Does power supply affect performance?
Right now i've got a cheap 300w power supply running with an Athlon 64 3200 on an MSI KT8 NEO with a Radeon 9800 pro. I don't really seem to have any stability problems but i can't OC my KT8 NEO's FSB over 210.
Would upgrading to a higher wattage/better quality PSU affect my performance at all or just make things more stable overall and maybe allow me to get a better OC out of my motherboard?
Would upgrading to a higher wattage/better quality PSU affect my performance at all or just make things more stable overall and maybe allow me to get a better OC out of my motherboard?
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By the way, I have a 450W psu that says the max load on hte 3.3+5 lines is 180W. I have a 330W psu that lists the max on the 3.3+5 as 190W. Guess what, the 330 is twice as heavy as the 450.
You may not always get what you pay for, but you never get more than you pay for.
Man, I hate to disagree with you but that's just not true, the FSP brand of PSU's (Fortron Source, PowerMan and Sparkle) are all very stout very hefty power supplies that offer excellent bang for the buck by offering PSU's that are every bit as good as the ones offered by Antec and Enermax and Vantec at a lot better price for the same wattage ratings.
Now yeah, a $20 500W PSU isn't going to be worth much but just because a PSU is $10 cheaper than a big name PSU doesn't mean it's not as good either, they just might not spend $20,000 a month on advertising like the big boys and therefore are able to charge a bit less thanks to lower overhead.
Even the lowest 250Watts power supply can cope if there is only a single hard drive.. and it will probably be more stable than a 550W...
Btw I have a 431W Ethermax in order to support 3cd/dvd drives, 3 hard drives and 3 pci cards...
It all depends on how far you want to go..
You will find much better overclocking abilities with an nForce 3 250gb board that has working locks
In answer to your other question, yes a power supply to a degree will affect performance. But not quite the way you think. It will affect if your computer stays stable or not (overclocked or not)
ATi cards especially high-end models (in this case 9800 pro) require a lot of power. Hence the more W you have the better, taking into consideration you buy a reliable PSU. Also a good comparison (as stated before) to which PSU's are good is weight. the heavier the better. Sorry for double response
There is no standard rating system for power supply wattages, which is why you get "550w" power supplies for $20. I bought a $20 RealPC Power "550w" PSU from SVC to use as a bench power supply. I never expected it to be a 550w unit, but I figured it would handle being used as a 300w PS just fine.
However, I decided to test it before I entrusted it to my dual athlon system or anything like that. So, I hooked up a bunch of peltier elements, fans, and old 10,000rpm scsi drives to it. I had it up to about 300w when it died. It lasted 8s at 300w, and the +12v rail dipped to 11.3v. So why is it rated for 550w? Well, I went to their website, and it turns out that it's rated to handle 550w with a component temperature of 25*C for 17ms.
What that means is if you stuck your power supply in the freezer (because 25*C was the temperature of the components in the power supply itself, not the air temperature), it would put out 550w for 17/1000 of 1 second before it died.
Compare that to say, a PC Power & Cooling 510w PS, which will put out 510w continuously at its normal operating temperature. That's why the PC Power & Cooling unit is a $150-200 power supply.
And while that generic 550w may power your system quite happily, since even a loaded single cpu system is not likely to draw more than 200-250w under absolute maximum load, it's still not necessarily a good idea to run it that way. I was lucky that the power supply didn't take any of my drives with it when it died, but they can and do. A dying power supply can take EVERYTHING in a system with it- motherboard, cpu, memory, video card, all your pci cards, all of your drives- the whole thing. And that's why I INSIST on using only reputable brands such as Antec, PC Power & Cooling, Fortron Source (FSP) etc.- is it really worth saving $50 on a power supply when you're risking having it take $1000 worth of other hardware to the grave with it when it dies?
You get, largely, what you pay for. There is no free lunch. Drawing big current requires quality components.
Originally posted by ipnobatis:
Sorry mate, but that's tosh. A true 550W PSU will be just as stable as a quality 250W PSU, in fact more so under peak loads. Basic ohm's law, really.
The issue is, how true is the manufacturer's rating? Kinda like quoted watts from an audio amplifier really, figures stated are open to abuse.