[violineb]

I know everyone hates when someone asks if a particular PSU will work but I have that question in conjunction with a few others.

Firstly I'd like to know if my assumption is correct that just about any power supply should power this rig:

Athlon 1000mhz
Asus A266A
CD drive
10gb hdd
Voodoo 5500 pci

That said; can I just get the cheapest $10-20 psu I can find or would that be making a mistake? That brings me to my other question. If Amps are what's important then would buying a PSU such as this one> http://svc.com/55repcposibl.html be a much better idea than getting say a $30 psu with 15 amps on the 12 volt? like this one

It's just somewhat confusing if you know what I mean. In other words if you get a psu with a lot of amps then can you be sure that the rails will be stable under load? And another thing. Does a 400 watt psu use 400 watts or just *suppossedly* put out 400 watts. Meaning if I'm getting this PSU for a pc that's meant to be cheap then would spending $10 on a cheap 400 watt instead of $20 on a 200-300 watt mean that I'd be wasting electricity?

Thanks,
Violineb

[Shroomr]

First off the rig in your specs will use nowhere near 15A

also a 250w psu will be plenty for what you have and 10A will also for the +12

Amps on the PSU have nothing to do with how stable the rails are. The parts that make up the PSU (caps,transformer ect..) will determain how stable the rails are. Also what you see in (mbm5,speedfan or other software) is not what usually is going on in the PSU. you are seeing what the mobo is doing to the rails. for a true reading of the rails you need to take direct readings at idle and load with a quality Multi meter. and then use those to determain if the PSU is good or the mobo is just bad.

If it turns out to be the mobo there are some things you can do to stabelize the voltages. Heat sinks and good air flow on the mosfets will really help a unstable vcore

and for the last part your power usage will be determained buy the PC's power draw mroe than the PSU's wattage rating

hope this helps ya out man

[fhanderson]

No, high amps don't necessarily mean stable voltage. It would be better to get a good rock solid 300W than a crappy high wattage powersupply. For your system look at Fortron or Sparkle 300W. I'm running an AMD XP1700Dutc at 2.0G in a folding rig using a Fortron 235W, but it has minimal hardware.

[violineb]

Thanks for all the info now I know why I go to these forums, to get smarter (or waste time

That just leaves me dangling between the Fortron and the Sparkle. Sparkle 250 watt with 17 amps or Fortron 300 watt with 15 amps? Difference is $1; the sparkle costing more.

Fortron

Sparkle

Thanks again both of you

[Shroomr]

out of the two the Fortron gets my vote

[violineb]

Ok order has been placed for the 300 watt Fortron, seeing as there aren't any buyer reviews on newegg for it I suppose I'll have to write one. As much as I hate dells I think the 250 watt psu they stuck in there must be some sort of monster, it's powering a p4 3.06 ghz, 120 and 160 gb hdds, DVD RW and CD RW, and......9700np and Voodoo 5500 pci, and lastly the soundblaster live. Eh, or maybe all 250 watt psus can do that

Can't wait to try this 1000mhz Thunderbird, just cleaned the core today and the writing says, AMD Athlon, A1000AMT3C, AXIA 0114DPAW, 94939370274, (c) 1999 AMD. Wonder how it will run

[larrymoencurly]

If your mobo is this one: http://www.ocworkbench.com/hardware/...ge004_copy.jpg , then don't worry about the +12V amp rating because I don't see a 4-pin connector to indicate that it runs the CPU off the +12V rail. I'd get the 300W Fortorn/Hi-Q PSU because it should have a higher +3.3V & +5V combined power rating, which is more important for a mobo that runs the CPU from the +5V rail, as I think this one does.