Will a cheapo CRAPusa power supply give enough juice for an Athlon Palomino system?

[darkessenz21]

I have an el cheapo power supply that I bought-its 300W. Its the COMPUSA brand. Anyone have any experience with these? WilL regret using it? It has a P4 plug...I don't know anything about power supplies though.

2000 XP system.

 

[darkessenz21]

i guess i should revise...


How important is the brand name of the power supply? From responses i have read, it seems like it is pretty important.

Will using a cheapo possibly damage the equipment?

 

[MrDudeMan]

put it this way...

would you install a 100hp civic hatchback stock engine in a dodge viper? no, not at all. using a less-than-par PSU is a bad idea and sticking with a name brand is highly recommended.

antec
enermax
sparkle


those are 3 good brands that i wouldnt stray from




different power supplies supply different voltages. for example, the +12v rail should be greater than or equal to 12. on a good PSU, you get that. on generics, its few and far between.

 

[Corporate Thug]

it most likely will but do u want to risk to hardware to weak rails?

 

[ToxicWaste]

go to PC Power & Cooling and read up on what they say about power supplies. I'm not saying you need to buy one of theirs, but they discuss the good the bad and the ugly...

 

[WobbleWobble]

Yes, using no-name power supplies can damage your equipment.

On the side note, they aren't that bad if you've got a basic set up with 1 HDD, 1 CD-RW, non-power hungry video card and no lights/case fans. Just enough to get by, i.e. CPU fan and PSU fan.

All those mom and pop stores don't sell Antec type PSUs to most of their customers. They buy the $30 dollar cases that come with no-name PSUs. I'm sure they would get a heck lot more returns if they were that bad. But for a basic set up, they should work fine.

Yes, no-name PSUs probably do fail more often than name-brand ones, but I don't think it's as high as 1 out of every 2 or 3. I think it's much less than that.

But it should be ok, as long as you don't have too many things running from it. If you can and need more than the basic setup, get a name-brand PSU. It's safer and more reliable.

 

[abaez]

I bought a compusa 500 watt psu from someone here in the for sale forums for a good price I thought. Died about a year later, decided to be done with it and went out and bought a nice antec.

 

[Goatsan]

no, i had a compusa 450 watt give out one time when i added another hd, but the same stuff is running on a 350watt antec smart power.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: Goatsan
no, i had a compusa 450 watt give out one time when i added another hd, but the same stuff is running on a 350watt antec smart power.

just so you know, a p4, a hard drive, 2 optical drives and other random crap will run on 300 and still be clean power...

 

[Goatsan]

well as mentioned before, it depends on the the quality of the psu you get, i was running an amd XP 1500+, 1 optical drive and 4 hard drives

 

[Ness]

well, by the time you buy 2 or 3 of these as they burn out once or twice a year, you might as well just pick up a high-quality PSU.

 

[Zepper]

If your mobo has a P4 connector (many AMD mobos do now) then you'll probably be OK.
.bh.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: Zepper
If your mobo has a P4 connector (many AMD mobos do now) then you'll probably be OK.
.bh.

what can you base that on?