F1speed :
Quick side question: what risks do you run by going with a noname brand or insufficient amperage PSU? As I understand it, having insufficient amps on the 12V rail means your card won't even power up, but is there any risk to your hardware? And are poor quality PSUs dangerous because they might malfunction while running and fry some components?
thanks
The risks vary. Sometimes a company will advertise a peak power, while the normal operating power is far less. In other words, you really aren't getting what you thought. That is one reason we periodically see someone writing in saying they have a 600wt psu or larger, but their computer doesn't power up. I have one psu that was advertised as a 680wt which I bought a few years ago. It hardly kept up with the SLI rig I had at the time. Come to find out, its real power was only 380wt. Any guesses about how I felt?
A bigger problem is unstable current. If you go to jonnyguru and look over the tests that he runs, you can see pictures of the current flow of the psu's and see some bad stuff. When the current is unstable, it can damage the hardware, like cpu's, video cards, ram, etc. All of a sudden that $50, or even $100 you saved on the psu is totally wiped out by the cost of replacing burned hardware, and then you have to buy a good psu anyway. Oh yes, bad psus have even been known to burn, I mean literally starting a fire. That will make you have a really bad day.
Best advice I can think of is to read the tier charts and read competent reviews, jonnyguru and others, and then make an informed choice.