I use 3 hard drives and 3 optical drives. My PSU is a 430 watt Enermax. I have no problems with power requirements. You shouldn't be too worried about how much power hard drives use. They only use about 9 watts each. Even if you do have 3 optical drives, you will rarely, if ever, use all of them at once. The only time I can think of when your system would use all 3 optical drives at once is if all of them had disks in them during boot-up. I don't recommend you leave disks in all of your optical drives unless you have to.
My CPU is an
Athlon 1400 MHz T-Bird and at 76 watts it actually uses more power than a 75 watt
3200 Barton. Where you will really use more power is if you were to install some of the higher end graphics cards. Those newer video cards with the molex connectors take a lot of power.
At 480 watts, you should have no problems with a high-end PSU. BTW,
do not buy Enermax. They were once the best you could get. Their quality control has dropped since I bought their 350 watt PSU years ago. With their 430 watt model, I was forced to return it because their rear 80mm "Globe Fan" had a poor grease plug. It was too small when installed at the Chinese factory. During shipment from China to me, all the grease dried up and the fan started rattling. I tried greasing it but I didn't have the correct type of grease. The replacement PSU also doesn't not have enough grease so the fan also rattles. I already have an 80mm replacement ready to install, an Antec, with a 3-pin extension cable.
I read a
review over at Hardware.COM and it appears the best 480 watt PSU to buy now is from
Tagan. The Tagan has many molex connectors and 2 SATA connectors. It delivers plenty of power on all rails. I think it is a higher quality PSU than the Enermax yet is equally priced. You can buy the Tagan at:
- AICMicro
Electroseller.com
Str8buy.COM
Try to get a Tagan package which has a
warranty card from NetWin Systems & Consultancy, to enjoy 3 years One-to-One Exchange.
Good Luck,
Cypherdude.
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