Ok so I just got done building my new machine, with an Intel D110GGC Board, Pentium D 2.66Ghz, 250GB SATAII HDD and Geforce 7600GT Video card. 2GB of RAM total. I ran it for a day and when I came home the next day I find out that hte power supply gave out and died. It had an AGI 400W power supply in it, but I guess it either wasn't enough or was defective. Now i'm having to buy a new PSU. I'm getting at least a 500W or better power supply but the guy at the computer store suggested I get an ATX 2.01 power supply since he said it has dual power rails, one for the devices and one fore the board. He unfortunatly didn't have any 2.01 PSU's that were 500+W so I picked up a Turbolink 500W ATX 2.03 Power Supply by Aspire. So I guess i'm wondering, did I make a good choice? And what exacly is the difference between the 2.01 power supply he was talking about and the 2.03 one I picked. ? Also my Video Card recommends having a "PCI Express Compliant" PSU, what exactly does this mean? What should I be looking for?
Aspire is not a quality brand. They use cheap parts, of the fewer components they do have. While the guy at the computer shop was right in recommending a power supply with dual 12V rails, Aspire is not a company I'd be recommending. A 350W-400W by a company like Antec is likely to have the same or better amperages. 2.03ATX power supplies have at least 1 6-pin PCIe video card power connetors along with dual 12V rails. ATX 2.01 simply required the auxillary 4-pin 12V connector that made it's debut with the introduction of the Pentium 4. If you want something with a good price: performance ratio, this Fortron AX450-PN would be an excellent option.
Hmm well right now he is the only PC Store I am able to get parts from due to the payment setup we have, I'll have to see about having him order me something. He has some other power supplies so I'll check those out. On a another note I had planned on adding 3 more hard drives to this system, will a 450W PSU power the card, CPU and all the drives without an issue?
450w could proberbly do if you got the power supply from a decent brand, you see cheap power supplys have low amps on the 12v rail, i would reccomend a power supply from hiper (hiper type-r) or Tagen, ThermalTake, Seasonic etc..
Hmm ok. The one I picked up has 16A on one rail and 18A on the other, at least thats what its rated. will check with the store in the morning.
hmm, i thats ok i think, my psu (hiper type-r) has 18A and 20A on the rails and is really good so 16a and 18a cant be bad.
The amps aren't bad, but if its a light unit, I'd seriously wonder about how it'd pull it off. If that sucker isn't reasonably heavy, those specs are likely BS. See what they can do for you. You owe it to yourself to get a good unit, and don't settle for anything less. Wattage is more or less a marketing tool. I have 350W units that have specs some companies would market with a 500W label. Power supply ratings are based on math of potential, and many companies liberally rate their units. Voltage (V) x Amperage (I)=W. Factors like heat aren't part of the equation. Cheaper units don't use as many nor high-quality capacitors. They'll also suck up more power because of piss-poor effiency. It may be a 500W unit, but if it's blowing a lot of that on AC/DC coversion, you're SOL with sub 70% effiency. 80% efficency is becoming a major draw, but not absolutely necessary. It can save on energy costs by not wasting as much power on AC/DC conversions, however.
