nicknomo said:
No offense deception, but I can tell you have done a lot of reading.. and very little trying out. Furthermore, I don't think I am contradicting any knoweledgable person, nor anyone on this thread right now... other than yourself.
The fact is, you don't need a ton of wattage for every single machine. I've put 430 and 480 antecs on newer P4's... and guess what.. it runs fine for the people I build them for. I've had very few problems. Granted, the people I build them for run at stock, but sometimes with 2 opticals and 2 hard drive, with mid to high end gfx cards. I would never reccommend or use it, but they occasionally run fine on those cheap *** 420 watters from raidmax. Using a quality p.s.u, they run just fine. Do you think Dell, or these other builders put a 140$ p.s.u in these machines? Yeah, right. 50$ tops.
Not everything needs 500+ watts. Its nice.. but not required, and it will run fine with less...
Actually, nicknomo, you have it all wrong.
Sure, I do plenty of reading, but I also do a plethora of testing and building, too. And it is also rather erroneous for you to assume that my only experience is based on the Athlon XP system in my signature. Contrary to your belief, I have learned through
first-hand experience that a strong power supply makes a difference across
all platforms. In many cases, a medicore unit is fine for just that: mediocre performance. But if you want a heavily clocked processor with a power-hungry graphics card and bells and whistles
and be stable 24/7, you're going to need a good unit. Period.
And for the record, I never recall actually saying that hightechjb1 needed a 500W unit for his setup. This is due to the fact that he is running a single 6600GT which does not chew up much power. However, my problem with your argument was this: you assumed that, a 500W unit was not necessary simply based on his intial testing, which he admitted did not last for more than several hours. This is wrong. On the flip side, it would also be wrong for me to assume that he needs a 500W+ unit based soley on a few tests. My point was that absolutely nothing can be assumed when booting a system for a few tests in a matter of hours. Rather, it's going to require a bit more practical usage to determine the power needs of his (or anyone else's) system. So while a 350W (20-pin or not) is good for a few benches, it's not sufficient for 24/7 usage over a long period of time.
The most important power issue with the DFI motherboards is the use of a native 24-pin power supply, as they provide a much more even distribution of flow to the entire circuitry of the board. I hate to break it to you, but I highly doubt that you'll find a 350W unit to support this feature.
running a pentium 2 on a 440BX motherboard... OCZ 520!
Also, let's try to keep the purile comments to a minimum here. Perhaps you find it humorous, but I'm sure that such extemporaneous comments make you look more foolish than anything. I don't mind a discussion or argument, but I'd rather hold one with those of an adult mind.
deception``