Cooler Master

Until recently, buying a PSU with a four-digit wattage was perhaps most useful for boasting among fellow hardware enthusiasts – there was barely any real need for such high wattages. However, Bitcoin mining and Altcoin mining have changed that.

Although high-wattage power supplies get most of the glory, we take our hats off to small, efficient solutions offering more practical output. We take four sub-450 W PSUs and run them through our benchmark suite to see if we can determine a winner.

So you like our System Builder Marathon? Ever come up with your own idea for a killer rig? Don't forget to tell us about it on the Tom's Hardware forums. The following ten setups were configured by forum members and chosen in Q1 2013 BestConfigs Poll.