PC hardware: Power supplies for PCs: How much power is enough & what brands are best?
- 10/16/09 3:27 PM
Power Supply Calculator
by DADSGETNDOWN - 10/9/09 7:21 PM In reply to: Power supplies for PCs: How much power is enough & what brands are best? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Here this might help, look closely.
http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
Sometimes it Pays to Spend a Little More
by High Desert Charlie - 10/9/09 7:53 PM In reply to: Power supplies for PCs: How much power is enough & what brands are best? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi Bill,
I expect that this thread about power supplies will live on long after you or I ever need to use it again, so lets take a crack at it.
When it comes to power supplies it's been my experience that you get what you pay for. The rated wattage on a power supply may tell you you're getting 450W but is that a measurement of peak power or continuous power? Expensive Power Supplies are expensive for a reason. Quality parts, quality control and craftsmanship, warranties, and reputation are things I look for in all of my computer purchases.
For the system you described, a 500 - 600W power supply should be plenty, without needing to replace it annually. Power Hogs on your power supply are Video Cards, Hard Drives, Optical Drives, and fans.
If you're running multiple hard drives in a raid configuration with dual video cards, a souped up overclocked cpu and superhot RAM, matched with 5-6 fans, some lights for bling and throw in a personal
USB fan just to keep cool yourself, you can expect to need a superhot 1,200W Power supply.
Newegg has an easy to use calculator suitable for most users here: http://educations.newegg.com/tool/psucalc/index.html
Or if you really want to get down to the nitty gritty you can add up the voltage and amperage of all of the devices on your computer and apply the formula: Wattage = Voltage X Amps. Of course, leave yourself about 30% overhead, and make sure the power supply you buy is rated to provide that power continuously (not peak).
There's been a lot of talk lately about how many rails a power supply has and most of it is bunk. The whole thing started in the EU and the marketers got their hands on it and tried to make a big selling point with it. You don't need multiple rails. You certainly don't need to pay more for them.
One thing I would pay more for would be a modular power supply. With these systems, you only need to use the wires required for your system without 25 other wires dangling all over the place. When you add components, you can add wires. I think these Power Supplies are well worth the little bit extra.
Finally, once you decide what you need in a power supply for your computer, shop around for it. Power supplies can frequently be found on sale combined with rebates. I once bought a 600W PS for $39 with a $39 rebate!!! No kidding. I'm still using it in my office computer.
Best of luck to you Bill
best power supply is a bad question......
by Chinookman - 10/9/09 7:59 PM In reply to: Power supplies for PCs: How much power is enough & what brands are best? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
My Ford is better then your chebby......OK you get my point..... do your homework.... try: http://www.pcpower.com/index.html or http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=136602
There are very quiet ones, highly regulated ones, and a variety of quality in most brand made.
First do your homework: what components do you have , what are the power needs of each calculate the totals. Figure in upgrades and futures add ons.
I'm picky but only rebuild my unit every 3-4 years. I do about two months of research for each component. Take a look at my needs and have learned that life goes in cycles and discover interest in music and bam gotta upgrade memory, or video card, etc.
Once you have added up your dream machine then decide on budget and your length of ownership. I buy quality first, they perform better in the long run. Example after two machines using Corsair value select I upgraded to Patriot gaming memory and bam like a new machine.
So my Antec machine went from a 350 to a 550w PSU and the APC UPS tells me it operates at 124watts on a 550w unit. Overkill yeah....margin fro growth and upgrade you bet!!!
Upgrade will be mobo, memory graphics card and a another dual core AMD. PSU will be the same unless the mobo will not accept the configuration.
Sorry no clear cut answer here but just a personal perspective from an amateur in a practical application. Hope it was enough to help you set a course to find your own "BEST" solution which is what it will always work out to be. Oh yeah my Ford Diesel F-250 still rock...LOL.... good luck with your projects.....
C-man....
Power requirements
by zepper - 10/9/09 9:36 PM In reply to: Power supplies for PCs: How much power is enough & what brands are best? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
There are power supply estimators around the Web - the Antec site has a decent one. There are a fair number of PSU brands that the old hands consider reliable: Seasonic, some Antec (they did have one batch that were lemons and hurt their rep a while back). Enermax, Corsair, OCZ and Silverstone are generally OEMed by reliable mfrs. Enhance and Sparkle/Fortron have been reliable, but I haven't been keeping up with them. Then there are always PC Power & Cooling and Zippy/Emacs where stability is valued above all. The jonnyguru.com, hardwaresecrets.com and silentpcreview.com web sites have good info on PSUs as well.
