Which power supply?

DavidNW

DavidNW

Big Geek
I want to upgrade my PC's power supply unit (never done this before). I have 2 hard drives, 1 floppy drive, a DVD-RW and a CD-RW. I occasionally run an external USB drive. I of course have a printer and a router. I'm just trying to list what I think is relevent to upgrade my current 300W supply. I don't run Windows on this machine anymore - just Mandriva and Ubuntu.

I'm thinking about an upgrade because my tutor at my computer hardware installation & maintainence class say he does not know how my PC runs on such a low power supply!

I don't play any games on the PC - just basically surf, send email and word process. Could anyone recommend a good power supply to cover my needs - one that should have enough connectors for my hardware. I'm told I should be looking at something around 500w.

Cheers,

David.
 
Well depending on the CPU, GPU etc you could run it on a 300W PSU. Some 300W units are better than so-called '450W+' units.

I would much rather have a 300W Antec PSU than a 600W Q-Tec PSU for instance.

What's the complete specs of your computer?
 
Cheers, Matt.

I'm running an Athlon XP 2400 (2 GHz) processor - FSB: 266MHz. An (old, I know) ECS K7VMM+ 3.1 motherboard with 512 MB of RAM - Radeon 9250 128 MB DDR graphics card + onboard sound. I hope this helps - can't think that there's anything else to tell you.

David.
 
That system will run on a 300W PSU - if you want a new PSU for that peace of mind then check out Big B's PSU sticky, anything from: Antec, Tagan, Enermax, ThermalTake, Seasonic, Sparkle will suit you well.

I myself have a Tagan PSU in my desktop rig (It's a TG480-U01) and I can say it's damn near silent, it's got strong rails and it's an older model - the new ones are even better.

I think a 400W+ unit from any of the above companies should do you well.
 
Thanks, Matt.

I might just stick with the one I have for now - considering what you have said. It was just what the tutor said at college that got me thinking + I was trying to load XP a couple of weeks ago and the PC kept continually re-booting. It could have been that the installation CD was a bit duff - got it at a cheap price on ebay - I've only managed to load XP on it twice and I've had the CD for ages! However, Ubuntu & Mandriva loaded up fine - no problems and have successfully been reinstalled several times due to one thing and another.

David.
 
Well I've had tutors telling me that my PC will explode because I have cathodes in there and a PSU that can't handle it.

My PSU is 480 Watts and has 22A on the 12V Rail, 48A on the 5V Rail and 28A on the 3.3V Rail - plus it's from a known, trusted and high-quality PSU manufacturer, my tutor was talking crap and didn't know what he was talking about.

A PSU isn't all about Watts, it's about the ability to provide power at varying loads and temperatures, a good PSU may only be 300W but it might be able to provide a constant 300W at 80*C at full load whereas a low-quality generic unit may only be able to provide its rated wattage (if it can that is, lots can't even do that) at 30*C when under virtually no stress.

A good quality PSU will be able to provide clean stable power (by that I mean the rails remain constant and don't drop to dangerously-low levels) under pretty-much any circumstances.

When a PSU is stressed at 100% you begin to see where the money went, a cheap unit will fail, cause crashes / unstability in the system and can even take your PC components with it, a high quality one will just keep on going, if it does fail it'll most probably go quietly and leave your components alone.
 
Well, some cathodes might, but that would be if you're using one that's used to running off the 120/240V circuits. The ones for PCs are the same as cars, and work off the 12V. Ask him if his theory is correct why people with tons of cathodes on their cars don't have their batteries blowing up, since those are 12V in most cases.

If you have a crappy PSU or have a demand on the 12V greater than what can be provided, then, yes, you can run the risk of a PSU's going to hell.
 
Yeah, he knows mine are cold cathodes that run off the 12V rail.

He's just an idiot basically and has always liked putting people down.
 
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