Right now I am really trying to play left 4 dead. the first thing i did was buy a geforce 7900 gt, well it turns out my power supply isnt big enough to run that type of card. Im using an acer m5100 that has a puny 250w power supply. I found a decently priced 500 watt one but I just need to know what I should be looking for in the realm of rails. some say it has 2 12v rails and some say single. What do I need or how do I find out. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Well, without telling us the rest of your system's hardware there's not much we can do to help. If it's an older motherboard, there's a chance many current PSU's won't be compatible, having 24-pin power outputs where you need a 20-pin input.
Other than that, make sure you stick with a high-reputation brand, I recommend Corsair or PC Power & Cooling. A 500W PSU from either of those would give enough juice to your graphics card to run it happily, and because they're high-quality supplies, it'd run happily for a very long time.
Proud owner of a Antec EA-500D that provides 500W, with 2 +12V rails each at 22A, running at 83-87% efficiency. That should be more than enough for the 7 series, even the 8 and the 9 and the GTX 260s. It comes with lots and lots of connectors, (2 PCI-E, 4 SATA, 6 Molex, 1 8pin) so its a pretty good bet. Made by Delta (which is pretty big in industrial level power supplies).
You should be able to find that in the states for approximately 50-60 dollars. If not, I think newegg has it for about 90.
Theres also Corsair, PC Power&Cooling, OCZ, all of which will perform well, given you get one with enough power.
In terms of 1 or 2 rails, it really is irrelevant unless you are planning to SLI with serious high end cards.
This forum thread (article) should give you a good idea about the whole 1vs2 12Volt rail controversy.
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