Most surround sound systems have separate power for the speakers and the sound card or integrated sound doesn't require much more power than standard, two-channel would. It is hard to imagine a system where more than about a 550W quality PSU would be needed. I've been running an Antec Earthwatts (OEM by Seasonic) EA380 for a good while now and I don't think I've ever stressed it.
A high end gaming system with two or more high end video cards may need more.
.bh.
Add on to my earlier post
by zepper - 10/9/09 10:09 PM In reply to: Power requirements by zepperThere is no "One Best PSU", there is only the best for your application. Many PSUs are NOT made by the company whose label is on them, e.g. currently a few Antec are made by (OEM) Seasonic and the others were made by Delta. I also am willing to pay a bit more for a PSU not made in the PRC - last I knew, Zippy/Emacs was still making most of theirs in Taiwan. I see that one post recommended buying only Japanese made, but AFAIK there is only one brand of PSU still made there and I really don't know enough about that company to make a judgement (I don't think they are routinely available in the states anyhoo). PC Power & Cooling were once made in the U.S., but I think they've pretty much outsourced too. The best Deltas were made in Taiwan or Thailand, while the Deltas OEM for Antec and some others have been farmed out to the PRC.
It is also good to look for the 80 Plus rating sticker which means that the PSU is at least 80% efficient between 20 and 90% of its output range. And I like to see Automatic Power Factor Correction - which compensates for the draw curve of reactive loads and can save money in some settings. Those who use a UPS may also see a few extra minutes of uptime as the PSU will be seen as a more stable load. Many of the brands noted in my first post have models offering both 80 Plus and auto-PFC. Wide range voltage tolerance is also nice as you won't have to flip a switch to run in locations with at least 90V or up to over 220V AC power, but you may need a plug adapter or localized cable as the outlets can have a different pin layout. This usually comes along with autoPFC in higher end models. The voltage tolerance also can make it easier on your UPS. Your system may be able to ride out some minimal drops and brownouts even if you don't have a UPS, but if power flaws are common in your area I'd still recommend a UPS.
.bh.
Even heavily loaded, a PC of that vintage wouldn't need more
by Flirkann - 10/9/09 10:10 PM In reply to: Power supplies for PCs: How much power is enough & what brands are best? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
than a 600W unit.
If it's a typical system then you'd be able to get away with using a 350W unit - as long as it's a good quality unit.
If you're using generics, 500-600W would cover you nicely with enough headroom for when you ramp things up, or when your rig gets hot and your 500W unit starts behaving like a 400W unit.
A quality brand unit of 400-450W would be the sweet spot, able to service new parts without an issue unless you really gut it during an upgrade. A quality unit will also be quieter.
As to your other mentioned problem, going through power supplies, unless you have a bad earth sucking excessive amounts of power from a cheap and nasty generic power supply working at it's limits - you have a dodgy mains power source killing your units.
Surges and excessive noise spikes in the AC supply are detrimental to the well being of your power supply, and thus your computer.
AC noise that gets past the power supply and into the DC power inside your computer can play havoc with the various timing signals used, causing odd behave, data corruption or even crashes.
This could come from industrial equipment on the local power grid, an air conditioning unit on the same circuit, an older fluorescent light, an electric motor in a dryer/washer/garage door or an unreliable power grid in your area.
At the very least, you should get yourself a quality surge protected board...not the cheapies with a simple circuit breaker you can find at your Supermarket/Target/Walmart type store, they're useless for what you need...but a well built board with a MOV bank or three to absorb power surges, and a filter circuit to keep nasty noise off your AC supply. You can find these at most electronics stores, computer stores should have some...home entertainment stores will have these.
Decent units will have some level of connected equipment warranty, some even offer a data recovery service for a computer damaged by a power surge that some how got past the surge protection.
As computers don't like power slumps either, you could also get a UPS - Uninterruptable Power Supply.
This would cover the power surge side of things, as well as protect you from dips in power levels when something big turns on or when the power cuts out temporarily.
First,, Bill, your query raises more questions than it asks
by JeffAHayes - 10/9/09 11:32 PM In reply to: Power supplies for PCs: How much power is enough & what brands are best? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I'm far from an expert on this subject, having built only one system, myself, and having upgraded only one power supply prior to that, but what I do know is that most of the processors today will run with far less power than either of those power supplies, and how much RAM you have is pretty inconsequential...
