Good Power Supply?

Z

zeppelinfreak

Geek Trainee
My dads old computer PSU died and he wants to use it so he told me to look up a good PSU for it. I offered him another solution, to buy me a new PSU and I will give him mine. Mine is a stock case PSU and always wanted a "real" one, it is more than enough for his regular computer.

I run a Geforce 7900 GT, 2GB of PC6400 DDR2, and an AMD X2 4200+. In the future I plan to get a Geforce 8800 GT, or whatever is high end but not absurdly expensive at the time. I will probably buy a better Mobo and processor too. To take this into account, I need to find a good PSU that will run this setup fine. My dad is willing to spend $50 on it, and I can also fork some in too. So obviously, I don't plan to get anything super expensive.

One person suggested this PSU: Newegg.com - Antec earthwatts EA430 430W ATX12V v2.0 Power Supply 100 - 240 V UL, CUL, FCC, TUV, CE, CB, C-tick, CCC - Power Supplies

But I also found this one:Newegg.com - RAIDMAX HYBRID 2 RX-530SS 530W ATX12V V2.2/ EPS12V Modular LED Power Supply 100 - 240 V UL, CUL, FCC, TUV, CE, C-tick, CCC, CB - Power Supplies

I actually think the one I found looks pretty good, only problem is I don't know if its trustworthy. Anyone want to offer some logic into the problem or find something good for me?
 
Well, for the money, the Antec Earthwatts 430 is your best bet. However, beyond that, if you want something good in a wattage range above the 450W mark, you simply aren't going to find a power supply that will reliably do what you want for $50.

Going cheap on a PSU is not what you want to do. If you want a higher-end video card, you will need at least 30A on the +12V rail (or if multiple rails, through their combined output), if not more. You're going to be very hard pressed to find a PSU that actually does this for $50 or less, even if you factor in rebates.

Raidmax is iffy. Given the price of $60 without a rebate for a 530W unit, I'd avoid it. If you can find a reputable review of the unit, fine, but I'd expect to pay $80-100 for a quality unit of that wattage range. When I say quality review, I refer to a website that's loading all the rails simutaneously to see if the unit does what the sticker says. Just because it doesn't blow up when you turn it on in no way means it's a good unit.

If you want a suggestion for cheap units, check out some of the Corsair VX models as well as the CoolerMaster RealPower or GreenPower lines. Other good brands: Enermax, OCZ, FSP/Sparkle/Fortron, and Silverstone.

Given your future plans, I'd probably look at something that can deliver 30-40A on the +12V rail (or combination of). A little digging around should pull up some decent units in the sub-$100 range in the 500-550W group.

There's also the Power Supply sticky at the top of this forum as well as linked in my signature.
 
I know the current crop of OCZ PSU's are using FSP designs, so they should be pretty solid, so that's a good choice.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top