather than powerful.

Enermax used to be a quality brand, no longer unfortunately! Although maybe expectations were lower back then...

PSU noise isn't that much of an issue these days, most decent PSU's use low-noise fans and only spin them up when the cooling is actually needed. Besides I bet a lot of graphics cards make more noise than a PSU these days!

The funky thing these days is modular PSU's, which helps with cable clutter inside cases.

 

[Hawkwind]

Just got a ThermalTake Case and PSU for my second rig. Runs quiet with nice fan speed controls and Watts display on case. Also, the cable management is excellent. Its a 680W beastyfrom their Purepower range which will cope with anything. Its nice and heavy and from a good name.

Main Rig has a Globalwin 550W which is also a nice PSU. But the ThermalTake is better imo.


As for the comments about not needing to go over more than 400W, sorry mate but if your designing a system use the 50% rule. Power Supply peak capacity should be double your requirements. Beating the thing up to 80-90% of peak on a day to day basis will reduce its MBTF.

Imo go for a good name with fairly high wattage.

 

[inactionman]

For further reading here's a roundup on PSU's by hexus:

http://www.hexus.net/content/static/psu_roundup.html

It's currently slashdotted mind.

 

[Cask]

That 50% rule sounds overly cautious to me (Q-Tec aside) but even if it is good practice then it surely can't apply equally to the high-quality and the cheaper PSUs because I would imagine (or hope, maybe) that there would be a lot of difference in the build, testing and quality of components.

I couldn't find a recommended operating load on the Antec website, but if you believe this then he won't be getting very near 50% anyway. I can see advantages to having a large PSU if you have particularly power hungry components or want extra capacity for upgrading but as we're talking about Summo's pooter, I'd eat my headset if 400W wouldn't run it.

 

[Summo]

I'm bidding on a 480w Antec beasty on eBay at the mo. Fingers crossed!

 

[Hawkwind]

That 50% rule sounds overly cautious to me (Q-Tec aside) but even if it is good practice then it surely can't apply equally to the high-quality and the cheaper PSUs because I would imagine (or hope, maybe) that there would be a lot of difference in the build, testing and quality of components.

I couldn't find a recommended operating load on the Antec website, but if you believe this then he won't be getting very near 50% anyway. I can see advantages to having a large PSU if you have particularly power hungry components or want extra capacity for upgrading but as we're talking about Summo's pooter, I'd eat my headset if 400W wouldn't run it.

*Mistake on first post Globalwin was a 480W.*

On my primary rig I had 6 HDD, 2 DVD burners, Pinnacle ProOne Video Editing card, USB Camera, USB ADSL and 6800GT Graphics Card. I was constantly getting error messages about the graphics card not having enough power. So I took out two SATA Drives and now it works fine. Getting a second PSU in so I can reinstall soon. So yes, it can happen. This only happened because I kept adding more and more onto the system and ignored my normal rules.

FYI on second rig with the ThermalTake case & PSU I get a LED readout of the Watts and it rarely goes above 160 W.

I use the 50% rule when I build a system because the components will last longer. Two main factors in MTBF of components are temperature and how hard your driving it. You drive PSU's at 80% of their load you will be lucky if they last 50% of their normal MTBF. So its worth spending an 10-20 GBP to get the better PSU's IMO. BTW this is a general rule for designing electronics in Aerospace industry in which I work. Standard practice. It might seem to be overly cautious but its a good rule of thumb.

 

[Shovel]

OK, on a related matter:

My folk's machine is really rather unstable and whilst it's getting a little old (and might just get a mass upgrade soon), I'm still toying with how to sort out the periodic blue-screens.

I thought it was temperature, but adding a number of case fans hasn't helped. This either means that the case is so bad that we need a bigger one to improve airflow, or that heat wasn't the problem.

To the point: My current suspicion is that it could be an iffy power supply. So can any of you recommend a good (software) tool for testing a PSU, which would give some kind of sane output. If it's something which my computer illiterate father can run without me having to travel 300 miles home then all the better.

 

[inactionman]

Sorry, the only reliable way of testing a PSU is to use a potentiometer or something similar (basically hardware), no software can do it unless that kind of capability is built into the hardware, which you only tend to get on servers or workstations (or expensive motherboards).

 

[Shovel]

Bugger. So is there anything to be gained from software that checks the voltage read-outs from the BIOS? (at this point, my power supply knowledge is exhausted )

 

[inactionman]

Voltage readouts aren't normally enough, you need to see current as well, but you may get an indication if the voltages are more than 10% out on the 3 main lines (3.3V, 5V and 12V).

 

[SawTooTH]

Im having power woes too at the moment after upgrading both my MOBO and Graphics card. Ive bought a PSU from PCworld made by Jean Tech called Artic. Its a 600Watt supply and is £69.00. It looks the business and I think if you need that kind of Wattage its money you have to spend. Its one of those where you can attach each lead to the PSU so you dont have the problem of spare unused leads to hide away.

Reason....I'm puttin in a second graphics card next week and that needs 500 Watt minimum.

 

[inactionman]

Jean Tech

Run away! Jean Tech are terrible PSU's! I truely doubt that really is a 600W power supply, as decent ones normally cost at least £90 online.