Osama Javaid asks:
I want to purchase a power supply for my PC. The current power supply in my PC is some cheap local made power supply and I think the 650W written on it is false because I only purchased it for $16, while a 500W power supply on newegg.com is around $50.
I have these specs :
Intel Core i3-2100 GHz
4GB DDR3 RAM
2 GB DDR3 nVidia GT430
DVD+RW Optical Drive
Western Digital 250GB Hard Drive
What would be the required wattage/voltage for these specs and the best brand to go for?
Browser: Firefox 10.0.2
System: Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 32-bit
Tagged: best hardware, compare hardware, power supply
System: Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 32-bit
Tagged: best hardware, compare hardware, power supply
3 Answers -
Mike
March 14, 2012Well, you can indeed get a 650W power supply for $15-20. To give you one example here is a Alpine 700W PSU for roughly $20.
The basic reason why known brands are more expensive are
- the branding
- higher quality electronics (higher reliability)
- higher efficiency (less power ergo money wasted in heat)
- better support and guarantee handling
Having that said the important information missing is the graphics solutions or graphics card of your system because a dedicated GPU often accounts for 60% or more of the total power consumption.
Assuming some high-end GPU with ~300W I would say any 500W or more power supply will do perfectly fine for your components. Corsair, Cooler Master, be quiet!, Seasonic, Silverstone, Tagan, Thermaltake… make your pick.
What you really should focus on are the connectors required taking future upgrades into account:
- SATA connectors for hard disk(s) and optical drive
- 4-pin (often called “IDE”) for cooling fans and misc.
- PCIe 6-pin, PCIe 6+2-pin or PCIe 8-pin for graphics card(s)
- proper ATX, ATX12V and/or EPS12V for the motherboard
Also for clean cabling you might want to get one with modular cables.
80 PLUS Bronze or better certification should be standard today.
Thanks for the info
March 14, 2012Anonymous
March 14, 2012well perhaps 650W will yield only 75% and neweg 500W will yield perhaps 90%, also depends on material used, so you have to see the real yield of power supply.
if you use pc for hard gaming… then 650W with 90% of yield is quite enough.
how can i check the actual yield ?
March 14, 2012Don’t know how to calculate the real one i think it depends on the manufacturere and physicam measurement.
A certified power supply “80 Plus” is a guarantee of good performance: it corresponds to the power supplies can exceed 80% efficiency over a load range from 20 to 100% of their maximum power. Logos 80 Plus Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum, for power capable of achieving better.
a PC with a Core i5 661 and a HD 5770 consumes about 80W at idle and 220W at full load.
A PC with a Core i5 2500 and GTX 560 Ti graphics card consumes about 300W, and a PC consists of a Core i7 3960X and a GTX 580 or HD 7970 does not exceed 500W
In general, a real power of 400W is enough for any entry level PC, a 500/550W enough for a midrange PC, and a 650W sufficient for a high-end PC without SLI or CrossFireX.
eXtreme Power Supply Calculator Lite
March 14, 2012http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
In general I agree it’s better to keep the utilization low because it will result in less heat and “longer” lifetime. But then again, efficiency is usually higher at 70-90% power consumption.
Also one of my systems hanging on a power meter (Core i7 860, GTX570) draws around 320W at full load hence a 500W would be perfectly fine for the initial components listed including a decent graphics card.
March 14, 2012Smayonak
March 15, 2012According to your specs (and in the PSU calculator), your suggested wattage pull is something like 250 watts, unless I added it up incorrectly.
However, everyone likes going big with PSUs for various reasons nowadays (in case you go with multiple GPUs ala CrossfireX or SLI). You may want to look at these power supplies:
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/1176920/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FatwalletHotDeals+%28Fatwallet.com+Hot+Deals%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/290538