What do you think about the Thermaltake Silent Purepower 420 W power supply for a A64 3500+ system?

[demenion]

Newegg has these on sale right now for 37.99 shipped..

Do you think this power supply will be able to handle a overclocked AMD 3500+ with a 9800 Pro?

I'm not going to be overclocking it to anything crazy..

I will probably be using a Zalmen CNPS7000A to cool it.

AMD 64 3500+ and MSI K8N Neo 2 Platinum mobo.

Oh yeah, I'm wondering what kind of overclocks other similiar setups are getting...

 

[MDE]

I picked one up myself, it'll be going into either an Athlon 2500+ system or a P4 3.2C, I'm curious as to how "silent" the thing is.

 

[klah]

It is not very quiet. Just do a search in the PSU section of the silentpcreview forums.

PSUs that are actually quiet tend to cost a little more

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article28-page3.html

 

[imported_Aelius]

I looked at the Thermaltake website and the most important information for the PSUs are conspicuously missing.

Well I did find 2 pieces of information but the rest of the important ones are nowhere to be found.

The 3.3v rail is 40A (that's good) the 5v rail is 28A (probably ok), and the most important 12v rail is 18A (that's marginal at best).

The Wattage is +/- 5% within spec. That's marginal but ok if your house has excellent wiring and the power going into the house is steady. Alternately a UPS can be used to help with this but then you are spending lots more money.

What's missing is temperature tolerance.

Also nowhere to be found is the allowed voltage variance in the PSU.

Why should you care?

Well temperature tolerance tells you how much heat the PSU can take before it starts reducing the Wattage to keep up the amps in the 3.3, 5 and 12v rails.

A very common rating is 0-25C. That means if your case temp is over 25C (very common or far higher if overclocking or on a hot day/without AC) then you loose 9WATTs per 1C over the PSU's tolerance.

So if your PSU is running at 35C because of the case temp then you loose 90WATT from the PSU.

This will cause everything from nothing (cause you got plenty of Watts and very little is used of the max) to frying everything in your case (worse case scenario when something shorts when the PSU blows up *very loud pop*)

The other thing is voltage variance. Average would be something around 115-125v rating. You might think that's "ok" but it means that the PSU is going to cut out if the current flowing to the PSU dips under 115v or over 125v.

You can help circumvent this by using a UPS to regulate power but if your UPS is doing so much work then that might still effect your PSU depending on how severe the power drop or spike is and how good the UPS is to regulate it.

A great PSU would have a rating of around 90v to 135v.

If a dip or spike occurs it can do everything from nothing (low spike or low dip or you got a good UPS) or it can blow your PSU (worse case scenario based on spike to the PSU that blows up the capacitors). Might sound like firecrackers going off in your case.

Food for thought.

 

[demenion]

Thanks for the advice.

Can anyone recommend other power supplies I should look into?

 

[imported_Aelius]

Originally posted by: demenion
Thanks for the advice.

Can anyone recommend other power supplies I should look into?

Look for a PSU that has at least a 20A 12v rail, temp tolerance of 0-40C, less than 5% within spec, and a voltage varience that is at least 10-15v below 120 and 10v above 120v.

Personally I use PC Power and Cooling PSUs.

No they aren't 39.99 but you shouldn't send an Ford to do a Hummer's job. :beer:

 

[Manzelle]

Antec NeoPower

 

[imported_Aelius]

Originally posted by: Manzelle
Antec NeoPower

I looked at Neo and it's ok but I wouldn't spend a penny on it personally.

12v rail on it blows (18A and 15A) and voltage varience isn't shown anywhere in the spec.

Is this supposed to be their flagship PSU?

 

[MrK6]

Aelius, what the hell are you talking about? Dual rails are the way to go, they offer much more and stable power than a single 12v rail; that neopower will run dual CPU's and 4 hard drives if it had to with plenty to spare. Seriously demenion, people are power junkies today, a quality (Antec, thermaltake, enermax, etc.) 350watt PSU would easily handle that 3500+ and 9800 Pro with plenty of power to spare. That thermaltake is a great PSU. The only time I've seen that 420watt fail is on a rig that had a 2500+ o/c'd to 2.31GHz, 1GB RAM, 5 HDD's, a 9700Pro, and two cold cathodes. Put your asking for it with 5 HDD's. However, that PSU is not very quiet. If you want top of the line quality and pretty quiet power supply, check out the enermax noisetaker series. My friend just got the 370watt model and I am very impressed with it. Dual 12v rails, quiet, and it even stays on after you power down to exhaust the hot air out of the case :thumbsup:. I remember seeing a review online somewhere that got 460watts out of that 370watt model, its incredible.

 

[DragonFire]

I just got this PSU about 2 months ago and Im loving it. Unless your case is fanless, its not loud. Since I have a 80mm fan cooling my 9800 Pro memory chips I cant tell where the fan noise is coming from.

Its powering a Abit AN7 with a XP 2400+ @ 2.2Ghz.

My rail readings:

3.3 - always at 3.42V
5.0 - Always at 5.15V
12.0 - Always at 12.05

I have yet to see one rail go below its rating.

EDIT:

Ok, I just unplugged the 2 fans in my case and I still dont find it loud at all. I can hear my otherwise slient seagate drives reading/writing nice and clear.

 

[imported_Aelius]

Originally posted by: MrK6
Aelius, what the hell are you talking about? Dual rails are the way to go, they offer much more and stable power than a single 12v rail; that neopower will run dual CPU's and 4 hard drives if it had to with plenty to spare. Seriously demenion, people are power junkies today, a quality (Antec, thermaltake, enermax, etc.) 350watt PSU would easily handle that 3500+ and 9800 Pro with plenty of power to spare. That thermaltake is a great PSU. The only time I've seen that 420watt fail is on a rig that had a 2500+ o/c'd to 2.31GHz, 1GB RAM, 5 HDD's, a 9700Pro, and two cold cathodes. Put your asking for it with 5 HDD's. However, that PSU is not very quiet. If you want top of the line quality and pretty quiet power supply, check out the enermax noisetaker series. My friend just got the 370watt model and I am very impressed with it. Dual 12v rails, quiet, and it even stays on after you power down to exhaust the hot air out of the case :thumbsup:. I remember seeing a review online somewhere that got 460watts out of that 370watt model, its incredible.

I could ask you the same thing. It's all nice that it has duel 12v rails but you completely ignored my point because you have no idea what any of that really means.

I don't care what you use bud. All I know is I can sleep well at night knowing that all of my bases are covered while my OCed rig runs 24/7.

To each their own.

 

[Demo24]

Iv got one of those power supplys(the 420w theramltake). Works pretty good. It really isnt that loud. You should have plenty of power

 

[Jhatfie]

Seriously you should look into a PSU with more amps on the 12v rail. My 480W Thermaltake Purepower performed great on my overclocked XP setup, but is having problems with my A64. The A64's put a fair bit more load on the 12v rail than XP's. 12 Amps with just the cpu and motherboard if I remember right. Bare minimum you should look for should be 20A, but I'd go for 30A on the 12v rail. I just bought a new OCZ Powerstream 520W to replace my Thermaltake, which is expensive at $120, but should power my system with ease. If you overclock, try to not skimp out on the power supply.