Quote:
Originally Posted by
dogbiscuit
I like seeing electronic stuff go bangflash.
So... I think I should get a good PSU then.
But here's another angle on the question - what if I get a cheap one that's got a much higher wattage than I need, wouldn't that give me lots of room, a big safety margin?
I see on ebay an 800W PSU for £24.
Hypothetically, wouldn't that mean I would never really stress it if it powered a system that used a lot less current than that?
Edit: Which 800W PSU are you seeing there? What is the make and model?
No, because regardless of the wattage, a low quality PSU is still a low quality PSU. In other words, regardless of a low-quality PSU's claimed wattage capacity (and I stress the word "claimed"), it is still very likely that it is unable to deliver clean and stable power. It would be the slow and gradual death of your system. It would be torture for it. Not only that, but you would also end up with all kinds of stability problems - even without overclocking.
You can equate building a computer system to building a human being. The PSU is the heart. If you were to build a human being, then would you buy a cheap heart? Or would that be your most important investment? Compare two human beings where one has a weak heart and the other has a very strong and healthy heart: which one is going to be better suited to regular physical activity and occasionally playing extreme sports? I mean sure, if your human is meant to be nothing but a couch potato watching mindless T.V. shows, then the quality of its heart isn't as important (it's still important, but not
as important). However, if you ask that human with a weak heart to go out and get some physical exercise, then it's going to have some trouble doing it. It might be fine for a few minutes at first, but it'll quickly start experiencing random problems that are hard to explain.
Have you ever had a computer that seemed to have nothing but problems all the time that were hard to explain? The culprit of such a computer system is usually the PSU. So not only is the quality of the PSU important for general system stability, but if you want to be gaming and overclocking, then it becomes even
more important.
So I will say it again: the PSU is the single-most important part of a computer system. There's a very good reason why an 800W power supply would only cost £24: because it's a cheap piece of you-know-what. You usually get what you pay for, but that doesn't mean "Just get the most expensive PSU". This is more about the price-per-watt. The price-per-watt can usually be a good indicator of the PSU's quality, but even then it's still important to ask around in places such as OCN.