What do you think of this VERY cheap PSU? After MIR

I wouldn't overclock it; be sure to have a spare ps if you get it. Also check the shipping weight; the higher the better. I've had lightweight ps fail in just days; one only weighed 2 lbs.

lol .. what, that seems badnews ... thanks for the input

o1die, thats pretty cool thinking .. I havent thought of considering the weight of the PSU on shipment

Does anybody even own this PSU? lol

Why is it that people always seem to think that you can skimp on the PSU? its probably THE most important piece of hardware in the system. Without it you get no power which means you $2000 worth of other parts cant do anything.

Its cheap for a reason its a POS

Absolute minimum i would get is this. $30 after rebate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817371005

Yes, after you cut hte cables off.

Not a bad power supply for an old junk P4 system without much 12 volt current demand.

It may not rate favorably against a newer PSU, but I doubt it's somehow deteriorated. If it was a quality PSU in 2004 it's still a quality PSU today, you just won't be able to but a high end CPU or multiple HDDs. I know this is a very unpopular opinion here, but I disagree with the idea that you have to buy name brand PSU. I'm not saying to buy just any crap, but I don't agree with saying something is POS just because it's not a name brand and doesn't cost a fortune. I personally like Ultra (Tiger Direct brand I think) and Dynex/RocketFish (Best Buy brands) for cheap PSUs. I got a free Ultra 600w with a video card that ran great, I only replaced it because I wanted one with modular cables and 1 120mm fan (as opposed to 2x80mm). I also bought several Dynex PSUs while working at Best Buy because I got them for $15. I build 3 systems with them and all run great, including one I still own which really pushes the 450w - I may switch it out with the 600w I still have. Do some research because you'll find a lot of times the same manufactures are making both the cheap and name brand PSUs. Working at Best Buy I found out that Antec either makes or uses the same manufactuer as the Best Buy brands.

Since the main draws on the PSU (on the 12v rail) are Mobo, CPU and GPU. And the fact that the GPU you plan to use is a lightweight

"7600 GT _________####} 36W ²" from here:
http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/forums [...] c=7&t=9354

So there is no way that, that machine will draw 380W

Actually it is currently $19.99 after the rebate because newegg has a $10 instant savings on it atm. I have this PSU and got the exact same deal about a month ago. As far as PSU's for under 20 bucks goes the EA380 is the top of the line.

Although I believe PurpleRat has a point, in general I will disagree. I spent some time on jonnyguru not long ago reading all the PSU reviews. There were a few surprises; I suspect there are some gems on tiers 4 and 5, but most of the cheap PSUs they tested failed, well below their ratings, and many of those failures involved special effects. The post-mortems often showed why.
It's a matter of risk too, and load. I'd run a Tier-1 or 2 PSU all day long at 90% of its capacity well before I'd even think of running a Tier-5 model at 50%, but I still have an old Aspire that I'd use if I only needed to pull 150W-175W in a non-critical application.
As many others have said, if you're spending $2K on a rig, is it unreasonable that a mere 5-10% go to the PSU? I don't think so.