Is the Neo Power 480 good enough for an nF4 Ultra?

MotzKopf · Apr 10, 2005

I'm bulding an nForce4 rig for a friend and have decided on the Gigabyte K8NXP-9, since performance, stability and feature set is more important than an OC (still waiting for the mobo). But I probably made a big mistake purchasing the PSU before the motherboard is available. I bought the Antec Neo Power 480, and I'm concerned that it won't have enough power for the completed rig.

Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-9
AMD Socket 939 Athlon 64 3500+ Winchester
GIGABYTE 3D Rocket Cooler-Pro
Corsair Value Select Dual Pack 512MBx2 VS1GBKIT400
eVGA nVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS GAMER
Seagate 120GB Barracuda SATA
RAIDMAX Black Aluminum Gaming Case
Antec Neo Power 480
Saitek Gamers' Keyboard
Logitech MediaPlay Cordless Mouse
ViewSonic VP912B 19" LCD Monitor
Logitech X-530 5.1 Black Speaker System

The RAIDMAX case and GIGABYTE 3D Rocket come with LED fans, so I wasn't thinking of adding much more in the way lighting. I'm concerned with the Neo Power's dual 12V rails only pumping out a maximum of 18 and 15 amps respectively, will this be enough for this system? I'm also concerned about it being enough for the new Dual Core Athlons.

Any thoughts?

mcoleg · Apr 10, 2005

it should be enough as is; when o/c'd, that's a different matter. i don't have a64 system but pIV one in my sig. was much happier with ocz.

JoLim24601 · Apr 10, 2005

MotzKopf said:
I'm bulding an nForce4 rig for a friend and have decided on the Gigabyte K8NXP-9, since performance, stability and feature set is more important than an OC (still waiting for the mobo). But I probably made a big mistake purchasing the PSU before the motherboard is available. I bought the Antec Neo Power 480, and I'm concerned that it won't have enough power for the completed rig.

Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-9
AMD Socket 939 Athlon 64 3500+ Winchester
GIGABYTE 3D Rocket Cooler-Pro
Corsair Value Select Dual Pack 512MBx2 VS1GBKIT400
eVGA nVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS GAMER
Seagate 120GB Barracuda SATA
RAIDMAX Black Aluminum Gaming Case
Antec Neo Power 480
Saitek Gamers' Keyboard
Logitech MediaPlay Cordless Mouse
ViewSonic VP912B 19" LCD Monitor
Logitech X-530 5.1 Black Speaker System

The RAIDMAX case and GIGABYTE 3D Rocket come with LED fans, so I wasn't thinking of adding much more in the way lighting. I'm concerned with the Neo Power's dual 12V rails only pumping out a maximum of 18 and 15 amps respectively, will this be enough for this system? I'm also concerned about it being enough for the new Dual Core Athlons.

Any thoughts?

Don't worry... it'll be fine. As for dual core I have no clue.

JudgeDredd · Apr 10, 2005

Check the system in my sig. It's very similar to yours except I have two hard drives instead of one. Mine is also overclocked, and I'm about to add in another 6800 GT, and I'm not scurred.

Antec4lyphe.

MotzKopf · Apr 11, 2005

That's a relief, thanks for the input and support.

I was afraid I'd fire it up and it would fall flat on it's face right in front of my friend. He wants to watch me put it together...should be fun.

I shouldn't worry about Dual Core anyway, shouldn't have to upgrade for at least a couple of years. By then all lot will change. Maybe Dual Core GPUs???

Again thanks for your replies.

whitebloodcell · Apr 11, 2005

You will have plenty of power for that system.

I found this article on spcr very interesting about how much power is actually drawn by a system.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article28-page4.html

mjw21a · Apr 11, 2005

Heck, go with the 550W TTGI N-Plug PSU. It's lower priced and has similar if not slightly better features.

ozziegn · Apr 12, 2005

the 480W Neo will be fine. people tend to think that the higher a PSU's wattage ratting means its all that much better which is complete BS.

heck, I also have a 480W Neo PSU and one of my buddies has a 600W Antec. he swears up and down about how much better his is over mine but yet all of my voltage rails are always higher than his and were both running the same CPU and motherboard combo.

mjw21a · Apr 12, 2005

ozziegn said:
the 480W Neo will be fine. people tend to think that the higher a PSU's wattage ratting means its all that much better which is complete BS.

heck, I also have a 480W Neo PSU and one of my buddies has a 600W Antec. he swears up and down about how much better his is over mine but yet all of my voltage rails are always higher than his and were both running the same CPU and motherboard combo.

