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Made in au
Grizzled Space Wolves Great Wolf





When looking at power supplies it's good to look at efficiency and current draw on the different rails. I don't know what you need, I could check later on today but I'm busy ATM. That PSU you linked only has a combined 42A on the 12V, so even though it's rated at 700W it can actually only supply 12*42 = 504W on the 12V lines combined. That means it's probably going to be worse than a high quality 500 to 600W supply. The other concern is that it looks to have a relatively low efficiency, it often just means cheap components were used in the first place so I wouldn't trust that PSU to last a long time.

I haven't built a computer for a few years now, but in the past it was almost always better to go with a lower rated but higher quality PSU than a low quality one with a high total power rating.

If you want good advice I recommend you sign up to something like [H]ardforum. Admittedly I haven't posted there for years but when I used to frequent [H] there was a lot of people who spend most of their free time looking at computer parts, benchmarks, etc. who are happy to give a bit of help to someone building a PC. While Dakka has lots of knowledgeable people as well most people here spend their free time looking at miniatures.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2017/09/14 21:15:07


 
Made in au
Grizzled Space Wolves Great Wolf





Coolermaster actually has a power calculator. I just had a look at it and it doesn't seem excessively conservative.

http://www.coolermaster.com/power-supply-calculator/

They give you a load wattage and also a recommended wattage, you usually get a bit more than you need partly for safety, partly if you want to upgrade and partly because as power supplies age their output and efficiency decreases, so if you plan on using it for say 5 years, you need 5 years worth of overhead.

But remember, most high power components in a PC draw from the 12V lines, so you want a PSU that can deliver that power to the 12V (which you determine by looking at the amperage on the 12V line and power = voltage*current, thus power = 12*current because you're looking at the 12V line).


 Ouze wrote:
Tom's Hardware has a forum literally just for power supplies. The computer repair and support advice here is consistently well-meaning but incorrect. Mostly we have experts on removing scale from bathtubs, how to handle pooping blood, the correct way to educate your special needs children, and also (as I understand it) tabletop wargames.
Yeah, as nice as Dakka is, when it comes to computer advice it is rather lacking.

I've never signed up to Tom's because I've seen way too many people giving bad or incorrect advice. [H]ardforum is my preference because the knowledge level over there seems to be higher (at least historically speaking, haven't been there recently), though it probably has less users overall.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/09/15 07:41:22


 
Made in au
Grizzled Space Wolves Great Wolf





 Skinnereal wrote:
 Ouze wrote:
The computer repair and support advice here is consistently well-meaning but incorrect.
AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Yeah, as nice as Dakka is, when it comes to computer advice it is rather lacking.
Usually, I'd pile into these threads. But, my PC-building days are limited to a PC a year now. The hundreds I used to build were more than a CPU-generation ago, and hardware changes so fast.
Part of the reason I haven't built a computer for so long is that hardware has really slowed down. The quality of the current gen i7's and i5's is surprisingly not a hell of a lot faster than the early gen i5's and i7's.

I just found my original thread on [H] from buying the computer I'm currently using, it's 6 years old now Granted I've upgraded the GPU and gotten bigger SSD's for it, but everything else is still the same. A computer enthusiast would say it's sad how much hardware increases have slowed down, to be honest I'm glad I'm not spending money upgrading all the time

The only thing I'll leave here is to agree with the 'Don't Skimp' from above. Keep your parts of a similar quality throughout, including the power supply.
I think the lessons I've learned is that you can skimp on power because most people will tell you absurdly how powers, just don't skimp on quality. That is, better to buy a low power rating supply that is good quality than a high rating one that's low quality.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/09/15 08:20:13


 
Made in au
Grizzled Space Wolves Great Wolf





Just use that Coolermaster calculator I posted earlier, add a few watts and then look at the next biggest PSU up from that. If you want to make sure you have overhead for upgrading, ask it how much extra power you'll need if you want a 2nd GPU or a higher end GPU.

From there you narrow your search to a handful of PSU's in that power range from reputable companies and start looking at reviews.

Or if you're lazy just ask on Hardforum and someone will more than likely be able to suggest one for you. If noise is important to you make sure you ask what's good and quiet.
Made in au
Grizzled Space Wolves Great Wolf





Small cases are nice if you need to fit them somewhere like a HTPC, but I always go with big cases for expandability. Big coolers take up space, extra hard drives, some high end video cards are very long and a bigger motherboard for the extra PCI slots.
Made in au
Grizzled Space Wolves Great Wolf





 daedalus wrote:
AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Small cases are nice if you need to fit them somewhere like a HTPC, but I always go with big cases for expandability. Big coolers take up space, extra hard drives, some high end video cards are very long and a bigger motherboard for the extra PCI slots.


So, I get wanting (some) space for cooling and video card clearance, but serious question on "expandability": Why? Your motherboard has built-in audio, network, hard drive controllers, usb controllers, maybe some firewire and possibly even wifi. What do you have to expand upon? This isn't the 90s anymore where you needed to buy separate peripheral cards. And hard drive have enough capacity that you really don't need more than maybe two unless you're doing some kind of custom RAID setup, and I can fit three hard drives into my micro-atx case. Four if all of them are SSD.


I was mostly thinking hard drives (my computer currently has 5 + optical drive + SSD), TV cards, enough space for a 2nd GPU if you want to go to SLI/Crossfire, sound cards (you often want a sound card a few slots away from the video card/s to avoid interference).

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against SFF computers, it's just every time I think "oh that would be nice" and just end up going for a big case instead and I haven't regretted it yet, somehow I always manage to fill space.

That said I've never been a case nerd. As long as it's quiet I couldn't give a feth what holds my components. Once it's built I don't spend a lot of time thinking about my case, lol.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/09/15 15:29:54


 
 
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