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Should I get a 430 Watt or 550 Watt Beast?

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Solitude

New Member
Joined
Feb 2, 2003
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ny
Hi all. I will be building a long overdue system in the next month and I was wondering if I'd be better off with a 550 watt beast or will a 430 watt do just fine. Either way the PSU will be Enermax. Here are the components:

Barton 3000 in Asus A7N8X deluxe with 2 512MB sticks of Corsair PC3200, 2 IBM HDD's with 180GB each in raid-0 with a Highpoint rocketRAID 404 controller, ATI's future R350 graphics card, sound blaster augidy2, dvd-rom, cd-rw, and in the future i will buy a dvd-rw.

Also I was wondering if the PSU says it supports the K7 (Athlon), does that mean it will also support BARTON?

I don't mind shelling out the extra 50 or 60 for the 550W to ensure stability in this system. Would I be cutting it close by going with the 430watt with all these parts?

-TIA
 
WELCOME TO THE FORUMS!

Personally, I'd go with the 550 considering the chip, board and vid card. However, if you want stability, get an Antec TruPower 480/550 or a high-output Sparkle.

~THT
 
Either the 400W Fortron/Sparkle or the 430 Antec True Power are more than enough. Both are better supplies than Enermax as well. The Fortron 350 is equal to or better than the 431 Enermax.
 
Amem to not buying EnerMax!!, if you have the money I'd buy an Antec 550truepower, though a 400W good PSU will run it fine I prefer the overhead of a 550W PSU for futureproof and overclockability. My 550W Antec t/p does'nt shift a jot on the 5V rail when under 100% CPU load, though the 12V seems abit low @ 11.62V, this could be mobo specific though maybe?...
 
How come so many people dislike enermax? or is antec really that good? hmm?
 
It has to do with the quality and performance of the supplies. Enermax just isn't that great. It's better than no-name crap, but is a lesser quality product than either the excellent Fortron/Sparkle or Antec True Power units. Although not the finite proof in most cases, in this particular instance popular opinion regarding Enermax is a reflection of the reality of the situation. They just aren't that great.

This is not to say that an Enermax supply can't do the job in the majority of cases. But bear in mind that the cases in which the Enermax 431 can do the job so can a Fortron/Sparkle 350. Don't be sucked into the "psuedo knowledge" that is the nominal total wattage rating. For a more thorough discussion of what it means, and what it doesn't, reference this thread:

http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=150384

It discusses brands, ratings, quality, and even touches on exaclty how mistaken people are concerning the actual current draw of a PC and the value of specs as a whole. It is intended to allow people to avoid the trap you have almost fallen into.
 
How come so many people dislike enermax? or is antec really that good? hmm?
Enermax seemed to be the brand that got the most praise until Antec's TruePower PSUs started becoming really popular and also you-know-who released their test report in Oct. 2002 showing that Enermax was good but not fantastic.

I had an old 250W Enermax short both of its high voltage transistors. It also didn't have a thermistor to reduce the power-on surge, and its EMI filter wasn't that fancy.
 
They have a good build quality but that's it, by 'build quality' I mean they look good. they are overpriced is all really that's wrong with them. they have less voltage regulation by far than Antec, there other specs are'nt as good. you can get BETTER for LESS and that's a crime to me :cool: ...
 
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