What power supply is the best for around the £40-£50 mark? As this is going in an aspire x-qpack case, the supply needs to smaller than a standard atx (but still an atx supply). I've heard good things about the seasonic line, and the enermax noisetakers, are there any better ones? prefferably one with a high airflow to assist system cooling.
Seasonic/Tagan/Hiper/Antec/OCZ all make good stuff. And PSUs aren't actually designed to act as an exhaust for the case. Btw, you can make one SINGLE thread instead of THREE. If does still work. :/
You might well have "issues" finding a good brand PSU thats smaller than standard ATX. But as kev said, the above brands are what you need to look for, not sure if ANY of those do "small" ATX supplies though.
If you mean mATX psu's then look at Fortron (sp?) also think Antec make a few smaller ones as well. Not sure what the Qpack uses.
I have just installed an Enermax Liberty 400W in my computer. It is powering everything in my sig, plus fans and optical drives etc and is deadly stable. It's great and you can get them for under £50.
By smaller i just mean the depth being slightly shorter. With this case and a full length ATX PSU the power cables at the rear of the supply interfere with the dvd drive (should really be using a smaller length dvd drive). The enermax noisetaker fitted, so I assume the liberty will, but will need to check. the seasonic's cables are fed from the left instead of the right, so can be routed very easily and are nice and quiet. I know I shouldn' really use a PSU as an exhaust, but I only have one fan space in the case (a 120mm fan), which is used as an intake and the PSU as an exhaust.
i thought PSU's were designed for this, otherwise why position them at the top of the case instead of the bottom?
When ATX was designed, that was a PSU function, kinda. But when ATX was designed 40mm fans that spun about about 500RPM covered CPU's, and there weren't any other fans in a system because there was hardly any heat produced. These days, in the age of huge fans for huge voltages, you should never rely on your PSU to exhaust heat from your case. The PSU needs to cool itself, the fans aren't there to cool other bits of the case. You want an exhaust at the back of your case always.
