IanUK

Currently in the process of buying parts for a new PC, issues with lack of stock and some negative reviews have prompted a change of power supply choice...

Originally I had opted for the 750w TX Corsair here http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=684732, says in stock, its not...


Have read customer reviews and looked at specs and come up with this alternative, and due to impatience on my part have already ordered and went for Coolermaster RealPower 850W Modular PSU http://www.ebuyer.com/product/132289, the customer reviews rave about it which certainly swayed me...

Not really concerned as to whether the Corsair or Coolermaster is better... just wondering have I bought a good enough power supply for a gaming PC? 3.33ghz dual core intel, 4 gb ram, HD4870 512 Radeon.

Fikorisu

Hi Ian,
Your power unit sounds to be ample tbh!
That Radeon will consume about 250 watts on full load, and I'm guessing that the intel is a Xeon?? In which case this particular processor tries to boast good power efficiency. Just do a little maths. It should say on other parts like your drives how much power is going to be diverted to them. Add on 250w for the Graphics and voila. Sounds more than enough though. Just depends on whether you want to add another G-card or want to supe your system up with lots of added extras. I've got a AMD X2 4800+ with about 5 drives (IDEs, RAID etc) and an X1950PRO (which apparently guzzles my power atm) all running off a 650W (maybe less) supply and is absolutely fine and have ZERO problems.
Hope that helps.

IanUK

Certainly sounds fine. Appears I'll have room for an extra graphics card down the line when I want to upgrade. Only going to be running one DVD drive and one hard drive, don't have need for extras or foresee any need to increase the number of drives hard or optical.

My case is cooler master to match the PSU and both come highly rated so I shouldn't have any issues fingers crossed. Not upgraded in quite some time and was a little disappointed to miss out on the corsair psu due to supply issues, only other supplier I use had negative reviews with products arriving either dead or faulty so a change of PSU was forced really.

Enough rambling, as long as theres no issues with Coolermaster seems I've nothing to worry about.

HawMan

Good choice in PSU

__________________

Please Consider Donating to keep the site free.

Tumbleweed36

That is an excellent power supply, so don't sweat that one.

__________________

----------

Gunshock

Some people say multiple rails is not as good as single rail continuous power. I have the HD 4870. You must look at how many Amps are put out per rail on the PSU. The HD4870 can put out i believe somewhere around 21 Amps.

Another thing to read about multiple rails from pcpower.com:

"ARE MULTIPLE 12-VOLT RAILS BETTER THAN A SINGLE 12-VOLT RAIL?

With all the hype about multiple 12-volt rails (ads claim that two rails is better than one, five is better than four, etc.), you'd think it was a better design. Unfortunately, it's not!

Here are the facts: A large, single 12-volt rail (without a 240VA limit) can transfer 100% of the 12-volt output from the PSU to the computer, while a multi-rail 12-volt design has distribution losses of up to 30% of the power supply's rating. Those losses occur because power literally gets "trapped" on under-utilized rails. For example, if the 12-volt rail that powers the CPU is rated for 17 amps and the CPU only uses 7A, the remaining 10A is unusable, since it is isolated from the rest of the system.

Since the maximum current from any one 12-volt rail of a multiple-rail PSU is limited to 20 amps (240VA / 12 volts = 20 amps), PCs with high-performance components that draw over 20 amps from the same rail are subject to over-current shutdowns. With power requirements for multiple processors and graphics cards continuing to grow, the multiple-rail design, with its 240VA limit per rail, is basically obsolete."

Now I am not picking on that PSU you have chosen (It just might be a great one!) but I myself made the mistake of getting a multirail PSU that could not supply enough Amps per rail (19 max)

So I went off and got a high-rated, well-known single rail 60A continous power PSU.

Just trying to help

IanUK

It certainly looked good, I was in a bit of a rush to get my order in as I've already lost a few days to a mix up with whether the corsair was in stock or not.

I do think I've picked a good one though gunshocks points do raise potential problems, hopefully though as I plan to run multiple graphics cards eventually and this PSU is designed with that in mind the multi rail power distribution thing should work as a pro and not a con.

Thanks for the responses, can always count on this forum for speedy answers to my questions, cheers guys.

All going to plan deliverywise should get the build started tomorrow, hopefully without any catastrophes. Of course the delays are always on parts you can't make a start without, no PSU, CPU or mobo right now.

Tumbleweed36

Please let us know how this build comes out. Good luck!

__________________

----------

IanUK

I'm very pleased to say that everything went smoothly and am up and running! First time using Vista OS and I like it. My system is rated at 5.7 on the vista score thing, everything being at the max 5.9 except the E8600 CPU which is a 5.7, still a good readout.

Thanks again for all the help.

Quick question, my display is slightly fuzzy, I have a 19" Benq FP93G monitor, not sure how to fix this... refresh rate setting seems to make a little difference. Any other suggestions?