Introduction
The Power Supply Unit (PSU) is usually one of the most under rated parts of a computer and often enough we see a lot of OEM manufacturers and system builders cutting costs and recommending or fitting low quality PSU's in the hope of reducing the final system cost. This usually leads to completing the sale, but also leads to lower life of the entire computer. The PSU is like the heart of the computer and cutting costs here will lead to a lot of issues in the future. A bad quality PSU can lead to the premature death of your GPU, CPU or can take out a number of components at once.
There are also lot of times I see posts on the forum where people ask about PSU's and which one would be suitable for their rigs. I also see a lot of people going overboard with suggestions of higher wattage PSU's, using future upgrades as an excuse and I also see a lot of people giving advise on power supplies that are not really up to the mark, or power supplies based on brand names.
My main intention of creating this thread is to dispel some of these myths and also to give a recommended list of power supplies that are commonly available in India today, as well as to give some basic knowledge on PSU's. I will also keep adding to this list from time to time to make sure that the data is current. I would also appreciate inputs from the senior members on this forum as and when possible.
Ok, so lets start with a list of manufacturers.....manufacturers you say, like Corsair, Coolermaster, XFX, Be Quiet, Thermaltake and the million others? Well, to be truthful, most of these brands are never made inhouse and truthfully most of the brands are outsourced to a bunch of Taiwanese and Chinese manufacturers. Some of these are better known and some not so much. Most of the brands tend to work on existing designs of the final manufacturers and very few of the brands actually make significant changes to the available platform. So basically, when all of us were loving the first series of Corsair power supplies to come out in India, what most of us did not realize was that many of the models were actually made by Seasonic. So, how can we actually find out the manufacturer of our PSU?
First, search for your Ul Number, which will be printed on your power supply. It normally starts with an "E" with a series of numbers after that.
Input the numbers in the UL File number space in the following link and thats when you will find out who the actual manufacturer is:
UL Number Database
And bnigo, there you go. You now know who manufactured your PSU. But how does this help me?
Well, here are a list of some of the better known manufacturers and hopefully your PSU is from this list. Keep in mind that this is a very general list and all manufacturers have basic lines which are really not up to the mark. And there will be manufacturers not on this list which have exceptional line s as well. The difference here are that these manufacturers tend to have a better track record and overall better quality:
Well there a lot more, but these are some of the brands that make it to India, so I think this list should be enough for us. For a full list of manufacturers you can take a look at this link:
List of PSU Manufacturers
And once you go through that, you will realize that there a whole lot of them.
Coming back to the main topic for today, lets move on to what you should be looking for when choosing a PSU.
Choosing a new Power Supply Unit
Well, lets start this off with trying to figure out what your requirements would be. Remember, that 99% of single GPU units do not require a quality PSU of more than 450 watts. But in case you do want to get an approximate of the peak power consumed by your rig, here are two PSU wattage calculators that you can use:
Antec PSU Calculator
And
Extreme Outer Vision
Both are pretty simple to use and self explanatory in nature.
Once you know what your peak wattage figures are looking like, add around 15-20% to it to be on the safe side. So for example if your peak wattage requirements are around 500 Watts of power, I would add around 100 watts to that and look for a good quality 600 Watt PSU. Please keep in mind, this is how I decide on the wattage I require and there is no science behind it. My reasoning is that I would like to run my PSU at around 70-80% of its total wattage, so as to keep it running quieter and longer.
So, as an example lets take my current setup and run it through the calculator:
AMD 1090T Phenom II
Asus 990FX Crosshair V
Super Talent 2000 Mhz CL 8
ATI/AMD 6970
10 Fans
2 Hard Drives
1 Optical Drive
1 SSD
Taking all this into account, I run up a total wattage requirement of around 360 - 370 Watts. I can add around 80 watts to that and easily go for a nice 450 watt PSU. 99.9% of users will not needs more than this and a quality 400-450 watt PSU is more than enough for most of us. I would take this number up to 500 Watts, taking some amount of overlcocking into the picture. Anything more than this is simply overkill for a single GPU setup.
Taking a similar setup with 2 X AMD 6970's in Crossfire leads to a wattage of around 600 Watts. Add some margin for overclocking and redundancy and a good 750-800 Watt PSU should suffice. So, what do we do with PSU's that are rated in the 1000 Watts and above range. Well, unless you plan to run Tri/Quad GPU setups, I really don't think you would need something that powerful. Bottom line, stick to a quality 500 Watt PSU for a single card setup and a quality 700-800 Watt PSU for a dual card setup.
Once you have decided on the wattage that you are looking for, the next thing you need to do is to take a look at some of the better known review sites across the internet, before taking a decision on any brand. Some of the sites I do suggest are:
Jonny Guru - One of the best sites for PSU testing and reviews
Hard OCP
Techpowerup - Just started doing PSU reviews but seems to be doing an unbiased job till date
I usually dont look beyond these three sites simply because they have are unbiased to a large extent and tend to do the reviews in the right way, with normal and hot box testing. Keep in mind that testing a PSU requires a lot of equipment, which in the real world costs a whole lot of money. These sites mentioned above seem to have the necessary equipment in place and I would rather trust them than most others. I have seen a lot of PSU reviews which are really mediocre at best, using multiple GPU's and software to test the efficiency and power output of a unit. Stay away from using these as your main source of information.
