What PSU's do you use?

[eUphoria]

Hi guys! Im trying to work out what people have had success with, im looking for a powerful, stable and quiet PSU that'll power my system happily (A64, 2hdds, optical, 9800p and most importantly from psu side of things - an 80watt pelt) I want it to be stable for overclocking and if possible to be braided so i dont have to do it myself!

Cheers!

[Stewart]

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=34128

PSU Section.

Antec, Enermax, OCZ, Tagan, PC Power and Cooling.

[CrapshoT]

I'm using a Antec True Blue 480 psu and its Ace.Been using it problem free for 6 months now.Takes everything i throw at it.Solid rails and if you have a window in your case it looks "pretty".

[eUphoria]

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=34128

PSU Section.

Antec, Enermax, OCZ, Tagan, PC Power and Cooling.

Thanks vaul - will go and have a read! Would still be interested to see what other forum regulars have to say about their PSU's though if anyone wants to post???

Especially if they've tried running small pelts off them...

[malfunction]

Over the past couple of years at home and at work I've had experience with cheapo PSUs and I would also say don't touch them with a ten foot pole. They are more likely to die and when the do die they are much more likely to take the rest of the PC with them.

There are many theories around that varous PSUs of differing brands come from the same manufacturer so you might be able to save cash by doing research up front (will find links and edit in a mo)

I've personally had:

An Antec PSU (330W IIRC) and it was good... Had it for a couple of years but found that the voltage rails weren't stable enough for me when I was torturing (overclocking) everything in my PC.

A 450W CWT PSU which had much more stable rails (nothing wrong with the antec - I just needed a higher wattage PSU IMO). The CWT died though - but I think this was a one off or the either dodgy electrics in my area - which brings up the point of considering a surge protector or full blown UPS if you can afford it. The ONLY thing that died was the PSU. Nothing else in my PC suffered any damage at all. Upon opening up the PSU one of the caps had leaked slightly - I have no idea if this was due to dodgy electrics or a dodgy capacitor though someone else around here may know. I don't think it was a problem with that line of PSUs as my brother also has one (and he has an almost identical rig to me) and there are 8 of them in PCs I've built at work which have been running 24/7 for over a year now.

I now have a 400W FSP power supply that was bought on the basis of bang for buck - a good PSU from a good manufacturer at a good price. I also strongly considered another CWT but they were out of stock at the time and the FSP unit I bought also has a 12cm fan in it so (in theory at least) has the potential to run quieter / cooler. I also considered a Thermaltake PSU but for my 2p I think almost everything they make looks cheap - even though the PSUs are meant to be good - and I haven't quite mentally shacken off thermaltakes older dodgy product period (which seems to be very much over - even if they are still producing stuff that is OTT / bling bling it's meant to be all made well now)

[jimborae]

Antec are very good, I use a TruePower 480w for my overclocked Amd64 gaming rig. It powers 2 Seagate 15k rpm Cheatahs, two 160g Maxtors, 1 DVD RW, a 6800 & obviously supplies enough juice to O/C the chip. It provides very stable rails & i believe it has adjustable pots to.

I also use a thermaltake Silent Power Butterfly in my other rig & thats looks nice and all cables are sleeved (unlike the Antec). Its also a very stable psu.

I've used Qtec in the past, dont touch them with a barge pole. Cheap, lightweight, crap components & likely to damage your pc if it goes wrong, which it is also likely to do.

I've also used 360w Enemax's in the past & two of them had problems with stable power on the 12v rail.

Finally I put a 350w FSP (Fortron Source Power) in a PC I built for a friend. It was cheap, silent, well built & supplied very stable power rails. I'd definitely recommend one for a machine built to a budget. Komplett has them for £29 atm.

Hope that helps.

[malfunction]

Also - one suggestion for running a pelt is to run it off a separate PSU. The Coolermaster Stacker case can house 2 PSUs so you could run your pelt off one and the rest off the other and you could get 2 cheaper PSUs that would more than happily power your system. The other suggestion of course is that if you're thinking of moving on from simple air cooling have you just tried water cooling first instead? (Or phase change if you've got the cash!)

[eUphoria]

Thanks guys! Ive got a hec 450 watt thing at the moment - but im not convinced its the best tbh I used this psu when i tried the rig in a vapo xe, but only managed to get an extra 450mhz out of it - so left me thinking its either the psu or the mobo thats the weak point. So i will be overclocking the cpu as much as possible (going to be moving to the dfi 250gb platform). Ive got good water at the moment (thermochill 120.3 mounted in a lian li pc75) so there is hopefully enough to cope with the extra heat from the pelt. Icant fit another atx psu in because the rad overhangs too much, i could fit a meanwell psu just for the pelt, but atm im experimenting with the pelt and dont want to commit to buying a v expensive psu just for that, so im looking at a high wattage stable atx psu (maybe the 480 tagan?) to do this for me.

[malfunction]

If you're only experimenting with the pelt then get something cheap and leave it out of the case while you're testing it?

[mike_w]

I've got a Tagan 480W, runs everything fine and has future compatability for PCI Express and BTX, as well as lots of other nice things like separate VGA molexes and bands to keep the cables tidy.

[DeludedGuy]

450w Cwt

[dawson]

Enermax 465watt PSU here. Done me well for the past 18 months, currently running my overclocked A64 box nicely.

[Platinum]

560 watt Thermaltake, seems to do the job

[StormPC]

I've had luck with Enermax in the past, but I've had a couple of bad ones recently so I now use the highend Antecs or PC Power & Cooling.

[GAteKeeper]

Antec Truepower 430W powering 5 HDDs 2DVDs and a overclocked XP-M.

I had an enermax 330W for a while which was ok (still going strong) but the rails were a tad low for my tastes.

GAteKeeper

[johnnr892]

Antec true power 330W,done me proad so far, superb PSU