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PSU Comments Needed

mattag08

n00b
Joined
Sep 28, 2008
Messages
11
Hi guys.

I'm looking to purchase a new PSU and I want to know what everyone impression is at first glance of my choice. Here's my setup:

Phenom 9950
Corsair Dominator DDR2 1066 2GB x 2
NVIDIA GTX 260
M-Audio Revolution 7.1 (PCI sound card)
2 SATA HDDs
1 IDE DVD/CD+-RW
8 USB devices totaling 600mA or less in power usage.

I've run this through three different PSU calculators, two came up with about 500W and one came up with 595W (for gaming). I typically run my computer 24/7/365 and I use it pretty heavily for high-end gaming applications. The power supply I was looking at was a PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad.

My questions are:
1) Does anyone have any advice about this particular PSU? Is it quality or is it crap? (I know PCP&C is supposed to be a good brand, but I wanted to here what your experience with it has been)

2) Will this 750W be powerful enough (in terms of 3.3V,5V, and 12V rails) for my system?

3) Are there advantages/disadvantages to having a single 12V rail?
 
I never had experience with these but have heard many many good things about it so yes it is a quality PSU. I was in the market for a good quiet PSU about 2 months ago and ended up going with the ZALMMAN ZM750-HP, it's modular. Another good one is the corsair 750. This will be plenty of power for your system. I have head too many different things about single rail vs. multiple rails so you just have to go with what you feel is right for your system.
 
The Silencer 750 is an excellent PSU. However, I recommend you take a look at the Corsair TX750 instead, which is on sale at Buy.com for $84 after mail-in rebate. It's pretty much equal to the PCP&C in terms of quality, and it's also significantly cheaper. Also, your system probably won't come close to 500W of power usage even under full load, so if you wanted to, you could make do with a lower-wattage unit in the area of 500-550W to be on the safe side. However, considering how great a deal the Corsair unit is, I would go with that in your situation.
 
The only thing I'm somewhat concerned about (and thus the reason I'm upgrading) is that I recently had a fried system and I still haven't completely diagnosed the cause. The only thing I know is that my video card, mobo, and CPU all got fried but everything else was fine. The 4-pin molex on my 8600GTS has a little burn mark on the corner and the voltage regulators on the video card look melted (so I personally think the regulators blew out). I'm curious though if this was the result of an underpowered system. I currently run an Antec Truepower 550W that's about 2.7 years old. I don't have the box or remember specific rail amperages, but I know it was more than enough back when I bought it. I'm worried that my new computer components may have over-taxed it and I don't want a repeat episode. If you want to know more and see my system specs check out the thread I posted about the incident here. Another thing to note, is the Antec PSU is still working fine and is currently powering the old computer parts that I stuck back in so the PSU isn't damaged as far as I can tell.
 
The main problem in that incident was probably the age of the PSU and not its rating, although the older TruePower units also weren't all that great. However, if you're worried about overtaxing your PSU, the Corsair TX750 I recommended will remove any risk of that happening with your parts.
 
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