Antec SmartPower 2.0

Yeah; I must agree with Dai. I am surprised you got that far with it really!



I recently replaced two PSU's from systems very similar to yours with antec TP-550's in them. They werent causing any trouble yet, but the 12volt rails were drooping down into the low 11volt readings like 11.7 to as low as 11.4 when the customers were gaming

your system is just to much "draw" for it your PSU will soon enough pop its cork, thats when you fry motherboards or memory sticks or video cards etc. Dont mean to alarm you, but feel obligated to tell ya!


The trouble with the SP & True Power Series is they are only 70% efficient thats means they are really at full load with 70% of the MAX rated wattage.
(Max rated wattage is their "selling" wattage
I suggest you look for the Antec Trio rail 650 watt PSU at newegg.com for $99.00 after rebate. This unit is 85% efficient! and is a head and shoulders above the SP and Tru Power product line. The Trio rail is antec answer to the ever more demanding computer voltage needs these days.

The Antec units are decent built, as evidenced by your 450 is trying to pull the wagon!

you could sell off your old unit on ebay to take some of the bite outta the new purchase ???? :4-dontkno

The owner of a respected computer distributor in my area suggested this power supply. I gave him all of my specs and that is the one that he told me to buy. There were more expensive and higher wattage PSU's for sale in his store, but he said that it would be more than sufficient for what I was running.

I was running all of this on a 350watt PSU that came with the case I have, which is the equivelent of a 20 dollar case. It ran fine for a long time, I just got a more beefy PSU because I upgraded my GFX card.

And, to further reduce the stress on my PSU, I switched my cooling fans from 12V DC fans to 115V AC cooling fans. Right now, the only thing that my PSU is running is this:

1 80mm LED Casefan.
2 Optical Drives
1 W.D. IDE H.D.D
1 Mobo
1 Hitachi SATA-II drive
2 3" neon sticks.
2 512MB DDR400 sticks.

There are two fans in my PSU. One on the front and one on the back. The Antec product information states that the fan in the back, meaning the one that blows air out of the back of the case, does not come on until a certain ambient power supply temperature is reached. There is a lead that, for fan monitoring purposes ONLY, plugs into the motherboard. With speedfan, the first fan (the one actually drawing air from inside the case) registers anywhere from 950RPM to 2000RPM, depending on how long my computer has been on, respective to the amount of heat buildup. The only way to MAKE the other fan come on is to open the power supply up, thereby voiding the warranty, and hardwire the fan. There is no fan control included with this power supply.

As I have previously stated, I was running what I have now and more on a very cheap 350watt power supply - one that was included with the 20 dollar case I bought. On that power supply I was running:

2 120mm case fans
2 80mm case fans
3 IDE Hard Drives
The motherboard
CPU
CPU Fan
Wireless Keyboard
Wireless Mouse
1 PCI Slot fan
XFX GeForce 7600GS
2 Optical Drives
Sound Blaster card
2 512MB DDR400 RAM sticks

The power supply worked for as long as I had it - about two and a half months. That power supply is now being used to power fans only for another project of mine unrelated to computers. It still works.

you forgot one major thing in your summary Floydfan! that extra 130 watts of power was dispated into the PSU itself as "heat" what happens to the voltage output the more you raise the temps. The higher the heat in the PSU unit, they less it can put out. PSU on average lose 5 watts of power for every 2 degress C the temp is increased, hence the reason why many private PSU testers plce test units in a "hot box" then run a power demanding unit, the result, many times they will pop their cookies for good.



so therfore; its a "proven fact" a higher efficiency unit will put out more juice than a lower efficiency unit, simply becuase of reduced heat.


quote:

Heat is a power supply's worst enemy, every component in a power supply is designed to work most optimum at a specific temperature, but not necessarily a realistic operating temperature (especially under heavy loading conditions). Capacity diminishes as temperature increases, and eventually the part will fail if it exceeds design parameters. Many people do not think about this, depending on the average ambient temperature inside their PC chassis, the PSU may or may not be able to operate at its full capacity (depending on how well the PSU was designed).

http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/articles/guides/Power_Supply_Guide_11.html


another MAJOR factor overlooked is most power supplies are tested and rated at 20 degress C; there is no computer I have ever seen with an internal operating temp of 20C, therfore the max rated wattage or the selling wattage is severely bogus to us, that's the reason why you must add 30% to the calculation provided by the PSU calc's prior to buying a unit.

Also the power supply wattage is its max output, no unit will ever even come close to operating in a stable means at its max wattage output.