Advantages of a high-wattage PSU???

[Jeremy]

Hi everyone,

My current computer, housed in a ATX Mid-Tower case, has an Enermax Whisper 350W PSU. I have the basic four-drive setup: floppy, DVD, CD-RW, and hard disk. My video card, a Radeon 9800 Pro, requires input from the power supply.

The Enermax is a great PSU, however, the sheer number of connectors and amount of wire appears to do more harm than good since I only use just a small fraction of the connectors. I would like to buy a simple generic power supply since it will have the exact number of connectors I will need. Should I need an extra I can use a Y-connector.

Now my question ... what wattage PSU should I buy. The price differential between a 350W and a 500W is $15CDN which I do not mind spending. I think 350W is more than sufficient for my needs, however, 500W appears to be overkill ... or is it?

What advantages are there to having a "powerful" power supply?

[Paragon]

Hi Jeremy,

While I think your logic is very sound about eliminating the excess wiring, I'm not sure I follow why you would buy a generic PSU. With generics your taking quite a chance on the components that make up the power supply. Major variations (spikes) in current can kill a motherboard, video card, or other components rather quickly. Since the power supply in the basic heart and soul of any system I would certainly look to buy quality...Antec has a modular PS out now the looks quite nice that you might consider...Link to a Review (http://www.twistedmods.com/article.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=250)

[RotorHead]

What model of power supply are you looking at to replace the Enermax?

Here is a link that might help you out Linky (http://www.pcpowercooling.com/maxpc/index_cases.htm)

The advantages of a powerful power supply are, that you can load up your system with a lot of peripheral components or keep a highly overclocked machine stable.

[AndyT]

Keep the Enermax and just zip tie the extra connectors out of the way. I stuff them in an unused bay. Generics bite!! They typically weigh half of what a quality one does and put out dirty power. Save your money and stay with what you have as long as it works for you. My $.02

[Jeremy]

I haven't checked the links provided above so forgive me...

The reason why the generic caught my eye is because it has exactly the number of connectors that I need and the wires are nice and short for their purpose. I also like the fact that the generic has only one fan (as opposed to the Enermax's two) since I have two case fans already. If there is a brand name PSU that has these properties (especially the first two properties) then I will not hesitate to buy it.

The Enermax on the other hand has a lot of connectors ... 10 large ones and two small ones ... all of which are attached to very long cords. The cord for the ATX connector is fat and is very long even though the PSU is an inch or two away from the motherboard. Three of my four 5.25" bays are occupied (I have a Audigy II Platinum) so I have already ziptied and stuffed the excess wiring into this bay.

According to the hardware monitoring on my motherboard BIOS (Intel 875PBZ), the temperature inside my case is about 45 degrees Celcius. I think that the absense of all this excess wiring would allow better airflow. Another thing is that when I eject a disk that has been sitting idle in either one of the optical drives, it is quite warm to the touch ... much warmer than it should be, in my opinion.

[pointreyes]

Wattage is useless unless the amperage is in line with what you should get for the PSU. A 500w PSU might be 500w, but if the amperage on the 12v rail on a $15 more 500w PSU is equal to the amperage on the $15 less 350w-then the 350w has a very good chance of being a better quality product. Here's another example.
The Antec 550w True Control has 24 amps on the 12v rail. A PC Power and Cooling 410w has 23 amps on the 12v rail. So my PC Power and Cooling costs about $15 less than the Antec and yet I lost 1 amp on the 12v but yet there's a 140w difference!

Note: Don't go generic unless you want to kill your computer. Many of the generic PSU are probably the evil Deer brand. Deer will provide you with one very nice 'feature' though-the blue sparks that will (not might, but will) eventually come out when the PSU fails within one year of usage.

[Jeremy]

Well, here are the specifications on a 400W I am thinking about buying:

***********************************************************
Supports Pentium 4 and AMD Athlon CPUs
Complies With ATX Ver 2.03 and ATX 12V Ver 1.1 Specifications

Protection Circuits for Inrush Current, Over Current and Over Temperature

Input:
100~~127V~~/7A 50/60Hz
200~~240V~~/4A 50/60Hz

Output:
5V /20A Max
12V /16A Max
-12V /0.5A Max
3.3V /14A Max
-5V /0.5A Max
5Vsb /1A Max
**********************************************************

[Jeremy]

The brand of this power supply is Powmax. www.powmax.com

[pointreyes]

Check out the 380w Antec ratings:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=17-103-907&depa=1 - better than the 400w Powmax. The 12v line is extremely important. I have one system that will not run unless I use a PSU with at least 20amps on the 12v rail. And yet I have another that ran just fine with 18amps on the 12v rail. Both of these systems were Canterwoods.

[Lost_Soul]

Since i have a Scsi system ( controller ; cd rom ; zip drive ; 3 hdd 10 k) and will replace my GF4 ultra for a 6800 ultra i think of getting this one :

Antec True Control 550W ATX Power Supply or

Enermax VH series : ActivePFC / 20pin & 24pin / Aluminium - 550W ActivePFC

btw i followed rotorheads linky and i didn't know that scsi parts are so power greedy :-)

[RotorHead]

SCSI drives really draw a lot of power during initial spin-up, once they get going they don’t draw a whole lot more than IDE’s. If your power supply is almost maxed out, you can usually stagger the spin-up on the drives through the SCSI cards setup function.

Without it, you can see that powering up a 4 drive RAID could pull up to 160W from your power supply. Then throw in a little overclocking, a video card, some fans, and you can run out of head room real fast.

[Paragon]

Both the Antec and Enermax units you are considering are very nice; I would however take a look a this (http://www.pcpowercooling.com/about/index_whatnew510.htm) before you make a final decision :wave:

[pointreyes]

Since i have a Scsi system ( controller ; cd rom ; zip drive ; 3 hdd 10 k) and will replace my GF4 ultra for a 6800 ultra i think of getting this one :

Antec True Control 550W ATX Power Supply or

Enermax VH series : ActivePFC / 20pin & 24pin / Aluminium - 550W ActivePFC

btw i followed rotorheads linky and i didn't know that scsi parts are so power greedy :-)

Did you overlook this little tidbit on post #6 of this thread?

The Antec 550w True Control has 24 amps on the 12v rail. A PC Power and Cooling 410w has 23 amps on the 12v rail. So my PC Power and Cooling costs about $15 less than the Antec and yet I lost 1 amp on the 12v but yet there's a 140w difference!
The 24pin Enermax and the 24pin Antec 550w PSUs will probably have 36amps one each of the three rails. Look at the amps. The TC550 only provides a dismal 24 amps.

[Paragon]

Pointreyes makes the best argument for a PC Power and Cooling PSU that I have seen, and the 510 blows the rest away :yikes:

[Lost_Soul]

Both the Antec and Enermax units you are considering are very nice; I would however take a look a this (http://www.pcpowercooling.com/about/index_whatnew510.htm) before you make a final decision :wave:


I read the link carefully (the comparison between 510 and other 550watt psu says it all.

I scrapd antec of my list but does it mean the same for the enermax unit ?

And would you go for the 510 ATX or the 510 ATX Deluxe and how do these psu do if it comes to noise levels?

Sorry about nagging you all with these questions :-)