Generic Power Supply?

I'm building a computer for a family friend, and it's a family computer, no big power supply needed (hard drive, dvd burner, processor, fans (4), and floppy). The thing is price. There's all those computer cases out there that come with 400w power supplies, and I'm wondering if I can slip by giving them one of those instead of spending 20-30 on a power supply. Any ideas?

If there's a post similar to this somewhere around here, please link

You can buy one now, or in a year when it burns out. It's really up to you.

Get a Fortron PSU and then you wont need to worry about that. They are built well.

Thanks for the quick response, any idea which power supply? Like I said, family computer, so 300w or lower?

The Fortron 300 watt or 350 watt should be fine depending on the system specs. They are pretty cheap and should last quite a while.

Apart from the Antec TP I have now, I've always used generic power supplies.

Because nothing else was available, apart from a branded 'Codegen', supposedly the worst PS on earth.

I've (knock on wood) yet to have a single burnt PS or other component out of the 30 or so PCs I've ever built (knock, knock, knock on wood).

They obviously do not work if you want to overclock, and the name of this forum is after all, OCforums. But for family / systems running stock, the generic PS units I have used are OK.

And those are not 400 watts. They will draw 400 watts at the point of explosion. You'd be lucky if they could deliver more than 240-260 watts, but smaller systems don't even need half of that in normal conditions (my 1800+ HTPC draws about 50 watts idle, and about 100-110 watts fully loaded)...

sangram said:

my 1800+ HTPC draws about 50 watts idle, and about 100-110 watts fully loaded

Click to expand...

How do you figure out how much wattage you are drawing?

AC amp meter reading * by 230 volt (line voltage). Reading taken inside the PS from the IEC input connector in series.

A power meter would be more accurate.

My Athlon 2600+ fully loaded draws about 230 watts, at overclocked settings as below. Counting PS efficiency 70-80%, I would assume the rig itself draws 160-170 watts at most. Of course this is much less than the sum total of all peripherals working together, because it is rare for any system to have four hard drives, two DVD-writers, a 100-watt CPU and a 60-watt (?) GPU all going together for one single operation...

Can't tell which rails are drawing how much juice in those conditions, too much soldering and unsoldering required. Maybe we can actually measure the switching frequency at the regulator/s and empirically determine the load current, but I don't have that kind of equipment or knowledge.

I have got to get a meter . .....ummm. ....and learn how to use it. It would have come in handy so many times.

yeah i thought i could also doged the PSU burnt out in two months i was doing some heavy Overclocking! mobo burnt out beacuse it couldnt handle my OCin and then went the Psu too! so got my self black nickle asaka psu!

People always dog generic power supplies, saying they'll burn out in a year. But unless your overclocking or putting a 250w power supply on a brand new 939 system you'll have no problems. Power supplies rarely go out unless they're put under rough conditions.

The the only thing that bugs me about generic power supplies is that are usually loud. Just replaced a no-namer in my grandmothers computer with a used antec 350w. It's a world quieter. I just hate fan noise though..

Dayton

^^ That I completely agree with ^^

But for a lot of people it doesn't matter at all, we usually keep ourselves cool using ceiling fans which are 20x louder than any CPU/PSU fan.