I doubt a webcam is using much power, and the surround sound is almost always externally powered, as most PCs have only a pre-amp sort of output for sound -- unless you're using some high-powered sound card. The biggest power hogs for most system are high-end video cards and other PCI(e) cards that require a lot of processing power, which you completely failed to mention, but even almost all of them would fall within the parameters of a 750-watt system, unless you were doing something really awesome, like running a SLI or Crossfire configuration with two or more high-end cards.
You also didn't mention what PSUs you had. Brand could have some impact, I think. While this forum might discourage promoting one brand over another, I'm pretty certain that, say, an Antec or a Corsair power supply would be preferable to some no-name brand that comes at half the price (which likely means somebody cut corners where they shouldn't have).
If you're having to replace a SECOND high-powered power supply in two years (and even 600 watts is fairly hefty), I'd say either you're doing something wrong with your wiring, or you're buying substandard power supplies. The only effect I ever noticed when the system where I upgraded a power supply from a too-weak supply was things like video freezes and so forth, where the video card I was using just wasn't getting quite enough power to do what I was asking of it. That still didn't burn the power supply out, although maybe it would have had I not replaced the supply at the same time I upgraded to an even heftier card.
I wonder if maybe you don't have a short or some other problem on your motherboard, if the problem isn't substandard power supplies. I certainly wouldn't go with a BIGGER supply unless your SPECS say you NEED a bigger supply. If you continue to add more power to a system that has problems unrelated to too little power, you may just be setting up conditions to fry your whole system, or worse yet, start a fire or something.
Jeff
It's time to let go....
by Brandominic - 10/10/09 12:50 AM In reply to: Power supplies for PCs: How much power is enough & what brands are best? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi to all,
Let me just relate my similar experience.
I live in a hot country. When I used our hot AMD processor desktop for 5 hrs a day with aircon, my PS lasted 3 years w/o incident. Then I stopped using the aircon and went online for 24 hr downloading frenzy. It only took 3 months to kill it. Your P4 is cooler than the AMD but is still heats up like an iron appliance, so keep it cool with additional fans that you can install on your box. I used a spare external electic fan with success.
By the way, you only need a 400W max PS, even with all your connections. So it may be that your outlet connection is loose or an erratic power fluctuation is killing it. Save your PSupply with an AVR attached.
So your equipment is two years old? It is old, and obsolete. I eventually replaced my AMD, because other parts were "COOKED" too, including my video card and memory chips, causing eratic blue screens & reboots. Save yourself the headache and trials, and be at peace..... buy a new small format box with Core2Quad processor, 500GBdisk, 2GB mem with an AVR or UPS protection and fly.... Better yet, buy a netbook and save on power and space.
It's time to let go....
Don't Just Go For Total Watts
by Jason83 - 10/10/09 1:59 AM In reply to: Power supplies for PCs: How much power is enough & what brands are best? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Funny, I'm running my old P4 3.0GHz rig on a 450 Watt Enermax Liberty Modular PSU. My rig has 1.5Gb RAM, 3x HDDs, 1x DVD-RW and 1x CD-RW drive, and last but not least the most power hungry part a Radeon HD3850. This PSU has lasted me about 2 years now without problems. Also worth noting is that this PSU worked fine in a dual core setup I tried (same specs as above except Pentium E5300 CPU, 2Gb DDRII and different mobo). Apparently, it also has enough spare Wattage to run a Radeon 4870, although I have not yet tried this.
Power supplies can be misleading in how they are marketed. Cheaper ones boast high wattage, but offer very little of this on the 12V supply, which is the most important. They have most of their Wattage "assigned" to the 3.3V and 5V rails, where it simply isn't needed, leaving a very weak 12V line, that will fail very easily indeed. A cheaper supply is also labelled by its peak Wattage (when it will blow up), instead of its constant wattage (which will not harm it).
The best advice I can give is to invest in a quailty PSU. After all, would you trust a $40 power supply with $1000+ of quality components??
