Thursday, December 18, 2008

The power supply

One of the most overlooked components of a computer is the power supply, or the box that powers up the rest of your system and makes it run. When looking at computer specs for potential consumer computers people are about to buy the ram, processor speed, video card, and other aspects are listed but the psu is all but forgotten. Many people seem like they can't tell the difference or ask for that info anyway. If you are a smart computer user especially one who uses graphics or heavy duty processing power you need to worry about this.

Most manufacturers seem to give cheap psu's in stock computers like gateways. hp's, emachines, etc. unless you buy one with a video card preinstalled and it is an 800 dollar plus computer. I realized I needed to change my powewr supply to put a video card in my computer when I found out it is only a 300 watt bestec psu (the exact same one I used on my previous 4 year old computer that came with that). Not only are watts the thing to look at when buying a psu but the amps each of the 12v rails have as well, it is good to have at least one of those 12v rails with a 25 or above amps if the video card is real heavy duty. Often psu manufacturers also lie about the power of it and list the top watt output but not the peak but still very functional output as well.

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