PSU Research Results

[DJFuji]

I've noticed a lot of people have been having PSU questions lately. (me included). I'm by no means an expert on the subject, so i did some research on it. I've decided to post some of my recent findings to help. If anyone else has good data, feel free to post here.

Hard Forum's Corruption 101
This page is about data corruption but covers PSUs and general power issues about a page down. Some VERY good information here. Enough data to convince me that i probably want to spend the $70 or so it's going to take to safely power my rig. Some of the links on that page i've placed here for convenience. Definitely worth reading and bookmarking. Explains a lot of factors that we normally don't think about in PSUs.

Takaman's PSU Calculator

another PSU Calculator

Another

Since your system is likely to have components that arent listed in some of these calculators, you can take the average of the three results and come up with a round figure on your requirements. Keep in mind that takaman's calculator gives you BARE MINIMUM total wattage. So you'll probably want to factor in some safety overhead in there. To give you an example, it says i need a ~350W PSU for my A64 3200+, 1 gig PC3200, 3 7200 HDDs, 1 10k Raptor, a R-AIW9600PRO, two burners, and a bunch of PCI cards. On the other hand, you probably won't find a 22A PSU at 350W anyway, so if you stick with the amp ratings, you should be ok.

Firing Squad's PSU Buying Guide
Good basic information about PSUs and how to buy one.

THIS page is what made me decide to shell out the money for an Antec PSU. It's in japanese, but the names are in english and the graphs are self explanatory. Scroll down a bit and look at the way the antec PSUs graph out. Maybe a generic would work just fine for me, but i value system stability. If i'm going to buy quality components and good ram, it would be stupid to skimp on the power and introduce instability and possibly data corruption to my rig.

I just lost 35 gigs of my program and file archive when chkdsk decided to delete things. Luckily very little was irreplacable, but that could have been all my documents (although i have backups of THAT). The corruption could have been caused by anything, really, but in the future, i'd rather not chance that it was the PSU.

edit: I guess AT Forums don't like the HardForum brackets...haha

 

[GnomeCop]

When I was going to upgrade my PSU, my only three choices were antec, PCP&P, and enermax. The enermax I wanted was expensive and didn't seem all that great in the end, and PCP&P was too expensive to waste on my old system so I got the antec neopower. It is by far the best power supply I have used. Zalman one have been good too up to this point.

PCP&P will be for when I upgrade and I build a whole new system

 

[DJFuji]

The graphs in one of the links i included actually look like the antec's are a bit more stable than the PCP&P. And $200+ for a PSU? That's a little steep for negligible performance/stability beneifts compared to an antec.

 

[JBT]

I just got a Seasonic 460 watt Super Silencer. This thing is amazingly quiet and has great Rails. I can't hear it at all the only thing I can hear is the 6800 GT and thats just barely noticable until I play a game which then makes a bit more noise even after playing. I have a water cooling setup comming next wednesday so then It should be VERY quiet hehe

 

[igloo15]

I used the takaman's calculator and it said i need a 200 wat psu to power my system that seems low

 

[WobbleWobble]

THIS

I suprised that the Enermax performed that poorly.

 

[mechBgon]

The graphs in one of the links i included actually look like the antec's are a bit more stable than the PCP&P.

The PC P&C fanboys are going to be hugely indignant at the mere suggestion :evil: Also, the "400W-is-overkill" mob will be along shortly to tell you how they ran a dual-Xeon system with a 6-disk SCSI RAID5 off of a grapefruit with a nickel and a penny stuck in it.

 

[DJFuji]

Originally posted by: igloo15
I used the takaman's calculator and it said i need a 200 wat psu to power my system that seems low

takaman's calculator calculates the minimum raw sustained power, i think. So you might need 200w of sustained power, which does not necessarily mean a 200w PSU. Mine, for example, says i need 350w, but i'll never find a 350W PSU with 22A on the 12v rails.

 

[DJFuji]

Originally posted by: mechBgon

The graphs in one of the links i included actually look like the antec's are a bit more stable than the PCP&P.

The PC P&C fanboys are going to be hugely indignant at the mere suggestion :evil: Also, the "400W-is-overkill" mob will be along shortly to tell you how they ran a dual-Xeon system with a 6-disk SCSI RAID5 off of a grapefruit with a nickel and a penny stuck in it.

lol grapefruit, huh? haha i'll have to try that one of these days. I'm actually running my AMD64 3200+ w/ raptor and three 7200 ide drives + R9600Pro on an Antec 350W PSU until the new one gets here. It runs fine, although I HAVE had a significant amount of drive corruption since i threw the HDDs into this rig. Could be a lot of things, though. The K8V mobo is so ridiculously picky that it could be the one causing corruption simply because it's the bad time of the month.

 

[SLOviper]

Maybe I should have posted in this thread about my SilverStone question, but I didn't. So if anyone out there feels like linking over HERE and giving some input, it'd be much appreciated! (Mine isn't the original post but further down the page)

 

[Chaotic42]

I've had two PC Power and Cooling PSUs and an Antec True Power 550 PSU. There is no way I'd ever buy another Antec again.

 

[KenSr]

Interesting post

 

[oldman420]

that confirms that i am indeed fine with a 350 watt psu thanks
sticky

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: mechBgon

The graphs in one of the links i included actually look like the antec's are a bit more stable than the PCP&P.

The PC P&C fanboys are going to be hugely indignant at the mere suggestion :evil: Also, the "400W-is-overkill" mob will be along shortly to tell you how they ran a dual-Xeon system with a 6-disk SCSI RAID5 off of a grapefruit with a nickel and a penny stuck in it.

Really??? So that was my problem.. interesting. I was trying to run my dual-Opteron off of a Lemon, I guess I needed to upgrade to a Grapefruit. Btw, do you happen to know how Persimmons run, as power sources? Someone on a different forum suggested that.

 

[maxavier]

Potatoes work well, and don't squirt acid in your eye when you plug the mobo in.