power supply

M

malgovert

Member
I am not sure if this is a daft question or not, but since I don't know the answer I'll go ahead and ask it anyway: Is it better to go with a Zalman 600w power supply than an Antec 380w, and would I need any extra cooling such as Noctua fans? The motherboard is Intel w/H55 Chipset and the processor Core i5 3.2GHz. Thanks!

Cheers

M.
 
The power supply required depends on the components and accessories in the computer the power supply is powering. If your computer needs 300 watts, then the 380 is all that is required. If you use the 600 w, no harm, you just have a lot of extra power, but the computer is still only going to draw what it needs eg: 300 w.

The best thing to do is add up the power requirements of all your components and get a power supply larger than that. The antec website has a calculator to figure out how much power you need:
http://www.antec.outervision.com/
As for extra cooling, no, the power supply will have it's own fan sized for it.
 
If you need the extra power, get the bigger one. Otherwise, get the quieter one, whichever one that is.
 
I agree with both of the above replies. However I would say that for the average system today 380 watts is adequate, but no more than that. If you think you will be adding more RAM / hard drives / expansion cards at a later date, get the heftier power supply.

And why do you think you are limited to just those two? There are lots of PS units on the market, in a broad price range.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/category_tlc.asp?CatId=106&name=Power-Supplies

http://www.newegg.com/Store/Category.aspx?Category=32&name=Power-Supplies
 
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