Well, after trying to sort this all out, I'm still quite confused on what to do about a power supply for my new, fairly moderate, system that I'm building. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
What I will be running (initially) is as follows:
AMD Athlon64 3000+ Stock Cooling
Undertermined 1gig 2x512mb DDR400 Memory
Chaintech VNF4/Ultra
Diamond Max 250 SATA 16MB
Possibly a smaller PATA Harddrive as well
LeadTek WinFast PX6600GT
NEC 3520a or BenQ 1620
Two Case fans
Floppy Drive
Internal Multi Card Reader
Officejet 6110 on USB
Occasional other USB devices
Of course, this set-up probably has very moderate power requirements.
However there are a couple of things to keep in mind. I WILL upgrade from time to time. As better CPUs drop below $175 I will get them and better Video Cards drop below $200 I will get them. I will likely install an additional harddrive or two, perhaps going with RAID at some point. And I may also install a 2nd optical drive.
Also, I DO plan on doing moderate overclocking. Nothing extreme. I don't like to overstress my parts and want to use stock cooling.
I will not be doing SLI, obviously.
At any rate, when the Mad Dog Multimedia 600W BTX/ATX Smart Cable Power Supplies were on sale at CompUSA for $79 after mail in rebate, I bought one. Haven't opened it yet. I just wanted to secure the price before the sale ended. Now, I haven't been able to find too much info about this particular brand of power supply. Some believe it is a rebranded SuperFlower. Which supposedly is good.
But I'm concerned that a) This supply will be noisy (it has 4 80mm fans). b) It's way more power than I need. and c) Is it all that reliable?
So, now I see that I can get an OCZ Modstream 450 Watt power supply for the same price, $79 including shipping.
Question is. a) Is the OCZ a better power supply? (probably) b) Will the 450 watts be enough for my system for the expansion I have in mind and the moderate overclocking? If I'm going to spend $80 on a power supply I want it to last. At least until I need to build a whole new system.
OR, I would also be interested in a less expensive power supply that is of decent quality (won't blow up, won't fry my components), and is ATX 2.03 24-pin compliant, if possible modular with sleeved cables, that can last my current plans and future upgrades with moderate overclocking.
Any thoughts would be most helpful.
Thanks!
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