I have been loking at upgrading myself, and I see the Corsair power supplies are highly recommended by many users. They also offer massive warranties of up to 7 years. There is a quick calculator (http://www.corsair.com/psufinder/default.aspx) on their website too, that will estimate your power requirements, and suggest the best 3 PSUs for the job. Unless you are considering SLI or Crossfire, then around 500W should be plenty, otherwise 650 - 750W for multi GPU setups is a safe bet. Antec are also a very good brand, and they have a calculator too (http://www.antec.outervision.com/). Given my experience with this PSU I have got, I would also have no issues in recommending Enermax.
The only real difference between these 3 brands is that Antec and Enermax are taking the multi 12V rail approach with almost all of their PSU, and Corsair are going for a single higher powered rail. The claim is that if you have 2x 20A rails, and only 10A is used on one of them, the remaining 10A power capacity is wasted, as it is unavailable to the second rail, so at maximum load, only 30A out of a possible 40A is being used. Corasir's single rail design means that there is none of this waste, as everything is tied into one very strong rail.
When picking your next PSU, your best bet will be to base it around what you will upgrade too, as the new setup will most likely need more power anyway, especially with newer graphics cards - these are the most power hungry part of the average PC these days!
Power supplies for PC's
by EJ the DJ - 10/10/09 2:16 AM In reply to: Power supplies for PCs: How much power is enough & what brands are best? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Two means to determine your computers load requirement that I can see.
1. If you know the load rating of each of your components add them up and allow at least 25% extra load capacity.
2. Connect an Ampere meter to the computer's power supply cord, deducting the load of the power supply.
If you have sufficient extra capacity and adequate ventilation your P/S should last you a long time with any reputable brand).
EJ
Getting away from the problem
by andyinlondon - 10/10/09 2:34 AM In reply to: Power supplies for PC's by EJ the DJAll good suggestions so far but not quite hitting the problem.
An old P4 system with no high spec gfx card only needs 350-400w max and if it is burning out PSUs regularly then it has a problem.
So the answer is to fix the problem not just fit ever higher rated PSUs. This is Like the fuse blowing so you fit a nail instead, it does not fix the problem.
I have seen this problem several times and almost every time it has been a faulty component, usually the cd/dvd drive or sometimes a failing fan drawing to much power and blowing a rail.
I would look to the optical drive first as the culprit and check that all the fans turn freely before digging deeper, this will most likely fix it.
Andy
Power supply ratings
by pupster40 - 10/10/09 2:58 AM In reply to: Power supplies for PCs: How much power is enough & what brands are best? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Most PSU manufacturers offer a calculator to determine the needs for the system and equipment you will be using, it is a good idea to use this feature.
The best way to be sure you have enough power is to add the individual components power usage in watts (amperes X volts), the spec sheet will give you this info, when you arrive at a figure, add an extra 10% to 15% to the total. This should give you an adequate amount of power and allowance for spikes. When totaling the individual items use the highest number, if a range is given.
When choosing a PSU be sure it has an active power factor feature, and a large enough fan to keep it cool, heat and dust are the worst enemies of a computer. Another thing to look for is it to have a single 12 volt rail, these are usually a better built unit. I personally have found Corsair to be the most reliable.
Buy a well known brand
by busybody - 10/10/09 3:27 AM In reply to: Power supplies for PCs: How much power is enough & what brands are best? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Dont buy those Cheap and generic PSU, they fail or perform badly.
650 and 700 watts thats allot for a single core CPU, i think you bought generic brand PSU that cannot deliver true 650 watts.
My suggestion buy on of the following brands: Thermaltake, Zalman, Corsair.
Good PSU will give you its stated power, not like those generic that have ridiculous data on their stickers.
On some websites of PSU manufactures there are power calculator that can help.
By what you wrote i guess 500 watt PSU from a good company will do the trick, assuming you got an average PC with one hard drive, one or two expansion card and average graphic card.
Power supply troulbe
by BobTec1 - 10/10/09 4:39 AM In reply to: Power supplies for PCs: How much power is enough & what brands are best? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Try using a APC surge protector with automatic voltage regulator. It sounds like you have either high or low voltage in your home
Failing power supplies
by jlrowe - 10/16/09 11:44 PM In reply to: Power supply troulbe by BobTec11st use a surge protector. voltage variances in the home wiring can cause the PS to fail. Especially if your using it in same plug in as say you have the window air conditioner on.
2nd thing i have found is someone using a computer where bugs can get into the PS and short it.
3rd is failing optical drives. Not much common now as when computers had floppies. When they failed it usually caused a short.
A good 480 watt ps will drive anything you throw at it and should last for years.
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