hot deals on a PSU

[sleefer]

I would tell you guys this. Base your decision on your needs. If you are wanting a power supply to take you beyond your current system, I'd get an ATX12V power supply like the FSP-350/400, Antec SL350/400, Antec TruePower330/380/430, or equivalent. I have a several Delta DPS-300BB's and 2 of the 300W LiteOn's, my thanks to mindless1 for his post. They are great for what I need them for. Not for everyone though. They are fine for most of today's Athlon's like he says. What you will need next year or after, maybe not. If your just concerned about now, they'll work fine. The 245-250W TCO is nice but the 300W total is what will limit you on these units. Say your system will be using 8A of +12V by your calculations. That's 96W out of 300W max. Doesn't leave 250W anymore, does it. Nope, now it's 204W for the other lines before you go over spec. The 300W is the limiter on these, and where you will eventually need more. Get up to the 250W TCO and the +12V rail would have to come down to only 4A. Double the problem if they switch to +12V MB's. You'll run into the wall on the +12V and max output. The FSP-350 at it's full 220W TCO would have 10A for +12V before you get close to the 350W max. It's important because you'll need it eventually. That's the advantage of the higher total output on all rails combined. You might say 8A of +12V is alot without the CPU, but figure 1-2A per hard drive, 1A per optical drive, up to .5A per PCI slot, and around .25A or more per fan. Now if you have 2 of each type of drive what's the total, probably around 6.5A or more. Most people have more fans, probably more like 4-6 in the larger cases. Don't forget fans cooling drves, CPU's, etc. The PCI slot consumption is based on the possible type of card, and yes, they can use +12V. Just look at the Voodoo5. You will see that 8A is not that hard of a figure to reach nowadays, even without the CPU.
An Antec SL400 has 18A of +12V, 240W TCO for +5V & +3.3V, 380W w/ +12V. so you can actually use use up to 12A of +12V before you start taking from the other rails. It's not the best 400W Antec model out there now either. The TruePower430 has a whopping 20A of +12V and you can use all 240W of it. It'll get you even further, but it will cost you more too.
That's my $.02 worth.

 

[SpacemanSpiffVT]

well i havent really looked at the voltages but i put in the 350w fortron from directron and its very quiet and seems to power everything just fine

 

[awanSky]

guys, what do you think of this RAIDMAX 350 for $17 shipped from this thread

 

[chmike]

How is the noise on the Directron (Liteon) fan? Noise isn't usually a factor for servers

thanks

 

[HumblePie]

I keep getting PM's every so often on this thread so I thought I'd do another follow up after I read through this. As mentioned earlier, the power to the CPU can come off either the 5v or the 12v lines. Most older comps are 5v only with some "newer" xp mobos and p4 mobo's supplying 12v to the cpu. As for the Asus a7n8x and delux version for the NF2 chipset, well I have the delux and can testify to the fact that it DOES run off the 5v rail and NOT the 12v. Also, if anyone is actually going off the power consumption tables posted on many websites, well they are nice safeguards but don't actually represent real world home systems. What these tables do is take the MAXIMUM amount of power draw a device could possibly draw in a system. Then they post it at 80% and use that as the recommended value for determining power draw. What this means is that those tables are expecting everyone to always be running every device in their system at 80% of their maximum power draw 100% of the time. That doesn't happen. Not in any home PC and most server comps either. A person would need to be folding, running prime95, playing UT2K3, running winamp in the background, uploading or downloading a ton of files across multiple harddrives and partitions, and running much much more just to achieve that level of total power draw from a system. I have the fortron 350w from directron (I noticed the difference in model numbers as well and ordered from directron even if it was more expensive with tax heh) and love it. Here's my system it's powering.....

