Power Supplies what makes a good one.

[The PIT]

Part of the infinite loop problem gets blamed on the power supply. Now what makes a good power supply. I use Enermax and someone said that they suck on 3.3v line. However looking at most the specs many manufacters are very similar. I had a good trawl through the recommended AMD supply list and the only one that stuck out was the Pc Power and cooling.

[DGhost]

enermax's +3.3v is fine. their +5v line was notoriously weak due to the use of low quality parts for a while. personally i have an Enermax 350W and it works fine for the most part, though it does have some issues. I will probably replace it with a Sparkle soon.

the ones that i recommend are Sparkle Power (never seen a problem with them, although their high end units do not move much air from the case, they only use a single fan design), PC Power and Cooling (heard good things about them), HiPro (they are not high performance units... and have problems with fans dying... quick splice later and its fine... not good for what you are probably looking for).

Antec power supplies (Channel Well manufactures them, iirc) are quite popular, but i've seen my share of them that die. there are a couple other power supply manufacturers that are popular but i can't remember them off the top of my head.

[Fat Tone]

What makes a good one? Line stability & longevity aside, its the total current capability on the 3.3V & 5V lines that matters most. I've seen PSUs with the same wattage rating, but with 10A different capability on one of the lines!

My 8500 (in combination with my A7M266 and XP1700+) is very sensitive to the power supply. I tried 3 different 300W supplies, 2 of them gave terrible flickering on the 2nd head, 1 was much improved. It wasn't until I swapped to this 'cheapy' 375W PSU that it was cured completely.

T.

[MadScot]

What are the most common side effects of a PS that isnt cutting it?

MadScot

[DGhost]

Originally posted by MadScot
What are the most common side effects of a PS that isnt cutting it?

Instability. Flakey behavior. a power supply connects to all devices in the system, so it could manifest itself in many ways, from affecting the system as a whole to just the devices plugged into it... from a hard drive thats developing bad sectors to a stick of memory that brings up errors and fails memory tests. or it could be something like the computer has to be turned on, then reset in order for it to work.

lots of things could be symptoms, but the system hanging/rebooting suddenly or refusing to post are two of the most common ones (from my experience).

[Technoid]

Dead Motherboard if AMD cpu...

If intell the motherboard wont die but the power wont be enough and some parts will lose power causing everything from no sound to bluescreens and hard freeses....

[MadScot]

Originally posted by DGhost

or it could be something like the computer has to be turned on, then reset in order for it to work.

My major interest is that I only have a 235W PS with all of the devices below, and I have almost no probs. About one time in forty my system will hang in POST, but a restart will boot fine. Am I riding the edge of my power limits? I want to upgrade to a PowerLeap 1.3 ghz celeron. Will this put me over the edge?

MadScot

[The PIT]

Originally posted by MadScot
What are the most common side effects of a PS that isnt cutting it?

MadScot

Well if you're running a Via chipset and XP it can appear as the infinite loop error.
Other effects I've seen are slower hard drive access it was quite interesting watching the 12v line loose a volt when the drive was spinning up.
Crashing system falling over when a new device is fitted etc etc.

[Jammrock]

PC Power and Cooling makes some really top notch power supplies...but at a premium. I used the 425 TurboCool for 2 years with no power related issues (well...the second one was perfect, the first one is a long story). It now resides in a dual Athlon MP system and is working like a champ.

Jammrock

[The PIT]

I looked at them on the web and they really do seem to handle the amps. If I was in the market for psu I would probably try them.

[Alfie]

Sparkle makes good power supplies,as does Antec and Highpower.
It's not so much the wattage as the quality of the power supplied

[Dr Mordrid]

I'll vouch for ANTEC. I have a couple of their 430 units and they're solid.

Dr. Mordrid

[Marshmallowman]

a good pwer supply will deliver plenty of power on the 5v and 3 volt rails alone.

most voltage regulators on motherboards run off the 5volt rail, so make sure the 5volt rail can supply plenty of current, becuse if it can't you will have stability problems.

things to check, under full load the 5volt rail stays over(and close to) 5 volts. Also the other voltages should stay on spec as well.

its hard to get a good reading but, you voltages should not fluctuate much, if they do that means it is not very good quality.

I bought a cheap 400w, which is working okay. But the 5volt rail is sitting 4.82 and every time i try to crank my cpu up a bit more It goes down a bit more(and it starts crashing). So 400w sounds like plenty but it is not suppling it were its needed, at the 5 volt rail.

I prevously had an open 300watt PSU but that got cooked by my system.

1.4G thunderbird, 3x 7200rpm HDD's, DVD, CDWR, geforce 1,epox 8kta3+ 512MB, millenium 170.

I cooked the the 300wat when I had 2940UW scsi and 3 extra scsi hdds.

moral: make sure the 5 volt rail can supply plenty of current
(1.4G TB draws about 40 amps, mainly off the 5 volt rail)

[The PIT]

Originally posted by Marshmallowman
Its hard to get a good reading but, you voltages should not fluctuate much, if they do that means it is not very good quality.

This leads too the next question which is how far do you trust software to give you the correct readings.

[TnT]

I've used Sparkle and Antec, no problems at all.

I've had 3 out of 4 power supplies in cheapo Enlight cases blow out on me. Replaced every single one with Sparkles.