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Forton PSU?

D

Dallows

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jun 18, 2004
Messages
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I hear good things about the Fortons, is it true? Am I better off with one of them than say like an antec? I need one for my current (About to be upgraded system to a 3200+ Barton, new mobo, and 6800GT) and one for my brother's system which I will be building sometime in August. Figure that system will have like AMD64 3500+, 6800ultra or GT with 120gb uhh nice soundcard and mobo. I can't think what else right now. But I need a good powerful psu for a good price.
 
It's debatable as to whether Fortrons are better than Antecs; On one hand, they can put out much more juice than a comparably rated antec. On the other hand, the Antec has a much tighter controlled output, +/- 3% vs the Fortron's +/- 5%. Also, the Antec has been shown to have very clean output, while there isn't really any good, hard data about the ripple and transient response on the Fortron models. Either way, they are both good supplies.
 
Dallows said:
That doesn't really help me, haha. Thanks though.
Click to expand...
What he's trying to say is that you probably can't go wrong with either (correct me if im wrong Vertigo). They both have their pros and con's. Do you want more power(fortron) or higher quality/tightly controlled power(antec true)?
 
Okay, now the antecs are more expensive, by about 20 bucks for a 550w. What's the deal with rails and all that. Are there certain cables that the vid card should be hooked up to, etc?
 
Out of those two, pick which ever one fits your budget better and/or you like better. They're both good supplies, and you'll be fine either way. In both of those power supplies, they have single outputs for each voltage. So, there will be 3 independent outputs in the Antec (3.3v, 5v, and 12v), and 2 independent outputs in the Fortron (3.3v shared with 5v, 12v) The shared design is much less desireable, but since it is on the two less important voltages nowadays, it doesn't really matter. To complicate matters more, you can have multiple "rails" for a single voltage. For example, the latest specs call for a separate 12v rail for just the processor(s), with the drives/fans/etc. being on their own rail aswell.

If you read this thread, Ice Czar is trying to put together a good resource of info about this very topic.
 
alright, I guess the question I've been avoiding is a pretty dumb one, but oh well. How do I tell which cables are which rails and volts? Does it say on the cables themselves or something? I never looked. I would obviously need to have the cpu on one 12v and possibly the 6800GT on another 12v? while the opticals and hdd are on the shared 3.3/5v? How many of each rail do the psu come with? Probably listed under product specs right? I saw that post and it was a lot to read at 2:30 am, so I'll check back later. Thanks for the help.
 
In most all power supplies today, a "rail" refers to a specific output voltage. So, you'd have a +12v rail, or a +5v rail, etc. It doesn't matter what cable you plug stuff into, because it all connects back to the same source inside the supply (yes i'm aware about some issues with different voltage drops and whatnot but cut me some slack i'm simplifying!). However, the latest standards call for multiple "rails" for single outputs. So, you'd have a +12vCPU, and +12v Everything else. Again, you don't really have to worry about connectors in a dual rail design, because the CPU rail isn't going to be connected to drive connectors, it'll be connected to the ATX connector and the P4 connector, and vice versa with the other +12v rail. The only consumer-level ATX powersupplies with multiple +12v rails right now are the latest Enermax supplies. In the past, it was only found in high-end multi-cpu servers.
 
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