Can't really see how thats possible. Both are Antec PSU's and both the TruePower and NeoPower series are supposed to be rated the same way.

The Antec SmartPower series on the other hand is rated in a different way. A 500W SmartPower cannot come close to the performance of a 500W TruePower PSU for example.

Be careful what you claim, and allways give details. If you're claiming it's better than a 600W TruePower then what you're saying is a load of BS. If it's a SmartPower, well, that might well be true.

ozziegn · Apr 12, 2005

mjw21a said:
Be careful what you claim, and allways give details. If you're claiming it's better than a 600W TruePower then what you're saying is a load of BS. If it's a SmartPower, well, that might well be true.

oh please, dont talk to me like I'm some seven year old kid that just starting working with computers yesterday.

I know what I know and I've seen what I've seen both on my machine and my buddy's machine. I have no reason to lie.

mjw21a · Apr 12, 2005

ozziegn said:
oh please, dont talk to me like I'm some seven year old kid that just starting working with computers yesterday.

I know what I know and I've seen what I've seen both on my machine and my buddy's machine. I have no reason to lie.

I'm simply saying that the way you've phrased it is as a blanket statement. You havent specified which Antec PSU he's running.

Various Antec PSU's, such as the SmartPower and TrueBlue series absolutely suck.

The newer PSU's such as the TruePower or the slightly newer NeoPower PSU are rated in the same way.

My argument isn't that the NeoPower isn't the better PSU, but more along the lines that you haven't mentioned which Antec PSU your mate is using. I only mentioned this as others less knowledgeable than yourself may read this thread and misunderstand what you're saying.

Take it easy man.

yeha · Apr 12, 2005

the parts you listed, during heavy load, will probably draw 115 or so watts of power. if you overclock the cpu to 2.7ghz and the vga card by 50mhz core 100mhz ram, you might push the whole system to 170 watts or so. it is very, very rare for pc's to actually draw even 300 watts, that requires an extremely high-power setup (i.e. preshott) and even then it would only be spikes of activity that gets it that high (i.e. all drives spinning up while cpu loaded).

just an extract from that silentpcreview article, the following system draws a maximum of 147 watts:

- athlon 64 3800+
- soltek k8tpro mobo
- 2 gigabytes (4x512mb) of pc3200 ram (ocz pc4000)
- radeon 9800 pro
- 400gb hitachi hard drive
- 160gb samsung hard drive
- silverstone fanless psu

that's not a lightweight system at all, and the highest draw the reviewer could get from the psu was 147 watts.

mjw21a · Apr 12, 2005

Mmmmmmm, nice. I'd like that setup......

ozziegn · Apr 12, 2005

mjw21a said:
Take it easy man.

I hear ya man... I was very hungry and irritable (sp?) yesterday when I typed my previous comment.

all I'm saying is that one cant judge how much "balls" a PSU has just by its wattage ratting because there's alot more to look at than just its overall wattage ratting.

this is the same concept as comparing a 1,000W car stereo amp. you can buy a 1,000W amp from a local flea market for $30 or you can buy a 1,000W amp from a reputable car stereo dealer for $500. now which one of those two items would you say is the better of the two in terms of quality?

the same goes for computer PSUs.

mjw21a · Apr 12, 2005

ozziegn said:
I hear ya man... I was very hungry and irritable (sp?) yesterday when I typed my previous comment.

all I'm saying is that one cant judge how much "balls" a PSU has just by its wattage ratting because there's alot more to look at than just its overall wattage ratting.

this is the same concept as comparing a 1,000W car stereo amp. you can buy a 1,000W amp from a local flea market for $30 or you can buy a 1,000W amp from a reputable car stereo dealer for $500. now which one of those two items would you say is the better of the two in terms of quality?

the same goes for computer PSUs.

Quite right. Though you can't always tell. There are exceptions. They're not reall common though.

Lol, I get grumpy without food too.....

bobmanfoo · Apr 12, 2005

Trueblue psu's are truepowers with blue led fans

mjw21a · Apr 13, 2005

bobmanfoo said:
Trueblue psu's are truepowers with blue led fans

Yeah, I thought they were just SmartPowers with a blue LED fan? My bad.

Hey, I like your Avatar man. Reminds me of mine, just not quite so evil

Is the Neo Power 480 good enough for an nF4 Ultra?

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