There have been so many "Blah Blah Blah 550W PSU-What do you think?" discussions in this forum I've put
this chart from Tom's into my favorites folder just so I don't have to look it up every time I need it.
This is a great reference for how much power each component in your computer will consume, and a great example of just how much stuff you'd have to cram into your case to tax even a 400W PSU.
Look at everything on that chart. With four hard drives, two optical drives, a loaded motherboard, Ti4600 video card, and a full compliment of PCI cards and AGP/Firewire devices, the total draw is 355 watts when everything is running. What are you going to drop in your rig to take that to 500W? Another four hard drives? Fifty fans? A pair of 60 watt light bulbs?
Juliendogg, with all respect, I always though the point of rolling your own was to do it smarter and better. Big is easy. Anyone who's caught a few episodes of Sesame Street can point to the big numbers. Big qualifies you to sell HP's at Best Buy and answer the phone at Dell. It doesn't mean you know jack about computers.
I know Larva is old enough to remember that back in the day a 300W PSU was usually called a "server power supply" because that was the only place they were used. The only time you saw anything bigger than that (for years the biggest I ever saw was a 400W) was on a dual-proc server or workstation rig. And as Larva notes, that was when drives and CPU's consumed substantially more power than today.
So to see someone with a classic desktop PC configuration (single CPU, one or two hard drives) declare they "need" a 500W power supply-its a joke. Its the PC equivilant of the guys who slap a huge wing on the back of their stock Civic.
BHD