hi guys,
time has come for a new psu as my cooler master has stopped working
anyway, any advice on which make i should go for, i can only really afford to get a used one as my budget is £30.
hi guys,
time has come for a new psu as my cooler master has stopped working
anyway, any advice on which make i should go for, i can only really afford to get a used one as my budget is £30.
Hmm it's really hard to get a PSU for under £30.
Try to stretch your budget a bit for a Corsair CX400 (£38.41) [Currently out of stock though >_<] or an OCZ StealthXStream 400W (£39.78 with delivery charge)
They're really good as they have nice efficiency, trusted branding and braided wires. The main difference from what I know is that the OCZ is slightly quieter (Corsair is quiet anyway) but the cable braiding doesn't begin from inside the case. The OCZ is slightly higher in efficiency though but has only 4 Sata/Molex as opposed to 6 from Corsair (along with braided wires from inside the case).
I recommend you NOT to go for the cheap Casecom, Arctic Power, Sumvision and other cheap ones as they tend they "stop working" too after a relatively short time.
thanks for the info mate, but like i say im probably going to look for a decent second hand one if i find one cheap, i know its hard finding a good psu for around £30 hence looking for second hand, but just wanted to get an idea of which ones i should look out for
thanks anyway
Well I got a CX400 myself off eBay for £32.99 second hand but it's a pretty rare find.
Well it's really quiet in my opinion but in a review they said it gets slightly loud on higher loads but my CPU fan usually spins up really loud when my pc is doing something intensive so I can't really hear anything else so I can't test it if it actually gets loud on higher loads. Everyone says the OCZ is really silent though so I'm guessing that's more silent than the Corsair. I only bought this 4 days ago so I can't really comment on anything else apart from that it looks good lol. In my opinion the cables are really nice and it came with lots of cable ties. Can't really comment on efficiency myself as I don't have the type of tools to measure it. All I know is that I managed to add another 200mhz overclock on the same voltage as my previous PSU stably. Cable length is no problem either.
I just checked on eBay though and I can't even see one Corsair CX400 or OCZ StealthXStream 400W that's second hand.
Anyway, here's some reviews to compare the two if you ever need to:
Corsair CX400W
OCZ StealthXStream 400W
thanks once again, after searching ebay, i found a HIPERPOWER Type M HPU-4M530
have you heard anything of HIPERPOWER
Well they're a couple of years old now from what I've seen and a review that I found states that it wasn't bad at the time. It only has 2 SATA connectors and seems to be a bit loud according to that review though. It doesn't meet the 80 Plus certification either.
Antec 480w on ebay £29.98 - 100% tested system pull
(please read all description if you decide to buy it, i've only had a quick browse through it)
edit: just seen on ebuyer:
Antec Basiq Power 350W ATX 12V PSU £30.27 on super saver - ebuyer
obv depends on your power requirements,
Last edited by K3V; 04-10-2009 at 04:00 PM.
Btw, vti, what exactly have you got as your pc. Is it a normal ATX board? How many SATA connectors do you need? Do you have a graphics card that needs a 6-pin connector?
Not sure how the warranty system may work for CM though.
well mobo is a socket 939
amd dual core 4400
2gb ram
ati hd 3450 gpu (no extra power socket needed for this)
as a minimum i would want
4 molex
2 sata
24 pin or 20 + 4 pin
1 x 4pin 12v
man this psu business is well funny, i have a 600watt crappy winpower in 1 of the systems, still going strong, and the 650watt cooler master (which hadn't had much use) stopped working, how does that justify going for a good make psu
Haha that really is weird. Wonder how it went out too as your pc doesn't seem like that type that'd kill a 650W.
Well at least now people know what connectors you need.
Thinking back to the warranty issue, I'm pretty sure you'd need a sales receipt or at least proof of purchase e.g. invoice from buying it off a website or something.
I looked at the Silverstone and Akasa 350W ones but they seem to have quite low amps on their 12V rails and therefore only had around 200-300W of usable power. Your system should only draw about 110W at most (peak) though so they're a safe buy. Only problem is that you'd be a bit limited in your choice of upgrades. They both have relatively high effiency with Silverstone slightly higher but with Akasa having cable braiding. The Silverstone also has 300W of usable power as opposed to Akasa's 200W.
Akasa costs £26.44 whilst Silverstone costs £32.14
Here are the reviews for them:
Akasa
Silverstone
it is wierd, i mean i tried the psu in another rig to make sure it wasn't my mobo that had gone, but still the same, no power at all.
it was working fine and then i switched my pc off (not from mains, just the pc) and next morning, it wouldn't turn on, no smell or anything, just stopped working.
anyway, i would want to get a high wattage psu for future upgrades.
but just want to say thanks a lot for your time and help
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