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350w or 400w for this system?

J

Jeff H

Golden Member
Guys,

I'll be building a new system soon, and the last, and argueably, most important component is the one I'm having the most difficulty deciding on. I have an Enlight 7237 case, and I want to replace the p.s. w/ either an Enermax 350w or 430w p.s. My mobo will be an EPoX 4BDA2+ i845 RAID board, along w/ a Northwood 1.8A GHz cpu, DVD, Yamaha 24x CD-RW, 512MB Crucial DDR, Leadtek GF3 Ti200, Linksys nic, TBSC sound, two case fans, hard drive cooler (3 fan).

Is the 350w enough? Or, is the 430w simply a waste of $$? Lastly, are there any issues anyone knows of w/ Enermax and EPoX i845 boards, such as there was/is w/ Enermax and EPoX KT266A boards?
 
I don't have the board you have, but for the sake of upgrading I would go with the 430W. Just to be on the safe side. Why not spend a little more now rather than having to buy a second, more powerful ps later. That is of course unless money matters right now.

Just my 2 cents.
 
I think the 350W psu is more than enough.
I have as many components as you, and im running fine on an Antec 300W psu.
 
okay here is what I have.
2 7200 hard drives
2 lite on drives (24x CDRW and 16x DVD)
sound blaster Live, 2 ethernet cards , modem, Rage fury pro wiht video in, web cam, joy stick, scanner (this one draws from the USB port, hence from the system power supply)
KK 266 RAID plus, 1.33 Athlon, 512 MB RAM (SDR consumes more power (3.3V) than the DDR memory(2.5V) you are using).
2X80 mm case fans, 1 pci slot area fan, apart froma powerful CPU fan.

All these work fine with 300W. Infact I once in a while put a extra hard drive in there to retrieve data. NEver had anytrouble. 400W will definitely be overkill. I would recommend 350 to be on safer side.
 
yup i just downgraded to a antec 300 watt because the 2 fan psu make too much noise.northwoods don't draw as much power as athlons
 
350w PSU should be fine, infact 350w would be fine for my PC but I`m using 431w ,reason being I like to plan ahead for future upgrades etc and I had the cash to spare.



<< are there any issues anyone knows of w/ Enermax and EPoX i845 boardssuch as there was/is w/ Enermax and EPoX KT266A boards? >>



No problems with my Enermax PSU and Epox KT266A board 🙂,nice 4.95v-5.0v on 5v rail,12v is 12.11v-12.22v,3.3v is 3.41v,don`t know about the Epox i845 board but would think it will be fine.

🙂
 
Guys, thanks for the responses. It looks like the 350w would suffice, while the 430w would give me more expansion capability. Does anyone know if the 430w would be noisier than the 350w?
 
no clue, I am pretty sure somewhere on the web there is a review.
either go to a store where you compare the different ps units or try to locate a review using google.com. I have an enermax and it is very quiet, or so I'd like to believe.
 
The 430w won't be any noisier than the 350w. Just go with the 350w. That's my standard for building PCs when I sell them to people. Of coruse my PCs are Athlons, not P4s. If you have extra $$$ go with the 430w. It may be overkill though, plus when the Pentium 5 comes out in a few years, it may require a new type of Power Supply Connector that the current 430w may not have.
 
Slawsk, I'm leaning toward the 350w unit simply because I'm not putting that many components in this box. AFAIK the P4 doesn't require as much power as the Athlon's - is that correct?
 
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