Hello everyone on Tom's Hardware,
I've come to this site/forum a number of times and always with great success, so I would like to say thank you. Now I have signed-up and I'm here to bore you with a PSU recommendation post! Apologies in advance.
I have been making some component upgrades over the last few months and now it's time to replace my PSU as it's the noisiest component (much to the disbelief of my WD Raptor HD). I know my setup is older than most, but it runs fast and without any issues; it also makes a great HTPC – except for the PSU fan noise.
Foxconn K8M890M2MA-RS2H (Socket AM2)
AMD Athlon 64 x2 5600+ (2.9 GHz, 89W, Brisbane core)
Arctic Cooling “Alpine 64 PWM” CPU cooler
2 x 1GB Kingston Hyper-X DDR2 800MHz (5-5-5-18)
Gigabyte Geforce GT240 512MB GDDR5
WD Raptor HDD [SATA] - Boot Drive
WD Caviar HDD [PATA] - Data Drive
WriteMaster 48x DVD+RW [PATA]
Xilence Fan Controller (Fans: 2 x 120mm, 1 x 80mm)
Hiper HPU-4S425 425W [2004 model]
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
One random anomaly in my system is the recommended PSU wattage for the Gigabyte GT240 GPU, Nvidia and most other companies offering a GT240 variation recommend at least a 300W PSU, but Gigabyte advise a minimum 450W PSU?! The card doesn't draw more than 69W according to Nvidia and in this review it draws only 51W fully loaded:
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.phpoption=com_content...
I've been looking at a few different 400W-500W PSUs and I was hoping I could get some feedback from any members willing to read and reply to my post!
I'm looking for something nice and quiet, at lease 80plus, for around £30-£35 - I'm a bit limited on funds at the moment. So, without further adieu here are the candidates (in ascending order of price):
FSP 400W 80plus Certified Power Supply Unit OEM PSU -
http://www.cclonline.com/product/98232/9PA4005502/Power...
Xigmatek Tauro 400W PSU (80plus Bronze) -
http://www.technextday.co.uk/products/UPS-Power-Supply/...
OCZ CoreXStream 500W PSU (apparently no 80plus certification) -
http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/powersupp...
Novatech PowerStation Gaming 400W Silent ATX2 Modular (80plus) -
http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/powersupp...
XFX ProSeries 450W Core Edition (80plus Bronze) -
http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/powersupp...
Any recommendation, advise, info is greatly appreciated.