PCA Forums

Any suggestions on a well rated, quiet power supply. Preferably 500 watts?

I like the Enermax NoiseTaker series lately.

I'll go with FP, I only got the 370W model but it has been running good and stable for the past year.
Powering P4, 2 optical drives, Floppy, Multimedia reader, ATI 9200 Video card, 5 80mm fans with lights
etc.

I have a zallman in my rig. its running a 3200 64 and a x800xl with no problems. Hell its not even a 24 (or is it 26) pin supply but its running this rig with the 2 (or 4) pins missing from the main atx connector.

What are you running that you need a 500W ps?? There is a big-time misnomer out there that bigger PS == better PS. 90% of the systems out there today don't need more than 350W, with 95% probably not needing more than 300W. The important thing is getting a *quality* ps that outputs stable currents.

Just as a refernce, I'm running an Athlon XP, 1.3Gb of RAM, GeForce 6800, CD burner and 3x HDDs on 300W PS at home and have never had an issue.

90% of the systems out there today don't need more than 350W, with 95% probably not needing more than 300W. The important thing is getting a *quality* ps that outputs stable currents.

this makes me wonder another p.s. question .
how long is a power supply life cycle .
i know its always better to buy a name brand power supply . but how long should you exspect it keep working .
lets say in a perfect world and its dust bunny free .and there are no power surges/spikes !

life cycle varies, but they are measured kind of like light bulbs, in the specs or on the box. ex. antec true blue 480 reads MTBF: 80,000 hrs.

I'm using the Noisetaker 435 which is more than adequate unless you have a LOT of drives or SLI. The 485 is all you could ever need.

i just got a SLI board with a 7800 card, and a 4400+ processor. Thought I might need 500W for down the road.

Still think the 485 would suffice. Just look at the 12 volt rails on that thing - it's no slouch.

They also make a very pricey NoiseTaker that's over 500 watts though.

i have the 600w noisetaker, btw theve renamed them to the allin1( told me when i opened the box, well the 5** version and the 600w), i have the 600w version runing steady with, 1 SATA drive, 1 IDE, and a 7800GTX, with the 4400 X2. really steady rails on these things i am impressed..

a Power supply will last a long time. Thier life is only cut short by modding and bad caps. The only PSU i have had die on me i opened and modded. I still remember the big red glow of a PSU that died, I moved it to the front lower part of my case becuase it coverd the CPU in the back it was the kind thats on a 90* angle

I had a p0wer supply take a crap on me and bought a thermaltake 420 and saw an immediate difference in gamming. I play bf2 a lot and run two 6600gt's clocked at 588mhz core so when my 500w Aspire took a dump and I bought a thermaltake..................................E-brake! I had to turn all my settings down in the vid options and disable all the onboard features that I dont use. Luckily I found a loose solder joint in the supply and fixed it. All went well after that. My oppinion is if your running a 7800gtx and plan on running SLI in the future, dont get anything below 500w. Im also running an array and overclocked a 1.8ghz proc to 2.45ghz so that might have something to do with it. Just my oppinion though.