Once you have gone through the reviews, take into account availability of the units and then make a choice depending on your budget. If you take the time to read through some of the reviews on the sites mentioned above, I hope you will end up with a unit that will give you years of faultless service.
In the next section, I will deal with some of the technical specifications to look out for in your new PSU.
Technical Specifications and what they mean
This section is going to deal with some of the more common specifications that we see on power supply units and what they mean for us as consumers. I am not going into the more macro aspects as of now. Lets start with something basic.
Efficiency - Well efficiency is the output power of a PSU divided by its input power. Basically a PSU takes power from the wall socket and distributes it to various components in your system. The efficiency of the PSU calculates how much power it will draw from the socket for a fixed amount of power required for the computer to run. So, if a PSU takes 500 watts from the wall but your computer is only using 400 watts of it at the time, then a 100 watts is lost in the process and the efficiency of your PSU is 80%. Most branded PSU's are rated for their efficiency using the 80 plus certification.
80 Plus Efficiency - This is an initiative to promote energy efficiency in computing. This is run by an independent agency and they offer 6 types of efficiency level certifications, from 80 Plus all the way to 80 Plus Titanium. An 80 Plus certified PSU should run at a minimum at 80% efficiency at loads of 20%, 50% and 100%. And a platinum certified unit should run at efficiency of more than 90% plus from 10% to 100% load. If you want to know the exact specifications, you can visit wikipedia here :
80 Plus
Wattage - This is the total maximum output that a PSU is capable of taking all the rails into account. These days, most of the wattage is provided to the 12V+ rails as these are the rails that run the CPU and GPU.
Continuous and Peak Power - Most PSU's are rated at their peak power, while some of them tend to go with Continuous power. Continuous power is the total load at which a PSU can run without any problems for a long period of time. Peak power is the load at which a PSU can run for only a small amount of time before its shuts down. While choosing a PSU, Continuous power is a more important aspect than peak power. A 500 Watt rated continuous power PSU can run at 500 Watts all day and may have a peak power rating which is higher. A 500 Watt peak power rated PSU will not run at 500 Watts continuously and running ti at this wattage is sure to reduce the life of the unit.
MTBF - Stands for Mean Time between Failure. Its an indication of the total life of the PSU and is normally given in hours. The MTBF is usually rated for a particular operating temperature and unfortunately this temperature is usually not very realistic in India.
12V rails - This is the most important rail in a PSU as it powers both the CPU and GPU. There has been a lot of discussion on how a single 12V rail improves overclocking and stability, but all that talk has no basis. A multiple 12V rail PSU has all the advantages of a single 12V rail, with the added benefit of Over Power Protection on each and every rail. This is not an issue in power supplies below 500 Watts, but on higher wattage supplies OPP is an added benefit with multiple rails
Over Power Protection - Well, this simply means that in case any of the rails start to pull more power than specified for your power supply, the PSU will shut down before harming any components
Power Factor Correction - There are two types of PFC's out there. Active and Passive. The active systems work better for you, so try and look for this when buying a new PSU. For more details on PF and PFC head over to this link:
Power Factor Correction
Ripple - Ripple is the amount of "noise" that is produced when a rail of the PSU is used. This is normally governed by ATX specifications and ripple should not be more than +/- 5% of the rated values at all times and +/- 10% of the negative rails like the -12/5 V rails. Ripple in higher end power supplies tends to be much lower than the specifications. High ripple can have an adverse effect on overclocking.
And finally, There is no difference between using modular and non modular systems. Modular systems will help you manage your cables better. Secondly, a higher rated power supply will not use more power. All power supplies will only draw the amount of power required by your computer and not more. And thirdly, a 400 Watt rated power supply should be able to supply 400 watts to your computer and will probably draw more from the power point depending on efficiency of the unit. SO an 80% unit will draw 500 W from the power point to supply the 400 Watts it is capable of.
Well, I hope that about covers most aspects that you would normally see in a review and I hope its not too technical and have tried to make it as easy to understand. There are a number of other aspects, like capacitors, transient filter components, Switchers, Diodes etc. These are more to do with the build quality and components used in a power supply and I will not be going into them at this point of time.
Recommended Power Supply List
Coming into the most important part of this article, lets head on to the recommended power supply list. This is a list based on various reviews from recommended sites and not based on what I have used in the past. Like I have said earlier in the article as well, testing PSU's is a difficult and expensive hobby and there are very few review sites out there which have the capital to setup a testing center. I hope to add to this list over time to keep it up to date. Lets start with basic systems:
< 400 Watts:
These are mainly for lower power systems, with on board GPU's or a single lower end GPU.
400 - 600 Watts:
Enough for all single GPU solutions available out there. Please choose from this list where ever possible. Some of these may not be available in India yet.
