3 year old Antec 550W OK for new build?

sitruz · 28 Apr 2015 at 00:05

Hi Guys,

Decided to upgrade, thought it was time after 10 years

Thought I may as well make it a gamer too, but I had to buy a new PSU about2/3 years ago (Antec 550W) and I was hoping I might be able to use that and put the cash I'd be saving back into the upgrade.

Do you think that Antec 550W would it be suitable to run this suggested upgrade...

Asus Z97-K - Devils Canyon Core i5 4690K Bundle
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Advanced CPU Cooler
Kingston HyperX 8GB (2x4GB) PC3-14900C9 1866MHz Dual Channel
Kingston HyperX 3K SSD 240GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive
KFA2 GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent "Infin8 Black Edition" 4096MB GDDR5

Plus a 1TB SATA internal HDD.

Cheers guys

HACO · 28 Apr 2015 at 01:45

Yes its sufficient.

dacads · 28 Apr 2015 at 09:19

pastymuncher · 28 Apr 2015 at 09:40

Which model 550w though? Some of Antecs models had really weak 12v rails. The original True Power only had 288w on the 12v rail, the Basiq 550 had 384w. If it was one of the better models then all should be good but you can't just say yes, it's enough, without knowing the actual model.

sitruz · 29 Apr 2015 at 00:37

pastymuncher said:
Which model 550w though?

Hi Guys. Many thanks for the replies.

The description on my old OcUK receipt is Antec Basiq Plus 550W Modular Power Supply.

pastymuncher · 29 Apr 2015 at 11:02

That only has 384w on the 12v rail which is pretty poor and it's only a budget low end psu. While it should run your pc it will only have 60-70w in reserve and leaves you little to no room at all for overclocking. It may also run hot and ramp the fan up. Personally I would buy a new psu. A quality 500-550w psu would be more than enough and give you headroom for overclocking. A couple of suggestions:-

Antec Truepower Classic 550w £59.99 Seasonic built unit with 540w on the 12v rail. Not modular.

EVGA Supernova GS550w £64.99 Seasonic built unit with 540w on the 12v rail. Fully modular. ***The price will go up when it comes off this week only and it's not a good buy then as the 650w is only a extra £5.***

Superflower Golden Green HX550w £62.99 Superflower built unit with 546w on the 12v rail. Not modular.

If you are really stuck budget wise take a look at the EVGA 500Bat £43.99. It's a HEC built unit with 480w on the 12v rail. Not brilliant but it would do the job.

My choice would be the EVGA GS550w but you would have to be quick to pick it up before it comes off this week only. It's not worth the money at full price with the 650w only a extra fiver. There should be additional units in the new this week only offers when updated later today so keep an eye on them.