[PercentSevenC]

Just put together a cheap system and I made the mistake of buying a Rosewill PSU. After the second DOA unit, I got Newegg to give me a refund and I'm going to pick up something not quite as... junk. In the meantime I'm using an Antec Basiq 430W I stole out of another system. It works, but I haven't started overclocking yet.

What I've got:
AMD Phenom II X3 720, 4th core unlocked (we'll see how far I can take it on air)
Gigabyte GA-770TA-UD3
2x2GB G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3-1600 CL7 RAM
ATI Radeon HD4870 1GB (won't be Crossfiring; mobo doesn't support it anyway)
One 7200 RPM SATA drive, may get another eventually
5 case fans (3 with LEDs), DVD burner, and a handful of USB devices

I've had my eye on this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817371030

Or the Seasonic unit on which it is based:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817151094

Supposed to have really good ripple suppression for it's price, but I don't know how much difference that actually makes.

I'm concerned that it might not give me enough overhead with overclocking. How do you calculate the extra wattage required by overclocking, given a known Vcore? Is it all on the +12V rail? I've been trying to find some hard numbers about how many amps my video card draws, but not much luck.

Any information or advice would be much appreciated. I'm doing my best to learn, but there's a lot of information to absorb.

 

[captain_clayman]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-015-_-Product

this should be enough watts to overclock the crap out of your system

 

[Phaedrus2129]

You're hardly a noob if you've done the research to know about the NeoECO/S12II relation.

The NeoEco is the best deal there and more than enough for your system.

 

[PercentSevenC]

Quote:

Originally Posted by captain_clayman http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-015-_-Product this should be enough watts to overclock the crap out of your system

That's another one I had been considering, but according to the jonnyGURU review the ripple and noise suppression isn't as good as the S12II's. Does that even matter as long as it stays within spec? Or should I just go for the extra wattage?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phaedrus2129 You're hardly a noob if you've done the research to know about the NeoECO/S12II relation. The NeoEco is the best deal there and more than enough for your system.

Thanks, but I definitely feel like a noob here. There's so much to learn and I haven't even scratched the surface. I've just been reading all the reviews I can and trying to get an idea of what's good and what's bad.

So you think the Neo Eco will do fine, even when overclocking? I wouldn't be concerned except that 520W is already pretty close to the eXtreme Power Supply Calculator's recommendation for my system (using 1.5V as an estimate for overclocked Vcore), and I don't know how conservative that calculator is. And of course it won't tell me the +12V rail amperage unless I pay.

 

[Phaedrus2129]

My rig draws more than yours will, and I've never topped 350W draw (except for a brief time when I had a 4850 in there as well). The NeoECO will be fine. It isn't the absolute best for overclocking since it's a group regulated unit, but getting a decent indy unit would cost about $80-$90 instead. And it's a very nice group reg, so the difference would be minimal. I'd say it's your best bang for the buck.

 

[PercentSevenC]

Cool. That's the one I'll probably go with, then. Thanks for the advice.