power supply question

[Civilized]

I just purchased a sparkle 400watt(12V) psu about three days ago and I think I might have made a bad choice....i did the wrong thing and purchased before researched....I am running a p4 2.4B gaming system (so add in all the goodies radeon 9700 pro etc..)...I have read that the p4 uses only the +12V rail and I should focus on a psu that offers alot of power on this rail...the sparkle psu I purchased offers 15A of power on the +12V rail, while the enermax and antec offer around 18A-22A.....should I return this power supply when I get it and exchange it for an enermax or antec true or should this psu provide the quality I am looking for?
A review I read said that a minimum of 18A was suggested for a gaming system...and I am going to overclock soon so this even adds to the madness...

 

[Quetzacoatl]

Ho boy...well, I never considered Sparkle a very high end company in terms of quality power supplies, certainly not for overclocking. I'm HIGHLY reccomend looking into Antec or Enermax for a power supply, at least 350 or so watts. I really like the Vantec power supplies, as well as Thermaltakes, but there's plenty of good suppliers out there. Right now though, i'd ditch the sparkle and get something of higher quality, especially considering you're going to overclock

Instead of Rdram, why not just merge 4 Sdram channels...

 

[halkebul]

i'd ditch the sparkle and get something of higher quality, especially considering you're going to overclock

I agree. I highly recommend the Enermax EG465P-VE(FMA) 431W power supply.


<i>It's your world kid!!!</i>

 

[Quetzacoatl]

Mmm...yes, Enermax is nice =) I like my Antec 430 watt truepower, but I really want to replace it with a Vantec Aluninum 520 watter

Instead of Rdram, why not just merge 4 Sdram channels...

 

[Civilized]

enermax it is =]....i called newegg and they will take it back...im going with the Enermax EG465P-VE(FMA) 431W power supply

 

[ZER0]

first question is there anything besides this research that makes you think your p/s is bad. have you used it? personaly i think a 400watt p/s is way to much unless its a damn server with 2 cpus and scsi drives. i know everybody on these boards likes to have a 10k watt p/s but why don't you give it a wirl and see how it goes. btw the overclocking arguement how much more power do you think it takes to go from 1.5 to 1.65 volts??

 

[Civilized]

well the enermax supplies 33A to the +12v rail that is about three times what the sparkle delivers....I just want a good quality psu....the only reason I got a sparkle this time was because I had one previously and it was a good psu but it was used on a much slower cpu etc...besides all of this the enermax is only 25 bucks more so that is enough to make me return it

 

[ZER0]

well you could be correct all i'm saying is providing 33a if it requries 10 doesn't matter.

 

[Civilized]

you have a point...and im sure operating under normal conditions the computer will be perfectly stable....im just worried about the 100 percent load times when it may blow up on me =]....and then again it may be just fine....who knows

 

[ZER0]

who knows is right. it might not be enough but i think its worth giving it a shot b4 you shell out more cash on a new p/s.

 

[Quetzacoatl]

Look...have you even used a sparkle PSU? My friend had one, 400 watts, most likely the same one civilized has here. It's extremely poor quality, overheats, doesn't provide enough voltage to even moderately overclock. It could possibly wreck his mobo, unclean power source. He's better off just investing the extra money for a reliable source.

Instead of Rdram, why not just merge 4 Sdram channels...

 

[tuesday630]

Actually, most of the power for the motherboard is through the 3.3V and 5V rail, then, when additional power is needed, it's pulled from the 12V. This is the reason for the change to the ATX speciification - when they added the 4-pin 12V cable that plugs into the motherboard. It's purpose is to kick in when extra juice is needed. Even with an AGP50 type card and a P4, a PS that delivers continuous output at least 30A at 3.3V, 30A at 5V and 15A at 12V should be good enough for a power user.

Of course, it's easy enough to do the math with all of the devices you plan on using to see if you have enough 12V. To figure it out, assume that the motherboard with a P4 will pull about 8 Amps of 12V max. Most CD/DVD drives pull a max of about 1.5 amps of 12V each (on spin up then less later). Your fans are about .26 Amps and your hard drives probably average about .6 amps of 12V. This should give you a pretty good picture of your 12V needs.

 

[ZER0]

actually i buy cases with p/s and i've never heard of sparkle. the biggest i ever go is 325.

 

[LtBlue14]

does the graphics card (and pci cards) pull from the 5 and 3.3 then, through the motherboard? and how much juice does a ti 4600, or a 9700(pro) take?

--------------

<A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=faq&notfound=1&code=1" target="_new">mubla otohp eht ni ecaf ruoy teg</A>

 

[tuesday630]

It's hard to say how much juice is pulled on each rail for the AGPPro. I contacted ATI support and asked this question and was told by a guy named Anthony Prowell that the information was propietary information. However, if the card follows the AGP 3.0 spec (which, by the way is the last release of AGP - Intel is not developing AGP further than AGP 3.0), then only 1 Amp of 12V is used, the rest of the 50W is pulled from the 3.3 and 5V rail.

I'm no expert, so you may want to check out the spec for yourself. You can see it at:
http://www.intel.com/technology/agp/downloads/agp30_final_10.pdf

See page 95.

 

[tuesday630]

Oh, and to try and answer the first part of your question, I'm not sure about PCI video cards (but I am pretty sure it's also on the 3.3 and 5V rail), but non PRO series AGP cards pull 25W, AGPPro50 pulls 50W and AGPPro110 can pull 110W (I don't think there are any 110W cards in the gaming market - mostly highend CAD and such).

 

[ChipDeath]

I kinda agree with you, zer0...
Although my latest system has had some problems which seem to be power related, my previous system has been running happily for years (I still use it often) was:

Athlon (T-Bird) 800 (@824Mhz - a small oc, but hey )
Geforce 2 Ultra
SB LIVE! 1024 Platinum
LinkSys NIC
512Mb PC133 SDRAM
30Gb 7200HDD (can't remember the make)
CD-ROM, Combi DVD/CDR drive, LS120 Drive, floppy, etc.

All this is 100% stable, and running on a 230W PSU! - I don't think it should cope really, but it does...


---
:tongue:

 

[ZER0]

thats been my experience also. maybe its the quality not the max output thats most important.

 

[eden]

Read my topic and input your opinion.


--
<A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=faq&notfound=1&code=1" target="_new">The THGC Photo Album, send your pics and see others'!</A>