ATM im running P4 2.4b Abit BD7-II (onboard Sound + NIC) 265 Mb DRR 3200 24x CD Rom Ricoh CD RW ***GHEY*** Geforce 2 MX 200 (GF4 on its way!!) Bit worried about my PSU. Its a cheap and nasty 300w Mercury PSU and Will has informed me of his worry about it as he has seen/heard of 5-6 blowing and in some cases taking the board with them. I only have £50 (inc VAT + Carrage) to get me a safeish PSU that will cope with my GF4, as i have heard of 2 people having power problems with them. I have seen 2, Cheiftec 360w (p4 approved) and sparkle 300w (p4 approved) however the sparkle 350w doesnt say that its p4 approved - Cos me needs that nice lil 4 pin power lead. Does any1 have a) any advice about which one to go for, for both safety and performance (is 300w a little low for a P4 and GF 4? Cos Will told me he had problems with his GF4 on a 300w enermax, and so payed £60 (now £80 erk) for a sparkle PSU. I could do with some advice (btw my PSU atm looks and *feels* cheap, its really light in weight and looks tacky tbh) Like i said, ive only got £50 to spend in total, so it needs to be about £40 (inc vat) so i can afford Carrage if its from OCuK or anywhere with P+P costs.
Have never owned either but have heard a lot of complaints recently about Chieftec PSUs. My recommendation would be the Q-tec 550w available from various outlets. I have had a very positive experience, and have never heard a bad word said about it. Bit-tech also did a review, see the main site.
OCS out of stock till end of Oct :S Geforce comes tomorrow, dont mind waiting till friday if i order tonight. Anywhere else i can get em from? Or any other PSUs?
I've had more than my fair share of PSU problems 1 - Duff Chieftec that would only power a low power drain system, say a P3 500, and not any Athlon/P4 based system whatsoever, despite being AMD/P4 approved 2 - Enermax 350w with an extremely poor 5v line, that dropped far enough to cause the machine to reboot, crash, dump me back to desktop and lockup. This was with a GeForce 2 Ti200 and my XP1500 @ 1.61Ghz (its worth noting that the voltage levels remained fine when at stock speeds, but when i raised the core voltage to 1.85 the other lines stability dropped substantially). Since replaced with a 400w Sparkle which has been flawless so far In terms of wattage, a 300w would probably be adequate, though 350w probably preferable should you want more hardware, say another HDD or two, cathodes etc. Problem is, with a cheap PSU like the one you have now, the 300w rating is not really accurate (it can never provide a true 300w, only theoretical), and those Mercury ones are pretty pap to say the least (I've seen a fair few dead ones). You may find the voltage regulation is a bit dodgy too, which, with your motherboard, which apparently for some does have an undervolting issue (as in the voltages can drop quite low for the cpu and 5v due to the design of the power circuitry on the board), may cause stability problems such as I had with my Enermax and acron is having with his Athlon 1.4 and Ti4200..... I would go for the Chieftec 360w or the Q-Tec 550w (which is pretty good it seems, despite not being a 'true' 550w), rather than risk instability by using a poor PSU, or worse case, damaging components with a cheap PSU that really isn't very good (it is a small risk, granted, but with £500 odd of other kit at stake, it pays to have a good PSU).
I've never had a Chieftec so I can't say from my own experience, but I remember icecube's exploding one I think the Q-tec can be bought from ebuyer and kustom, and I have also seen it in the smaller computer shops round here recently.
Q-tec returns no results on Ebuyer so i searched for PSU and there were no Q-tec ones. Kustom have them never had nethin off Kustom - they decent? Seems very cheap for a 550w even tho its not a "true" 550w but as ive had such a good report i know where to send my abuse to when my system explodes
ebuyer call it the "ebuyer 550W psu" they just claim its their own branding but they are q-tecs, i got one about a month bac, and a friend got it bout 2months back, both q-tec retail jobs. tom
Kustom are bloomin' good service wise Nick £2 delivery charges on all items. P.S. Nick (Fish I mean) if you order from Kustom can you order me 4 anodised bl00 thumbscrews I'll pay ya back when they arrive, promise! Bl00 Thumbscrews
Will give me your addy m8,ive got some spare dont know if the rubber washers are on them or not.......on me b1g-d0g@blueyonder.co.uk
icecube was poking around inside his machine while it was switched on..... I've been using a chieftec 340W for a year, and it's been good. Much better than my old 300W AOpen.
fish - if it blows up / doesnt power the GF4, then deal with that when you come to it. Why buy a new one right now when for all you know it'll power your system fine 'if it aint broke don't fix it'
I do have a 400watt sparkle for sale just waiting for one bloke to make his mind up,the reason im selling it was my new p4 setup will not run on it as the cables are different,i needed a atx and a square plug and my psu has the atx and a long thin connection thing on,buy the way m8ty Kustompcs are rock solid.