Asus a7n8x delux with a thermaltake orb modded on north and south bridges.
12 case fans including 2 sunon 120mm high power fans and a 80mm tornado on my slk-800 heatsink. Also, 2 of the fans power flashing blue LED lights.
ATI radeon 9700 pro
hercules fortissimo 3 7.1
both onboard lans
2x maxtor 80gb diamond max plus 9 8mb buffered HDDs with "ultimate hard drive coolers" on each. (getting a raid controller card soon to truly use these right)
1 floppy (used uhh to load my OS with a boot disk once heh)
1 liteon 48/24/48 cdrw
1 liteon 16/48 dvdrom
2 UV cold cathodes.
2 green cold cathodes.
2x512mb samsung pc2700 running at 190fsb at 2.8v (man wish I could bump these to 2.9 without having to mod the board)
AMD XP 1800 running at 2090 (190*11)
Logitech navigator duo keyboard and mouse I won from the December 20th contest.
Canon Canoscan USB 2.0 scanner (has it's own power supply but the USB port is still drawing power for being active)

All I can say is I'm no where close to stressing my PSU even when I try to put it underload. My only problem I have is the lack of overclocking options I have with my board. If I could go over 1.75v for the vcore and 2.8 for the mem without having to mod the motherboard then I would be sitting pretty.

As for the guy asking about the raidmax.... well all I will say is that those things are nice looking paperweights in my opinion. I personally wouldn't buy nor recommend them to anyone. That doesn't mean they don't work for some people but I know it would be struggling with my system if I tried to stress it. Also, as I stated, antecs are very good power supplies but then again you pay twice or more for them. The point of this thread is for a HOT DEAL, meaning the best available for the lowest price. The fortron 300 to 450watt power supplies for the price are the best bang for your buck. Period. If I could pick up a 450+ watt antec truepower for the same or lesser price I probably would. Or if the 400w+ PCpower&cooling models were less then $140 I would definately pick one up. But, that's not what the current price is now and I can wish all I want. Fact is, for the price versus performance, nothing beats the 350w fortron right now.

Also, as for the poster that earlier mentioned the PCpower&cooling 350w model having 5% line regulation. That is correct. It's not untill you reach the 400W silencer and higher wattage models do they really shine, and cost a helluva lot more. The 400w and higher all have 1% line regulation to them and independant circuits on some models for the 3.3v and 5v lines. Even with independant regulation circuits, all PC power supplies still share the same capacitors and PCB, so they still have some limiting capacity to all 3 lines regardless. My post here was meant to educate and help people in their search to build the better computer without losing and arm and leg.

 

[SpacemanSpiffVT]

oh and my fotron has a power switch on it,
differnet from the pic

 

[tbrooks40]

this is an interesting pdf from AMD that talks about psu's and power consumption of todays (2002 document) athlonxp and duron processors...

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/26003.pdf

...it looks like they are concentrating on the 12v rail as well. they do mention earlier in the document that when building a system the builder should confer with the mobo manufacturer when choosing the psu.

sorry bentvalve i didn't see your post... good article tho.

 

[pelikan]

I just got the Fortron 350W from Directron.

It is quiet until it heats up, which seems to only happen while gaming - which is very fortunate. When it is hot, the Noise Maker comes on. Oh, yeah, I mean Noise Killer, or is it Silence Killer. It is so loud I couldn't believe it. It sounds exactly like my Thermaltake Smart Case Fan 2 at 4800 rpm (which is 48dB). I am very disappointed with the noise. Maybe I was spoiled with my Enlight 300W, which I could never hear at all.

 

[m1ke101]

Originally posted by: FreakyGuy

Originally posted by: dxpaap nice post - and of course I just saw it after I picked up a no name (turbolink) from a computer show this afternoon. anyone heard of this one - 420 watts, two fans, 40A on the +5v, 18A on the +12V, and 28A on the +3.3v thats 292.4w on the +3.3v/+5v lines combined ? I think ? V * A = W ? Seems decent ? I have no idea what the variance is - anyone know how I could tell ? oh yea - cost $35 thx

I have this exact PSU. Been running it over a year now and only had to replace one fan due to dusty conditions here where I live. I have 5 normal fans and 2 high speed fans, 3 hard drives, a DVD-Rom, CDRW and a floppy all running of this PSU. Also I can confirm that this is made by Channel Well Technologies who makes some Antec models. It's a good PSU for the price IMO, it's somewhat light but has dual fans which helps on cooling. Oh rest of specs: AMD Athlon XP 1700(1.47mhz) OC'd to 1704 mhz Air Cooled BFG Geforce 4200 TI 128mb newest revision 768 (3x256) megs of Crucial DDR 2100 I-Will XP333-R Mobo Rev 2.1 Soundblaster Live! X-Gamer Generic network adapter with 384/384 DSL

I belive I have this power supply as well, came with my case. It says its made by turbolink, and it seems to be running my system pretty well. Anyone know if this is a good quality power supply?