Quote:
Originally posted by fade2black2004
im still glad i got my 650watt antec psu. now i dont have to worry about upgrading for a year or so |
Remember that people aren't about to pay $150/month in electric bills for their computers anytime in the next decade. The goal of hardware builders isn't just to make faster products and to not care about how much power they consume - Hardware companies also try to minimize the amount of power that they consume.
As an example, future Dual Core Intel processors based on the 45nm manufacturing process are expected to consume 57W, and AMD's K8L Dual Cores are supposed to range anywhere from 35 to 89W, depending on the clockspeed. This is down from the minimum 65W that Core 2s consume right now, and the 80-something Watts that Athlon 64 X2s consume. So its not like power consumption is going to keep increasing forever and never be stopped.
Just an example of power consumption actually reducing over time. So it might very well be the case that even 650W will never even come close to being fully used, and you could've done with a much smaller PSU. A 500W PSU still leaves quite a bit of room for any future upgrades; Also note that any "upgrades" to the amount of power an 8800GTX consumes would have to come in the form of ridiculously impractical hardware (such as 4x4).
Quote:
Originally posted by RalliArt882
I have an OCZ GameXStream 700W too. There's no reason to have regret though, we buy those because we know they will handle things years from now and they won't go out on us. If there is ANYTHING you shouldn't compromise, it better be your PSU. Because if it goes out, you can bet a couple more things will go out with it. |
Power Supplies failing is something that has to do with the quality of the PSU, not the amount of energy that it supplies. A high-quality PSU that supplies a low amount of watts is still a better choice than a low-quality PSU that supplies a large amount of watts. OCZ is an excellent PSU maker, so I can't really argue against that, but the 400W Forton is still less likely to fail than the 700W OCZ.
By the way, 72Amps on the +12v rails is so much overkill...Half that would be enough to keep a system going for a LONG time (years). Just an example of spending more money than needed.
Quote:
Originally posted by fangs2000
I REALLY needed this post. I have been using power supply calculators to work out how much my new build would require, and always thought it was off. Looking around everyone seems to say "You need at least 500W PSU to run XYZ", now it seems the calculator is correct. I will probably look into downgrading my PSU in that case, maybe going for a 400W one. I cannot see the point of going SLI/XFIRE, nor quad core. I also never cared for the high-speed hard drives. I am happy with a 7200RPM one.
I have a question though, Is there a chart rating the quality of different companies? I have seen some REALLY cheap PSUs (example, Sansun 450W for 24.99, or Ebuyer Value 550W for £21.99) . I am a big fan of reliablity over performance.
Again, thanks for this post. |
Don't use those calculators as a measure of how much power your system is consuming, but as an example of the power supply that you should get. And still, Power Supplies are not made equal, so the 450W required in a PSU that it shows could be the same thing as a good 400W PSU or a 500W crappy PSU. As long as you stick with good brands, and don't go below 400W, you should be just fine in any non-SLI system.
Which leads me into answering your question. Sorry to say that there is no real list of good PSU companies. Any sort of list that exists is only a collection of what other people think are good companies. That kind of a list is completely useless since only one person needs to think that a known bad company is good, for it to be included in such a list. I've seen it happen too many times.
The only real way to know which PSU makers are good is to hang around places that discuss such things. The
Power Supplies subforum over at [H]Forums is one of my favorite hangouts. You'll have to be there for a decent amount of time to be able to sift through the crappy ones and the good ones though. That, or you could just ask us which ones we think are good, for what its worth.
As for the PSUs you listed, I wouldn't touch either of those with a 10-foot power cable. Just because the 400W Forton is cheap doesn't mean that all cheap PSUs are good. Infact, that Forton is an extreme rarity. The way you tell a good PSU is from it's maker, and brands such as Forton, Antec, PCP&C, OCZ, Hiper, Seasonic, etc are some good names off the top of my head.