How Much PSU power do you need?

P

Phil Durkin

Guest
Just bought componants for a PC which are

AS Rock K7VM4 Mother board (built in LAN)
AMD Athlon 2800 XP
Seagate Barracuda 120Gb Hard Drive 7200 rpm
Radeon 9200se (fanless)
Asus CD-RW Drive


I am wondering what wattage the PSU will need to be?
Is there a magic formula or is it suck it and see?

I will put a DVD Rom in and later another 120GB hard drive and that will be it.

The PSU will have to be VERY quite, as they do tend to hack you off when they whine away so it will be a Silenx either 300W or 400W. From the research i have done on the net they are the quitest or are there any other worth considering?

Any advice would be greatly recieved.
Cheers Phil
 
You'll want nearer 400W than 300W .. I use QuietPC PSUs and I wish they were a bit quieter, I've not heard of Silenx before.
 
Phil,

I'm using a 400W Silenx, and have a few more bits and pieces in PC than you, and it copes with no problems. Best of all it is silent - I've a single 120mm case fan running at 7.5v and it makes more noise that the PSU, but neither are audible unless I stick my head behind the PC.

I've tried QuietPC PSUs in the past - they're pretty good when you first power up, but tend to get louder as they heat up. The Silenx doesn't. Trouble is that the damn things so quiet all I can hear now is the buzzing backlight on my LCD monitor :suicide:
 
Thanks for the replies lads. cwick, I have ordered the SilenX 400 this morning, should be here Thursday/Friday, I did'nt want to spend a ton just for a PSU but with a free case fan thrown in it isnt too bad. I know anything that made too much noise would have been in my opinion a waste of money so if it lives up to its write ups etc then it will be money well spent. I will let you know my opinion when its fitted. Thanks again..phil
 
my pc is running fine on a 350w enermax. TBH though id go for 400w if you could afford it:)
 
............Silence is bliss!! I have now fitted the silenx 400 after 3 calls to the UK supplier who sadly failed to deliver the next day , its been in for a week now and boy is it quite! I would recommend this to anyone seeking a quite PSU, it also came with a free 120mm case fan which has a built in thermister which is equally as quite but this offer has finished now. thanks for all reply's.......phil
 
This silenx 400 sounds like just what I need... Where did you get yours from Phil?
 
Timh

I bought it from www.soadvanced.com you can buy over the net or mail order. It cost just under a Ton delivered. If you buy one it would be interesting to hear your comments.....Phil
 
I'm running a DVD burner, DVD rom, 120gig Seagate drive, 40gig Maxtor drive, and another 120gig Seagate drive via an ide card from a standard 300w PSU. I'm going to add another drive tomorrow, but I've had no problems at all so far. What do you think will happen if the next drive is too much for it?

BTW - I mad my HTPC PSU quiet by replacing the 80mm fan inside it with a 20db Papst one. It's a lot quieter and can't be heard from being seated 4ft away (it dropped over 5db when measured from 0.5 mtrs). It's a cheap mod and it seems to work OK as it's been running like that for around 3 years now.

Gary.
 
It's not just the wattage it's the quality of the power that counts.

Gary, you'll prolly see it start getting unstable and crashing when under heavy load, if this starts happening, it's PSU upgrade time :)

Dave
 
The power rating is not the important thing these days, it is the amount of current the PSU can supply on the 12V rail. Older processors used 5V and 3.3V so the power supplies were optimised for large capacity on those rails. Newer processors take the bulk of their requirements from the 12V rail so a lot of older power supplies are not up to the job as they weren't designed with this in mind.

I can't remember the figures but my 300W Seasonic PSU is fine for my "medium loaded" Athlon 2800+ system because it's got the output capacity where it needs it, on the 12V rail.
 
thats fine, except that his board doesnt take the power for the cpu from the 12v rail as far as i can see. There are very few Socket A AMD board that do (my NF7-S being one of them) so that completely throws your theory out the window;)
 

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