Guide for Selecting a Power Supply

[Kantucki]

I just recently bought an HP Pavilion,  the a6703w-b desktop bundle.

It came with a 250 watt power supply and on board video which was not conducive to playing Call Of Duty 4.

So I got on the newegg website and bought the  Corsair 550

along with BFG GeForce 9800GTX + 1GB.

Everything fit perfectly (yeah, even that gigantic BFG video card) and it runs Call Of Duty 4 without a sweat at high settings.

[RoyalSerpent]

A basic Earthwatts 380 would be sufficient, but that Corsair is still a very nice PSU.  I prefer to stick with the Corsair 400 or 450 for most of my single GPU builds.  The $ saved is put toward the Radeon 4770.  Very fast card with low heat output.

[RoyalSerpent]

Bought this E5300 CPU/MB combo last weekend at Fry's for $80 (about $53 for CPU).  The CPU is stable @ 4.03GHz overclock with 1.33 load voltage.  Load temperature under Orthos is 48C (76F ambient air temperature), which is significantly lower than the rated specs of 74C at 1.36V max.  The system idles at 48W.  Orthos load voltage is 106W.  These numbers were obtained with a calibrated power meter.

These 5xxx CPUs are great overclockers (3.4GHz min).  Even with a high-powered graphic card, the total load on the PSU should not exceed 250W. 

[Hendrix27]

Ok, if you folks could forgive my blunt question here.  My eyes tend to glaze over with all technical info in regard to power supplies.

Anyway, I have an m9510f, and I'm looking for a 550w power supply.  Any suggestions on something that'll fit?

[Kantucki]

The Corsair 550 will fit. 

[Hendrix27]

Ok, thanks for the recommendation.

[TBone]

Hey guys,

Im going to make this plain and simple.

When it comes to computers im very savvy, when it comes to replacing the PSU, I have no idea what Im doing.

I have an HP Pav a1630n Media Ed with a ATI Radeon x1600 graphics card using dual monitors(not sure if thats relevant or not).  I know that It needs 92watts at idle and 156 at full load, so If my reading was correct.  Then the actual load is (160W*.8) = 128W, then adding the 25% margin (128W*1.25) = 160W.  So I need to use a PSU that has an output of about 160W, correct?  But then the actual load will fall right at the 80% efficiency limit, which will give it less margin to increase the load in small amounts before it will go over 80% and it will just run hotter.

I would appreciate if anyone could correct whatever it is I dont know what im talking about, and if you would like, suggest good PSU's too

Thanks alot.

[RoyalSerpent]

Best PSU is the Antec Earthwatts 380.  Corsair 400CX is also a good buy.  A more powerful PSU will not draw much more current when PC is idling.  Perhaps an extra 3-4 watts.

In theory, a 160W PSU will do the job, but you're not going to find a quality unit with this wattage.

[TBone]

Cool, thanks alot.

Do these both come with the 4-pin on black and yellow cords?

Message Edited by TBone on 06-14-2009 08:41 PM

[RoyalSerpent]

The PSU comes with a 6-pin GPU power plug.  There's also a 20+4 detacheable power plug for the MB.