Choosing a new PSU

Shining Arcanine · Post by **Shining Arcanine** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 4:26 pm

I have a Fortron-Source Zen fanless 300W. My cousin has come over many times over the past month and played on my computer without a problem, but two saturdays ago, I was playing Age of Empires III and my computer stopped functioning. It entered a cycle of attempted reboots, which all failed, with the PC refusing to POST. My PSU's casing was extremely hot. I do not know exactly what its temperature was, but it was hot enough to burn skin (>=50 degrees Celsius).

Once things had cooled off, I attempted to use my PC again. It worked, for a few hours and then it developed the same issue. A few days later, my mother told me taht she thought that the problem was because of how my computer runs 24/7 and that I should try it again. My PSU was at the ambient temperature before turning on my PC; within a few hours it was extremely hot again and my computer failed. I am not sure why this is happening now, that it had ran for hours on end under extreme loads from my graphics card (XFX GeForce 7950 GT), but I need a new PSU to correct this.

I ordered a Kill-A-Watt meter last week to measure my computer's power AC consumption so I could hopefully get a PSU that was a better fit for my PC and the meter arrived today. As I am typing this, my computer is using 164 watts of electrical power. When my CPU is at full load (running a multithreaded program I wrote that finds large prime numbers; it is similar to Prime95), my computer consumes 175 watts of electrical power. Running the Nvidia Dawn Ultra demo at 1920 x 1200 raises my PC's power consumption at 183 to 184 watts. Running both the Dawn Demo and my multithreaded program raises my computer's power consumption to 191 to 193 watts.

My CPU is an Intel Core 2 Duo E6300. I have been thinking of upgrading to a Xeon X3350, which is a 45nm quad core processor. Using SPCR's efficiency data, I am estimating that at maximum load, my computer uses approximately 160 watts of DC power and as an educated guess, my upgrade to a quad core processor will raise that to 180 watts of DC power. I have been looking at the following PSU, not because it has a high output rating, but because of its acoustic qualities up to 202 watts of DC load:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article806-page1.html

Its high price and double ball bearing fan are things of which I am not particular fond. I know that ball bearing fans become louder as time passes and I do not want to pay a premium for an output rating that I will never use. The following is somewhat more appealing to me, but not by much:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817194031

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 7:04 pm

Hello,

What about this one?

vick1000 · Post by **vick1000** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 4:05 am

This is all you need....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817139003

...or if you must...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817703005

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 5:02 am

Hello,

vick1000 wrote:The Pro 82+ line is going to be louder than the Modu 82+, and that price is outrageous.

Huh? What would make it louder? You state it as if it is a fact -- can you back it up?

vick1000 · Post by **vick1000** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 5:23 am

NeilBlanchard wrote:Hello,

vick1000 wrote:The Pro 82+ line is going to be louder than the Modu 82+, and that price is outrageous.
Huh? What would make it louder? You state it as if it is a fact -- can you back it up?

Whoops. For some reason I had Liberty in my head. The Pro 82+s are exactly the same as the Modu 82+...fan/ control wise. Will edit.

Shining Arcanine · Post by **Shining Arcanine** » Sun May 25, 2008 12:39 pm

I purchased a 425Watt Modu 82+ and installed it today. Everything seems to be working so far. I will post an update later confirming whether or not my computer suddenly restarted again.