PSU recommendations

I am looking for a PSU around the £60 mark. It will be needed to power a 3.2 P4, Abit AI7 motherboard, ATI 9800xt, 512mb Kingston PC3700 memory, 120gb hard drive, DVD writer, DVD drive and 5 case fans.

Here is a few I have been looking at:

Antec SmartPower 450W PSU
Thermaltake 480W ATX PSU Xaser Silent Edition
Thermaltake Purepower 480w Butterfly Black Power Supply
TAGAN 480w
Vantec Stealth Aluminium PSU 520W
460W Akasa AK-P460FG-BL Power

I have recently put the above rig together and I am using a Q-tec 400w PSU. It has served me well with previous PC, but after reading a number of forums I no longer want to take risk of it damaging my new set up. Quietness of PSU is essential.

Thanks in advance for your advice and comments.

I recommend the one of the regular favourites CWT 450watt from scan.....well priced, and a rebranded Antec so good quality.

Other than that Tagan 480watt is a favourite currently as well.

The Tagan is better than the 450w CWT/Meridien (personal experience, got both).

The 550w CWT/Meridian would be worth considering as it has seperate rails unlike the 450w.

lol, I saw the thread title and immediately thought that CWT would be the first suggestion!

If you only have 1 HDD and 2 optical drives, I wouldn't have thought your power requirements were too high, unless you were future-proofing.

I personally, with a similar setup, though AMD, am considering one of these:

http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_1754.html

Only 350W, but uber quiet and quite stable, my housemate has one which runs his system fine, which is a similar spec to yours (AMD XP 3200, 9800pro, DVD writer etc)

Anyone is free to say if they think this is a bad idea though. :)

Do look at Enermax PSUs. They seem to have gone out of fashion with the enthusiast community at large, but they are still solidly built, quality PSUs.

I must say I like the Tagan PSUs... I'd go for a 480W if I had to choose.

Enermax isn't a bad idea ether, but they generally make more noise and might have a higher price. I use an Enermax to power my Vapo system, they give lots of juice for bigger systems :)

Either go for a Tagan or CWT/Meridien.
I've used both, the Tagan is better quality - but the CWT/Meridien is still very good. :)

I'm not a fan of enermax, their 350 watt psu's suck. Went through 2 of them in a year and then got an antec. Antec 550W psu retails for about 95 united states dollars on newegg.com, but they don't ship international.

Get the Tagan, it's awesome.

Agreed, The Tagan is awesome. Dead solid on all rails

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Merlin

Do look at Enermax PSUs. They seem to have gone out of fashion with the enthusiast community at large, but they are still solidly built, quality PSUs.

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Yay, I still swear by my 420W Enermax, had it a few years now going 24/7, quality! Also hav a Tagan, good PSU but gets a bit warm.

Tagan easy choice!!

Keeping 11.98v and 5.05v on my system (full load)powering a 12v WC pump, UV cathodes, 6 120mm Fans, 3 80mm Fans, Items in sig and an MO display!

Not bad I think you'll agree :D

I had a similar decision to make recenty and went for the 460W Akasa AK-P460FG-BL PaxPower. Glad I did - what a piece of kit! Built quality is excellent and the black annodised finish is superb. It has easy release molex connectors, SATA power connectors, and the ATX line is nylon braided in black. The 12cm Blue LED fan is VERY quiet and so far all my rails are holding nicely. Highly recommended.

madmaca.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BUFF

The Tagan is better than the 450w CWT/Meridien (personal experience, got both).

The 550w CWT/Meridian would be worth considering as it has seperate rails unlike the 450w.

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Which one out of these is the quietest?

Looking at the 550w CWT or Tagan myself. :)

Ta

The Tagan is extremely quiet. My opinion is slightly uninformed though as my last PSU was a QTEC :rant:

The Akasa PSU that I have and recommended above is rated at 18dba :eek:

madmaca.

I am using an Antec Trueblue 480W. Good PSU, although slightly above budget.

It seems the Tagan is the one to go for. I have read a number of reviews and visited a number of forums and I have not found one bad word said about it.

It's now on order. Goodbye Q-tec.

Thanks for advice. Very much appreciated.

Made a good choice mate, the Tagans are a solid piece of kit for sure.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GreenPiggy

The Tagan is extremely quiet. My opinion is slightly uninformed though as my last PSU was a QTEC :rant:

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Iranu, I agree with Green Piggy, I've got an Aero 7 blower on 7V on a SLK-947U, various other fans on 5 or 7 V and the Tagan TG480U01 PSU. The loudest thing in my rig is the Aero 7, which is for all practicality, silent. If I were you, I'd go for the Tagan anyway, the rails are rock steady +/- 0.02V on the 12V rail, exactly 5 or slightly above on the 5V, and the PSU is unbelievably quiet.

Bought the Tagan 480w

Very happy with it. BTX forwards compatible, 2 sata connectors, dedicated 4 pin gfx card power, loads of connectors. Rock steady and very quiet. Won't need another for aslong as I can see.

Bought 120mm and 80mm stealth fans at the same time and now I need to buy a quieter cpu cooler cos that is the loudest thing in the system now. :)

http://www.thecoolingshop.com/produc...roducts_id/648
;)

iranu - since the BTX standard hasn't even been set yet, I believe it's quite hard to tell if any current PSUs are compatible with it or not... But I surely hope the power from a good 480W PSU is enought for BTX... Intel has gone too far anyways :)

I thought I read that it did support BTX. Somewhere. :inquisiti

here's the hexus review link.

http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews...lld19JRD02OTQ=

btx? :devilish:

If there is a change in mobo power socket for BTX then hopefully Tagan will bring out an adapter similar to the one they use at the mo for converting 24 pin to 20 pin ATX.

Isn't the 24 pin connection going to be the same as the BTX connector?

Well - I just spent a ten minutes finding and perusing the specs. Looks like the 24pin EPS connector is the same as the BTX connector.

A convertor from 20->24 pin is possible - but you'd have to find another 3.3V line from somewhere - probably the ATX AUX connector which is rarerly used.

I'd choose the CWT 550 watt as well ( although its named as 3XS meridian now ).

Ever since I've got this PSU I've been able to clock my system more and it is very quiet indeed ( pity that can't be said for my aero blowers in the side panel of the case )

Abits uGuru shows my lines and voltages are stable as hell - no peaks or troughs ... no nothing which is what you really want from a PSU, and it has some nice cable length so you can hide the excess in the extremeties of the case :)

hehe i sit here with my globalwin silent psu secretly thinking how gr8 it is.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Merlin

Do look at Enermax PSUs. They seem to have gone out of fashion with the enthusiast community at large, but they are still solidly built, quality PSUs.

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I really like the look of the new enermax's with split 12V rails for CPU and everything else IIRC ... and with full aluminium casing (looked good) - sounded good on paper anyway ... can't seem to find them available in UK tho last time I looked (couple of weeks back) as I might just have been tempted.

I doubt these will be cheap tho - very surprised if they will be sub £100 inc.

hi, can i just ask how good is the Antec TruePower 430Watt Dual Fan PSU and also is it quite or noisy?
thanks
oh whats a good 2nd hand price?