[Massling]

So I ended up ordering a PC mostly for gaming but nothing very over-the-top. A friend of mine recently looked at what I ordered and freaked out, because he said the power supply wasnt enough and the motherboard was complete garbage. Problem is, they are in QA stage of building and will be shipping tomorrow or thursday, lol.

Anyways, let me know what you think, here are the specs.

AMD Phenom(TM) X4 9500 Quad-Core CPU w/ HyperTransport Technology

20X DVD+/-R/+/-RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER

AMD ATHLON64 CERTIFIED CPU FAN & HEATSINK

Extra Case Cooling Fan [+3] (2 x Fans [+3])

Single Hard Drive (320GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD

MOTHERBOARD: MSI K9A2 CF-F AMD 790X CrossFire Chipset DDR2/1066 Dual 16X PCIE SATA RAID MB w/GbLAN,USB2.0,&7.1Audio

MEMORY: (Req.DDR2 MainBoard)2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory (Mushkin Brand

OS: Microsoft(R) Windows Vista(TM) Home Premium (64-bit Edition

POWERSUPPLY: 635 Watts Power Supplies Sigma Shark SP-635W PSU - SLI Ready

SOUND: Creative Labs SB Audigy SE

VIDEO: ATI Radeon HD 3870 PCI-E x16 512MB Video Card

Let me know what you guys think. I ended up paying just shy of 890$ for the system plus shipping.

[gurusan]

For a Phenom build that looks quite good. The motherboard isn't crap...but he was right about the power supply

[whitefro]

how much you paid for it determines how good it is.

[darksideleader]

pretty nice for $890, and tons of room to upgrade in the future.

[Trotter]

You defintely want to replace that PSU ASAP. Other than that, looks good.

[Ste]

Originally Posted by Trotter

You defintely want to replace that PSU ASAP. Other than that, looks good.

I disagree, while the OP did make the mistake of buying an unreccomended brand, there is no need to replace it unless there is an imediate problem with it.

If he cares to determine whether he really should or should not replace it asap, testing needs to be done.

He will need to acquire a Digital Multimeter and test it's Voltage outputs under load first. Each separate Voltage output needs to be within +/- 5% of its rated Voltage.

Thus if he just so happens to be measureing a 12+ Volt wire/prong, the output voltage can be within a range of about 11.4Volts through 12.6 Volts
Same math can be applied to the other Voltages as well.
3.3 X .05 == variance acceptable for this output
5 X .05 == variance acceptable for this output
etc etc

If they readings are out of a 5% +/- variance of the rated voltage, then he should replace it.

Course he could do amperage tests, but voltage is the easiest...
The most effective way to maximize the wattage output and strain on the power supply is prehaps to overclock the GPU and CPU Slightly and then moniter the rails during a few runs of 3Dmark06.

[maroon1]

I think he already bought it

But he could have got the Q6600 for about the same price, because the AMD 790X motherboard is expensive. He could have got a cheaper motherboard like DS3L with Q6600