Power Supply?

[BurningSpear]

What do you recommend for my system? looking for good balance between performance and value. list brand and wattage.

nforce2 motherboard
Athlon 2400+ or higher
Radeon 9000pro or higher
80gb WD HDD
SBLive 5.1 MP3+ card

[Hunter83]

I only buy Sparkle Power Supply Units. For that system, to be sure, I'd get a 400 Watt.

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?DEPA=&submit=Go&description=Sparkle+400

I'll be getting that for my new system as soon as I get the fundage.

You want to make sure you get a high quality PSU, poorly made ones can stop working or even cause damage to your system from voltage instabilities or even if they malfunction(i.e. - meltdown or catch fire).

I've never seen someone have a problem with a Sparkle and I've seen lots of em.

[BurningSpear]

yeah, i want to make sure i get a quality PSU. I'm just not familiar with the makers of PSUs. I have an Antec case. should I lean toward the Antec PSUs?

[Cyanide]

400w is overkill for that buddy. 350 would work just fine and 300 would probably work too. The biggest power drains on your system are not the video card, or the processor, or the motherboard. The biggest drains are your drives and fans. Things with moving parts that is. If all you have is a CPU fan, video fan, one case fan, one hard drive, one CD drive and one floppy/zip drive then you could eaily get away with 350 and probably even 300. I'm running a big video fan, 4 80mm case fans, 2 hard drives on RAID, 2 CD drives, a floppy and a pretty high RPM CPU fan on 350 right now and i've never had any problems with it.

As far as brand you want either an Antec or an Enermax. These have been consitantly proven to be the best quality power supplys. If there is any part of the computer that you do not want to be cheap with it's the power supply because a bad power supply can damage your other hardware. Also, try to find one that has a dual fan design as it provides much better cooling (heat is the number one cause of hardware failure, cooling = VERY IMPORTANT).

[Hunter83]

I also like to leave people with a good amount of room for expansion so they don't have to buy another PSU when they upgrade.
The biggest drains are by far the CPU and GFX Card. That 2400+ he listed, it could be taking 60-74 watts, depending on how fast of a CPU he got.
He also didn't say exactly what vid card he wanted, the newest ones, where you have to plug a 4 pin cable into the card can use 70+ watts. The 9700 Pro uses 54 watts and the GeForceFX uses 75watts. Lord knows how many the Radeon 9800 may use.

Had he said he is getting a 2400+ and is getting a 9000Pro, then yes, 400 would be a bit much, but when it could be anything above those....

And that WD HDD uses ~17watts on spinup. Fans and HDD's aren't even close to the wattage of a CPU or vidcard. The noisest and most powerful fan could be ~9watts but no sane person would want to sit next to it(~55dba).

A 350Watt should be fine unless you plan on doing some serious overclocking.
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?DEPA=&submit=Go&description=Sparkle+350

[BurningSpear]

Hunter, what you posted is exactly my situation. I want a PSU that will leave my options open. I currently have a 9000pro, but most likely will upgrade, at furthest by summer. So i don't wanna by a new PSU every 6 months. So i'll go for 400watts, and maybe that sparkle. I heard good things about the Antec True series, but they're also more expensive.

[Cyanide]

Hunter I'd like to see where you got those numbers. Most computers don't use more than 120watts total even at the startup spike. In fact they just had a guy on TechTV demonstrating how much power a computer uses while it's on (story was about how much power is wasted by companies who just leave their computers idling all the time instead of turning them off overnight) using a watt meter.

[Hunter83]

Ok, here's a link to the AMD white papers on their products: http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_1274_3734]^3748,00.html
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/26237.pdf (page 33)
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/25175.pdf (page 34)

But here's a nice chart that takes all the equations and makes them into a chart: http://users.erols.com/chare/elec.htm

Tom's Hardware makes a nice easy to read chart of only the newer CPU's: http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/images/cpu_chart.gif
From this article: http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/cpu_charts-32.html#comparison_table

THG also tells of the GFX Card wattage: http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030127/geforce_fx-05.html (bottom of page)

But if your so sure, go buy an old 166Mhz Compaq, rip it's PSU out, and put it in your system.

[Daleon]

I sit right next to a 55dba 9.1w 80mm Tornado Hunter heh. Yea its bordering on this side of insanity.

Total components really are where you decide on wattage. CPU/FX can defintely eat up the most, as AMD's are powerhogs. And reliable power = system stability.

Sparkle is the best, yes it is THE best powersupply around. Reason alot of ppl and review sites don't know this is b/c there not as well known a brand. But ppl who know serious power know Sparkle is where its at.

Generally quality over wattage is the rule. Weight = Quality. A very high quality 300 watt ps beats a cheap 450 watt ps. Its about stability on all the rails and the ps making sure you PC doesn't choke down more power than it should. I know ppl with old Dell 300 watt ps's they can run systems on that would kill most 500 watt ps's.

That all being said, I use a top of the line Enermax 550 watt dual ball bearing fan monster. I would put this on equal basis with pretty much any high end Sparkle also.

Antec, bah. The TruePower series is more than adequate. But they also make the SmartPower series that is CRAP.

[Hunter83]

Here's a great review of 21 power supplies. Make note that Sparkle is made by the made company that makes Verax. It's the same thing, just a different name, and less expensive under the Sparkle name.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/20021021/index.html