Power Supply/Case for an Athlon 64 3000

[Soopafresh]

I used one of those online wattage calculators to get an idea of power requirements for a new system. It's for a friend who has very little $ to spend. Total Calculated Wattage Needed: 275W

This Antec seems like a good deal. The combo 120mm fan and decent quality power supply makes it an easy buy, but is the 350W power supply powerful enough ?

http://www2.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811129150

I've found other cases with higher wattage PSUs, but the power supplies look pretty dodgy and off brand. And hey, as well all know, without a good PSU, we are all merely intelligent apes.

[redwudz]

Assuming a true rating on the PS and probably 2 optical drives and two HD's and no SLI video cards, IMO, it should be sufficient.

I have a 480W on my 64, but that's with PCI-E video, 3 optical drives, a zip, floppy and 4 HDs and it's well within its rating with no heat issues.

[waheed]

You would also need to look at the volt ratings as well as the wattage.

Antecs are decent power supplies.

[Soopafresh]

waheed, does this image provide you with the info ?

http://www2.newegg.com/Product/ShowImage.asp?image=11-129-150-01.jpg,11-129-150-02.jpg...Power%20Supply

[waheed]

Yes it does. The most important rating is the +12V rating as most components draws its power from this rail (CPU, MB etc)

It would depend on the specs of the system what sort of power rating you would need. As you calculated 275W, it would it would be ok for the system.

[Cobra]

I can vouch for Antec supplies - they are excellent. I don't fully understand the technicalities, but every PSU has to provide 3.3v, 5v and 12v. Usually the 3.3v and 5v lines are fed together, so if one or the other is stressed it might deliver say 20A across it, but if both are being used then the total current drops to 10A. No idea why.

Antecs supply everything separately, so their power rating is pretty realistic. My 550W Antec TruePower is able to deliver 530W.

You'll be fine with that 350W supply, I'm sure.

[Soopafresh]

Great. Thanks everyone. Looks like that is the one.

[rallynavvie]

The only shortcoming with Antec power supplies is that they have issues with some devices coming on instantaneously. That is the Antec power on each rail seperately when it turns on and some devices (namely hard drives) want to come on with everything else but don't. This happens with both of my Antec-equipped workstations. It may only be a problem with SCSI hard drives though, but if when you turn the system on and it doesn't boot just give it a second and hit the reset button and it'll power up just fine. I read about this issue over on an SMP forum, just an annoyance more than it is a problem. Otherwise once up and running I've never had issues with the power my two Antecs have put out.

If you wanna go nuts there's always the PC Power and Cooling Turbo 510 8)