PSU...OEM vs named unit

super-saint · 15 Nov 2006 at 10:51

Hi

Currently have a 450watt PSU & have been reccommended that I upgrade to at east 500 w when i upgrade to Core Duo2 & X1950 256mb graphics card. Obviously both a OEM version & a name brand are going to supply the same amount of power but why the huge variation in price ? Also say my current PSU can not handle my upgrade - how will this manifest itself in my system ? PC will just shut down ?

Cheers guys

kmistry · 15 Nov 2006 at 11:01

Many OEM PSUs tend to not be as good as they say they are. It may state that it is a 450W but that is not relative to its true power. Also branded PSUs come with a good warranty etc so they can be RMA'd if need be. Branded PSUs tend to be more expensive because they are better than their OEM counterparts in terms of how much power they can supply on the rails and how stable they are. If a branded PSU where to ever die (and they can) it is much less likely to fry any components with it, whereas an OEM one will probably take some components with it (I know as this has happened to me before

) In terms of you not having enough "juice" for your card then yes, a PSU that isn't powerful enough will probably cause crashes, be generally unstable and maybe not even turn on (though don't quote me on this). Theres my opinion, see what others say too, hope this helps

Kiz

mikeymike · 15 Nov 2006 at 11:19

they wont neccesarily supply the same power OEM/generic tend to describe a 400w power supply as one that will PEAK at 400w, not sustained usage, for example any q-tec PSU is like this their "650 watt" PSU can only peak at 650w, sustained outage is more like 400w
named PSU's dont try to trick the customer like this, they tell you true sustainable output.

oem psu's tend to weigh nothing at all because they are built from cheap parts and have rubbish heatsinks, this is why they usually die after prolongued usage/in hot weather, decent psu's are heavy because of the larger heatsinks

then onto rails, oem/generic psu's rails are usually more jittery than a carnival rollercoaster, open an intensive app and the 12v rail will probably spiral below 12v, this is not good for system parts as it stresses them needlessly, good brand psu's will usually be totally rock solid on all their rails

finally generic/oem cpu's usually have next to no hardware protection, so if it does go it could easily take half your system with it, whereas if a good branded psu goes the rest of your pc generally survives in one bit

basically you dont just get what you pay for with PSU's as a poor psu can damage your system as well as not simply be powerful enough to run it

it could just power down when you run intensive apps, it may just crash when you turn it on, it could however blow and take half your rig with it
byebye nice new 1950pro .....ok slightly dramatic, but none the less it could happen

t31os · 15 Nov 2006 at 13:19

If you value the rest of your hardware, then dont skimp on the psu.

End of.

super-saint · 15 Nov 2006 at 14:17

Cheers guys for your helpful reponses

snowdog · 15 Nov 2006 at 15:09

super-saint said:
Hi
how will this manifest itself in my system ? PC will just shut down ?

Cheers guys

BSOD's
Reboots
Freezes
Process errors (like corruption when unzipping)

when stressed...

Oem supply's lie about output, good branded (mostly) dont...