Advice on a new rig

[Trippy]

The GTX 260 has a peak power draw of around 180W which is 15A at 12V (P=VI). When they say they recommend 36A on the 12V line they mean total for the entire system, not for just that card cause otherwise that would be a tad ridiculous (432W for just the video card  )

Having a single rail 12V line makes it easier to figure out if you are within that range but having multiple 12V rails will still work as long as they put out enough power. The Seasonic is kind of borderline at 17A so if you are worried you can get something with a little more 12V power.

[Strazos]

Now, do you mean it's borderline because on any one rail, it's only putting out 17A?

Would something like this still be trustworthy, but more in line with my power requirements?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139004

Or am I going to need to jump up to the ~$100 range to find a suitable PSU for the sort of system I am looking at building?

[Trippy]

Now, do you mean it's borderline because on any one rail, it's only putting out 17A?

That's right.

Would something like this still be trustworthy, but more in line with my power requirements?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139004

Or am I going to need to jump up to the ~$100 range to find a suitable PSU for the sort of system I am looking at building?

Corsair's are good, and some of theirs are in fact made by Seasonic. That one happens to be made by CWT.

This one is made by Seasonic supposedly (it might be a CWT, based on a Seasonic design):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139005

if you wanted some more "headroom".

[Salamok]

If you are jumping up to the $100 range get something like this: Silencer-610

[Strazos]

Excellent selection, thank you Trippy.

I had some price shock for a moment there, until 1) I saw the nice discount and rebate, and 2) I remember last time I tried to shave money off by skimping on a PSU.


A more serious question: I don't think my new system is particularly ambitious - just a Q2c, a single video card, single HDD. Not running a whole lot else. Yet, I see that the Vast Majority of PSUs for sale on Newegg are simply not up to snuff. So really, the question is: Who is buying these things? I mean, are most people, in all honesty, underpowering their systems? Putting their components at serious risk due to the PSU not being able to pump out enough power?

[lac]

I'm thinking to assemble my new pc after buying stock HP and Dell machines for a while and I was wondering the same thing, when looking at the boards you see people equiping 650+ PSU's while Dell or HP machines come with 350-450 PSU's. I talked to my HP sales contact about it and he told me their PSU's will crank out a whole lot more but HP tends to downplay the specs because most rigs don't require much more in actual use and PSU's are the only component that sell better to the general public through lower specs.

I was thinking about this:
ANTEC Sonata Plus 550 -EC case
GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD3R or GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD5
INTEL Core i7-920
Corsair DIMM 6 GB DDR3-1600 Tri-Kit
WD VelociRaptor 2,5" 300 GB SATA II 16MB
Nvidia 9800 GTX (got this one now but it bottlenecks on my 3 year old cpu)

Since it's been quite a few years since I've assembled a pc, I hope I won't run into trouble putting this together.

[Miguel]

Who is buying these things? I mean, are most people, in all honesty, underpowering their systems?

Most people, in this context, are not running bleeding edge systems.  I wish I could remember where I saw the source, but someone found that most systems are using integrated graphics, or the equivalent of integrated graphics on a card....not the most power hungry users out there.  The average integrated GPU draws on the order of 10W or so (or less!).

In fact, I would think that you could put together a budget system with less than 100W power budget with today's low power chipsets.

Having said that, there's power and there' clean power.  I bet if you busted open some of those dirt cheap power supplies you wouldn't see a ton of filtering going on in there.  At least with some of the better built supplies, you not only get more amps, you get a more stable voltage rail, at whatever load is being used.  This plays a huge role in system stability as well.

[Trippy]

I was thinking about this:
ANTEC Sonata Plus 550 -EC case
GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD3R or GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD5
INTEL Core i7-920
Corsair DIMM 6 GB DDR3-1600 Tri-Kit
WD VelociRaptor 2,5" 300 GB SATA II 16MB
Nvidia 9800 GTX (got this one now but it bottlenecks on my 3 year old cpu)

Since it's been quite a few years since I've assembled a pc, I hope I won't run into trouble putting this together.

Don't see any obvious problems.

[Strazos]

While I understand that most PC users are just using Facebook, email, and internet browsing, but I would think that Newegg would have a disproportionate percentage of  ....enthusiast users, so I would think they would stock more higher-end PSUs.

Or is it just a case of I'm building a higher-end system than I thought I was, and my PSU should reflect that?

[Trippy]

Look at the Steam hardware survey:

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

That survey obviously includes very old systems as well as the latest and greatest but your system would put you at ~90th percentile (i.e. only ~10% or less of Steam players would have a machine as or more powerful than your planned build).

[Strazos]

Heh, interesting.

[Strazos]

Not to doublepost, but as an update:

New PC works like a charm. Thanks for all the help and advice here.

It's so nice to be able to just DO WHAT I WANT, especially with Windows 7. Everything just...works.