PSU Question...

[shinzwei]

i want to buy a psu for my case becuase my old one is acting up. i bought this demon case which looks really nice but now i need a power supply. on new egg i see a demon power supply with 480 watts!! for 24.99 free shipping also. is that one good deal or is the psu a POS?

 

[Degrador]

I'm almost certain that psu will be a pos. Good psus don't come that cheap. I'd be looking for a better brand - I use Antec, and they're pretty popular. Fortron are meant to be good also. There are a couple of others around to, but most psus that cheap will be unreliable, have unsteady voltages, and won't be able to supply their advertised wattage.

 

[Gunslinger08]

Eh, I've found that cheap PSUs really aren't that bad. They still get the job done.

 

[Jhhnn]

Personally, I'd be a lot more comfortable with one of the 350w fortron/sparkle Hi-Q or PowerQ models. Not their top of the line ,but still decent stuff.

There's absolutely no truth in advertising with psu's, so that means it's smart to go with a brandname you can trust. My own experience with the Fortron/Sparkle line is good, as is the experience of many others. Few are really any better, many are vastly inferior.

The need for high output psu's is mostly myth, the need for quality is not. A 350w Fortron will easily run a fairly heavily loaded system, largely because it's conservatively rated, and has very strong momentary peak power capabilities, for booting...

 

[Zepper]

Silverstone (made by Enhance) 400W very nice and reasonably priced.
.bh.

Where's the :sun: ?

 

[Mark R]

A little caution is advised on very cheap PSUs. I saw some at a fair and was able to take a close look at them.

I saw one marked '500W' for about 29.99 which immediately caught my interest (especially as I'd just paid about 79.99 for a 430W PSU).

It had high-speed sleeve-bearing fans, tiny heatsinks and tiny transformers internally. The main reservoir capacitors were about half the size that I was used to seeing. The power cables were very short, and were a mess because the individual wires were all different lengths.

Best of all, however, were the specifications on the box - I added them up. 3.3 V + 5 V combined power = 170 W. Total power = 295 W.

I'm sure that it would have no difficulty at all in powering an Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 based PC (even one with high-performance gaming graphics and RAID), but you'd have to be supicious as to how long it would last. A high-end PC may need up to 180 W of clean power, but with the PSU sucking hot air directly off the CPU, I'd hate to think how hot things would get inside that PSU. Of course, that assumes that the fan keeps going - sleeve bearings are a disaster for high-speeds and high temperatures.

Don't forget some of the other advantages of high-quality PSUs:
- the newest active PFC PSUs have significantly improved electrical efficiency, and will save you money on your power bill (up to $2/month).
- better quality connectors can significantly improve voltages at the motherboard while keeping temperatures low (I've seen a few mobos with melted molex connectors due to low-quality PSU connectors);
- improved protection: cheap PSUs will usually just try to shut down in the event of a fault. Better PSUs have an over-voltage 'crowbar' which actually absorbs the surge protecting the rest of your comp, as well as guaranteeing that the PSU shuts down.

 

[iwantanewcomputer]

just had a 420w 3 month old psu die on me. didn't even use the computer much and turned it off when not using it. i had 1 hard drive, no optical or floppy's on it. just bad luck. guess that's what i get for getting a psu that came with a cool case for 50 bucks

 

[Gamingphreek]

Take a good look at OCZ powerstream PSU's/ They are supposed to be incredible. One of those will be my next PSU.

-Kevin