Hi. I'm planning to upgrade my PSU to cope with a mid range radeon x1950 graphics card, and I may double up and use crossfire as well. I am considering either Seasonic S12 500w or ANTEC Truepower 550w, or FSP Bluestorm 500w, or Corsair HX 520w My motherboard is an (MSI) AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+, with 1gb RAM. Being new to upgrading PSUs I have 2 questions. 1. Will any of these PSUs work OK in my system? Do I have to worry about compatability issues with the mother board or graphics card? 2. Any views on the best value for money at around 500w? Many thanks.
All those units should work fine, though I'd probably lean toward the Corsair out of them all, given how slick of product they are.
I could be incorrect, but isn't the preferred psu for the mid range vids card now a days at 450-500w? This doesn't leave much room for expansion, especially a crossfire upgrade. The thing you want to be careful is the 12v rails. if you've got 30amps over the 12v rails you should be fine. I've never personally had an Antec psu, but have heard alot of good things about them. Just don't get fooled into picking a psu for just eyecandy or even a modular design. Modulars are VERY nice, but in the end you still end up with alot of cables in that case to hide. Check reviews, make sure that they are putting out clean stable outputs. I have a couple friends who went with an OCZ 700 w PSU that looks like it should be able to handle just about anything. Newegg.com - OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI ATX12V 700W Power Supply 100 - 240 V - Retail You just couldn't beat the 72amps over the 12v rail. Very nice psu.
The current OCZ units are based off the Fortron Epsilon units, so that's why they're quite solid. I'm not sure about the Seasonic off hand, but the other three feature dual 18A +12V rails, which combined run into the 30A territory.
Ya the Seasonic runs at dual 17s. Either of those PSUs would work fine as long as you dont plan on upgrading to power hogging video cards in the future. I'm not sure about the power consumption of a crossfire setup but I would really overshoot the psu if you plan on runnin a dual pci-e card setup, especially something that is mid-high range.
