A couple of ?s on PSUs and case temps

I'm looking at power supplies and was wondering...does a more powerful PSU (greater wattage) produce more heat?

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With that in mind, I am considering purchasing either of the following:
-Antec TRUE430 (430W)
-Thermaltake Silent PurePower 420W

My rig that I am building will have a 2400+ mobile processor 1.35v, an ati 9600 pro (or something similar), 2 CD-Rom-type drives 1-2 hard drives, a floppy, 4 fans, a temp monitor device, and a fan controller.

I will be overclocking.

Now, I've read the stickies and am a bit confused. Do I need the amount of power for the PSUs I am considering...or could I go with a 350w?

Most people will recomend you get a 400+W power supply, its a good idea if you plan on OC'in or adding alot of stuff.

I run my system with a 350W PSU. (4) case fans, (1) cathode lamp...the rest is in my sig.

A PSU with a higher wattage rating will not produce more heat than a lower rated PSU under the same load conditions. A more efficient PSU will produce less heat, but such figures are often vaguely specified, or are given within a range since the efficiency varies over the load range.

Wattage rating is also not nearly as reliable as you seem to think. A 300W Fortron can outproduce many so-called 500W Q-tec or other noname brand PSUs.

Since that's a pretty well configured system I'd say go with a FSP 350 power supply - dead cheap from Newegg but are top notch quality.

L337 M33P said:

Wattage rating is also not nearly as reliable as you seem to think. A 300W Fortron can outproduce many so-called 500W Q-tec or other noname brand PSUs.

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's kinda what confused me...the fact that a higher wattage doesn't necessarily mean better performance. So I would be alright with the fortron...does it provide much breathing room if I wanna add components?

One other question (am I a newbie or what), how important is getting a power supply with PFC?

Bump

Still curious as to how important PFC is. If anyone can answer I'd really appreciate it.

If PFC isn't that important I am leaning toward the Sparkle FSP350-60PN. If PFC is important I still like the thermaltake mentioned in my original post.

The only thing about the sparkle is that it says that overvoltage protection is unspecified...but surely there is some form on it. Anyone know for sure?

PFC really doesn't do anything.

The Antec model you selected above is very good. I'd reccomend it more than my Fortron as a matter of fact (my Fortron doesn't have the most stable rails, which is one of the TruePower's biggest features: automatically adjusting stable rails).

From what I understand about PFC it just increases the PSU's efficiency, it makes more DC power out of less AC power (saves you money on your electric bill).
EDIT: actually thats not completly correct - read this if you really wanna know.

Sparkle/Fortron is the way to go for PSUs. If you have the extra money I would suggest the Fotron/Sparkle 530w model but if not the 350w should power your rig very well. (If you didn't know Sparkle rebrands FSP/Fortron PSUs.)

I see. Well, I am trying to keep the cost as low as possible...if a Sparkle/Fortron 350w suits my needs, what advatage is there to going for a higher/more expensive model?

The only advantage with going with a higher wattage model is that you probably won't have to upgrade pretty much ever... at least not for a very long time.
With the 350w version you might need to upgrade if you decide to add a bunch of HDDs or MAYBE one of the newest generation video cards. For instance the 6800 is supposed to require somthing like a 480w PSU... This one (PSU I mean) is top quality though, so if you, hypothetically, got the card you might not even need to upgrade, but if you had more stuff you probably would.