What type of power supply should I get?

duckmanx88

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Oct 23, 2008
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Probably within the next year I plan to buy a new computer so I can give my parental units my current rig.

My plan is to get a Corsair PSU but I'm not too sure how many watts I'll need.

I'd most likely be getting the AMD Phenom 2 X4 955, with a GTX 275, one bluray read drive, one dvd drive, 6 gigs of ram, and one hard drive. i wouldn't OC, and no raid configurations. to do this should I just add the power demands of all the components or should I be safe with a 750watt? (i most likely would not upgrade any parts after the purchase).
 

Greg_77

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Nov 11, 2008
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I would get a 750 watt unit, but you could go lower. My guess is that you could be fine with 650 watts. I would still go with 750 watts for safety and so you can use it possibly for future builds. Corsair, PC Power and Cooling, Antec, and Seasonic are all reputable brands around here. Their are other reputable brands as well, I just can't remember their names. I have a 750 watt PC Power and Cooling PSU and have not had any issues, but my system is not heavily stressed in the way of high power components. But, to its credit, my room often exceeds 80 F in temperature and it never has had problems.
 

skora

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If your getting a quality PSU, 550w is enough in reality. So the 650 is good for some headroom, but i doubt you'd need it. Your final decision will probably be based on price at time of purchase unless you plan to buy specific parts when they are on sale and not build till you have everything. Greg_77 has a good list of quality units, you can add silverstone to the list also.

Note on your build, if you're planning on an AMD platform, you don't want to get a 6 gig ram kit. Those kits are for triple channel intel platforms. It would work, but you'd have 3 sticks running in single channel and take a bandwith hit. You won't need more than 4 gigs (unless heavy vid/graphics editing) so stick to that. I also wouldn't commit to AMD if you're build goes out to a year. If the i5s are in the same price bracket and have superior performance, you could be missing out. i5s also only use dual channel if memory serves me correctly. Nope, that wasn't intended to be a pun.
 

ion_tribe

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Corsair 650w TX, but if you have a small case go for a modular version [OCZ like], otherwise you could end up with a bunch of unnecessary cables :p