Hey All, Recently got my new rig up and running; I read the sticky on power supplies and I'm still a bit unclear about amps, volts, and rails. You guys have never failed me, so basically What power supply should i get to power an AMD 64 3700+ , geforce 7800gt, hard drive, 2 optical drives, and of course mobo. What confuses me is the whole dual 12V rail. Is it better to have one rail @36A, or dual 12Vrails at 18 each, does it make a difference? whatever you experts say is better is what i'll go for. I want to upgrade before any instability issues may occur. by the way my current power supply is this one except with a fan controller.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817153007
It's better to have 2 12V Rails @ 18A each, less stress on the one rail to supply power for everything, that PSU is good but you might want more Amps on the 12V Rail for that system... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103458 That PSU looks quite good...there are many others though, other people will have different reccommendations...
Did you mean 2 rails at 18each? Hmmm, personally I don't feel it matters whether you have 2 or one rail so long as the total amps are pretty high. A minimum of 22A if you can help it. Your psu is good and I trust thermaltake so you'd probably be alright but if you're looking to upgrade this is, in my opinion one of the best psu's out there, especially for the price. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103931
This thread is a thread I made from an article in a magazine I bought, it's an interesting read for PSU's...
Having 2 rails definately helps, because the voltage will drop as you chain more and more connectors, so having dual rails will help.
Sweetness, so that's how they keep all those watts stable. That thing is such a beast, you could run three beefy computers with that thing.
There's a few units out there for server motherboards that have 4 12V rails, but only the first couple have high amps.... Multiple 12V rails are nicer than a single one because there's not one circuit powering the huge load. This makes the unit get hotter, and as is common knowledge, that's not good. There's also a cost factor involved with producing a high amperage, single 12V rail.
Thanks B. Though I must say it's getting to be pretty common place to see high amps now. Though few quality PSU's can pull it off cheesier brands like Aspire and Rosewill have 28+A on some models.