Planned system

[Austin]

I largely agree with TiG. A poor quality PSU as found 'free' on many cases is very optimistic in its claims and I have seen many a component destroyed by a bad PSU. It makes sense to protect and feed your PC well, esp if the kit is worth a fair bit. I wouldn't hesitate in saying a good branded PSU (eg Antec, Enermax) rated at 350W would easily beat a 400W+ PSU made by some unknown 'brand'. I have also heard the P4's are more fussy about their power, esp if you o/c and surely these new 800FSB+ beasts. Obv Globalwin are not some generic brand but I am not sure of how good they actually are, even in a good brand I'd say 320W is cutting it a little fine.

[Dr-Rogg]

Wow, thanks all

Ok, here's what I think I'm going for:

Akasa UV Reactive Transparent Case
DFI Lan Party i875 Motherboard [UV rawks ]
Intel Pentium 4 'Northwood' 2.4CGHz (800FSB) with HT [prolly not going to overclock cos I'm leaving for Japan in a couple of weeks and won't have time to sit down and have a play]
Sapphire ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB [price/perf compromise, unless anyone knows where I can get a 9500...]
LiteOn LTC-48161H 48x48x24x16x CDRW/DVD Combo Drive [already got one in my T-bird sys]
Adata 512MB DDR PC4000 CAS 3
Western Digital Caviar 80GB Special Edition 8MB Cache [relative bargain, and he won't use the extra space]
Enermax EG365AX-VE(G)(FMA) 350W ATX Power Supply

That's the important stuff anyway, just got to get monitor, peripherals and UV cables Oh, need to check the on-board sound as well on the DFI, and get a wireless network card - poor sod has to buy a voucher from his halls for £144 = 12 months or 40 gig download :O

[Axion]

make sure you go for dual channel (2x 256mb ram) as the p4c's love that bandwidth

i would still get a fsp/sparkle 350w ahead of that enermax

[fondie]

the reviews i've seen of Globalwin PSU's are all very good. even overclocked to 3.5Ghz+ that system won't consume 320W. over engineering your system isn't going to do any harm, but there really is no need. the extra £35 needed to go to the next model up (420W) would be better spent on other things, or better yet not spent at all, as he says he is already over budget!

[Austin]

There's a lot more to a PSU than the simple voltage it's rated for. You need a supply on all voltage rails and that supply should be clean and consistent even when stressed. It should also handle heat and airflow well with minimal noise. It should be able to reach its rated maximum and sustain that level for several hours and it should be efficient too at all levels. If a good PSU finds the rails becoming unstable or over-stressed it should have the capacity to shut down. That is the way a good branded PSU is very likely to be tested and quality tested.

A lesser PSU is unlikely to even hit its rated maximum in practice and if it does it is likely to fall out of spec on the rails, most likely providing spikes and surges along the way. Sustaining the rated maximum for even a marginal length of time is suspect. Even on a light system it may have problems providing clean power and is unlikely to cope as well if there is a mains power surge or freak mains spike ... it really can take out a bunch of your PC and it isn't unknown for them to catch fire in extreme cases. Certainly for those PSU's given away with cases there simply isn't the R&D nor profit there for it to fully meet spec and they know many people think all 350W PSUs are equal for example. Not scare mongering and I am not a PSU expert but I do keep an ear to the ground and listen to those in the know.

A CPU alone can account for around 90W and the top end gfx cards often come close to that figure too. When you consider most PSUs have to share their load unequally across the voltage rails it can quickly become stressed or fall out of spec.

Not to say Globalwin aren't a good PSU brand, nor that the 320W one won't do for the purposes stated (and hopefully future purposes too) but IMHO it would be wiser to go for something 350W+ unless your budget is simply too tight.

[fondie]

i'm well aware of the points you mention Austin, i study electrical engineering. it is very tempting to over-engineer and take a better safe than sorry approach, especially when recommending to other people (the guilt factor if it goes wrong!), but i'll stand by saying a quality 320W PSU, like the globalwin, will adequately hande that job.

anyhow, Dr-Rogg, it still looks good, though in your first spec it looked as though you were going for a quiet system (though i maybe completely wrong), and you've kind of dropped that now...?

just seen the round-up of PC4000 on Anandtech and the a-data doesn't come out looking quite as impressive as on some other sites, either they've got poor sticks or others have been getting very good ones, it still reaches 259MHz though, so still a decent speed + top value for money! and as Axion says, make sure you get 2 x 256mb sticks for dual channel.

[Axion]

i heavily o/c'd p4c does need more juice than any sub-400w psu can offer

at stock a good qaulity ~350w will do the job - i agree with that

also not all ram is created equally... within itself even

ive read comprehensive reviwes which tested more 17 different chips, plus loads of personal experiences from various forums PROVE more than anandtech can that the ADATA is top notch... and at just over a £100 for 2x256mb sticks it CANNOT be matched for price...

[fondie]

Originally posted by Axion
also not all ram is created equally... within itself even

ive read comprehensive reviwes which tested more 17 different chips, plus loads of personal experiences from various forums PROVE more than anandtech can that the ADATA is top notch... and at just over a £100 for 2x256mb sticks it CANNOT be matched for price...

i agree, 1 review of a couple of sticks of ram (in which they still performed well) can't compete with forums full of good feedback, the adata is still good money even if all the sticks performed at the speeds anandtech found, not alone with the possibility of almost 300mhz!!

i'm bored of PSU's now so i'll be quiet!

[Axion]

hehe

oh and my "the adata cant go lower than cl2.5 on any fsb" was based on that australian review of 17 sticks... which found that they just arent built for those low latencies...

meaning they really arent the ebst thing for an amd system

[Austin]

Axion AMD systems don't need low latency at all. Outside of pointless synthetic benchmarks the lowest settings are only 1-2% faster at most than the highest settings. If it can run as PC4000 @ CL3 it should easily do PC3200 @ CL2.5 and that is all you need. There's no point forking out serious cash for low latency modules yielding tiny gains in the real world. If gaming is your bag the latency makes even less diff ... unless you game in 640x480!

Of course you can just get Crucial, TwinMOS or Adata PC3200 stuff too! No need for the opver-priced pointless Corsair LL crap.