Will my pc ever work!

[Bahumat]

PC turned itself off, tried to reboot and nothing happend, change dthe power leads fuse and still no power....PSU smells a bit funny and i suspect its blown.

Is this PSU any good? i take it £15 PSU's suck and this sounds quite good, i only need 300watts according to some website but i would prefer to have extra incase i need it.

Is this any good?

Zalman ZM400B-APS 400W ATX2.0 PSU (CA-001-ZA)
With the goal of enhancing the computing environment, all Zalman Tech products are noise-free. This product is a noise-free 400W ATX (version 2.03) / ATX12V power supply supporting Intel Pentium 4 and AMD CPUs. By implementing heat-sensor circuitry that controls the cooling fan's speed (rpm) in relation to the temperature within the power supply, noise has been greatly reduced.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Zalman_psu.html

Full Specification

Price: £54.95 (£64.57 Including VAT at 17.5%)

 

[Herjulf]

Aslong as it is the same formfactor as your Mainboard use, is it ATX get a powersupply that you think may be of good quality.

400W is what you need with most modern day computers to have stable voltages.
You didnt say what computer hardware you got so i cannot tell you that the PS you are thinking of is good enough, but with 99% certainty it is.

Aslong as you use a modern gfx card with its own powerfeed (not via AGP slot) i think it is preffered with 400W as minimum, 300W would work mostlikely just fine but some spontaneous reboots and unstability to follow.
It could even run a little hot and the lifetime is shortened on the PS.

A bonus with OVER dimensioning powersupplies is they run cooler thus more silent.

But short answer yes most likely the PS will do fine.

Personally i use this one, because i have a bunch of hardrives and stuff, and a decent gfx card etc.
Sirtec/Chieftec GPS-450AA-101A 450W 120mm fan ATX2.0 12V 20/24-pin
http://www.chieftec.com/products/psu/atx_psu.htm

 

[Bahumat]

Although i never mentioned my hardware spec its requiring 300watts to run, i had a 350 so a 400 should be fine

Asustek SoA nForce2 ATX A L

Thats my motherboard, the PSU i mentioned was, This product is a noise-free 400W ATX (version 2.03) / ATX12V power supply supporting Intel Pentium 4 and AMD CPUs.

To me it looks like it is suitable, i take it they all come as 12v?

 

[Tesla Monkor]

It's a good idea to invest in a good PSU, even if you only need 300W. A bad PSU can die and take your entire PC with it - as well as any other PCs that happen to be connected to the same power outlet.

Buy a A-name brand PSU. (That Zallman will be fine for your system). Cheap = Bad in PSU land.

 

[Frozodo]

m8 tbh all u got to check is, following things the Ampere make sure u got a decent Ampere I.E my amd 64, PCI-E need at least 30 Ampere and check the Ampere on 12v lead. if i had to buy a Brand i would go for following once : Antec, Hiper or Ultra-X

Ultra - X
AC INPUT 115V/230V 10A/6A 60/50Hz
DC OUTPUT +3.3V +5V +12V -12V -5V +5VSB
28A 30A 34A 0.8A 0.3A 2A
500W| Max Combined Watts

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Ultra_X.html

decent one i like the specs of it

 

[Crookshanks]

CustomPC (which is a great pc mag btw!) this month (Issue November) ran a fairly exhaustive PSU test (of 29 different PSUs) and used some fairly expensive testing kit (of the order of £20,000 they claimed) to see how the PSUs performed.

What was interesting was that they concluded that the vast majority of manufacters blatently lie about what their PSUs output capacity is. Even the more expensive brands like the Enermax EG701AX (the £90 600w enermax psu which I bought at the beginning of the year thinking it was the bees knees) could only output 511w, switching itself off when more power was demanded.

They also found that the majority of the "budget" ones ended up "blowing up" when the power drain approached the quoted figures.

Anyway - the winner in both the "up to 500w" and "over 500w" catagories were both "Seasonic" PSUs (which I must admit I'd never heard of - but since the mag came out I see overclockers are now pushing these PSUs on their front page!). Apparently Seasonic is the only manufacturer who builds their PSUs from start to finish (what the other manufactureres do I don't know! ).

Their 500w winner was the Seasonic S12-500, which overclockers have on a "this week only" deal for £67.50+vat : http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_This_Week_Only_25.html#aCA_2d001_2dSS

http://www.custompc.co.uk/ is custompc's webby - it looks like the webby lags behind the magazine by a month, presumably to make you buy the mag rather than just look online.

 

[Bahumat]

Crookshanks i think i read that but it may have been in pc gamer, either way it was a friends magazine and i never remembered all the names hehe

Thanks hope Maplin has them