600 - 800 Watts:
700/800 watts is enough for most crossfire/SLI setups.
800 - 999 Watts:
Good for high end SLI/Crossfire Setups and 3 card setups as well. And finally,
> 1000 Watts:
So there you have it. The complete list of recommended power supplies for your needs. This list has been chosen after reading a number of reviews across creditable sites and also taking the help of more informed users from across the internet. I have to thank Tator Tot from Overclock.net for his indepth list on recommended list as well. This is not a all inclusive list and some power supplies may have been left out, simply as I am not able to find creditable reviews for them.
I hope this list will help you to make a informed decision the next time you go out hunting for a new Power Supply. Thanks for reading and till next time.
The Power Supply Unit (PSU) is usually one of the most under rated parts of a computer and often enough we see a lot of OEM manufacturers and system builders cutting costs and recommending or fitting low quality PSU's in the hope of reducing the final system cost. This usually leads to completing the sale, but also leads to lower life of the entire computer. The PSU is like the heart of the computer and cutting costs here will lead to a lot of issues in the future. A bad quality PSU can lead to the premature death of your GPU, CPU or can take out a number of components at once.
There are also lot of times I see posts on the forum where people ask about PSU's and which one would be suitable for their rigs. I also see a lot of people going overboard with suggestions of higher wattage PSU's, using future upgrades as an excuse and I also see a lot of people giving advise on power supplies that are not really up to the mark, or power supplies based on brand names.
My main intention of creating this thread is to dispel some of these myths and also to give a recommended list of power supplies that are commonly available in India today, as well as to give some basic knowledge on PSU's. I will also keep adding to this list from time to time to make sure that the data is current. I would also appreciate inputs from the senior members on this forum as and when possible.
Ok, so lets start with a list of manufacturers.....manufacturers you say, like Corsair, Coolermaster, XFX, Be Quiet, Thermaltake and the million others? Well, to be truthful, most of these brands are never made inhouse and truthfully most of the brands are outsourced to a bunch of Taiwanese and Chinese manufacturers. Some of these are better known and some not so much. Most of the brands tend to work on existing designs of the final manufacturers and very few of the brands actually make significant changes to the available platform. So basically, when all of us were loving the first series of Corsair power supplies to come out in India, what most of us did not realize was that many of the models were actually made by Seasonic. So, how can we actually find out the manufacturer of our PSU?
First, search for your Ul Number, which will be printed on your power supply. It normally starts with an "E" with a series of numbers after that.
Input the numbers in the UL File number space in the following link and thats when you will find out who the actual manufacturer is:
UL Number Database
And bnigo, there you go. You now know who manufactured your PSU. But how does this help me?
Well, here are a list of some of the better known manufacturers and hopefully your PSU is from this list. Keep in mind that this is a very general list and all manufacturers have basic lines which are really not up to the mark. And there will be manufacturers not on this list which have exceptional line s as well. The difference here are that these manufacturers tend to have a better track record and overall better quality:
- Delta Electronics - Supplies to some OEM's and also to Antec (Delta is the largest in the world)
- Seasonic - Very well known and supplies to a lot of brands like Corsair, XFX etc. Also sells under their own brand. Again one of the best manufacturers around.
- Channel Well - Supplies to Corsair, Thermaltake, Enermax and some others
- FSP - Supplies to Antec, Coolermaster, OCZ and some others, but also markets PSU's under their own brand name as well
- Sirfa - Supplies to OCZ, PC Power and Cooling and a few others
Well there a lot more, but these are some of the brands that make it to India, so I think this list should be enough for us. For a full list of manufacturers you can take a look at this link:
List of PSU Manufacturers
And once you go through that, you will realize that there a whole lot of them.
Coming back to the main topic for today, lets move on to what you should be looking for when choosing a PSU.
Choosing a new Power Supply Unit
Well, lets start this off with trying to figure out what your requirements would be. Remember, that 99% of single GPU units do not require a quality PSU of more than 450 watts. But in case you do want to get an approximate of the peak power consumed by your rig, here are two PSU wattage calculators that you can use:
Antec PSU Calculator
And
Extreme Outer Vision
Both are pretty simple to use and self explanatory in nature.
Once you know what your peak wattage figures are looking like, add around 15-20% to it to be on the safe side. So for example if your peak wattage requirements are around 500 Watts of power, I would add around 100 watts to that and look for a good quality 600 Watt PSU. Please keep in mind, this is how I decide on the wattage I require and there is no science behind it. My reasoning is that I would like to run my PSU at around 70-80% of its total wattage, so as to keep it running quieter and longer.
So, as an example lets take my current setup and run it through the calculator:
AMD 1090T Phenom II
Asus 990FX Crosshair V
Super Talent 2000 Mhz CL 8
ATI/AMD 6970
10 Fans
2 Hard Drives
1 Optical Drive
1 SSD
Taking all this into account, I run up a total wattage requirement of around 360 - 370 Watts. I can add around 80 watts to that and easily go for a nice 450 watt PSU. 99.9% of users will not needs more than this and a quality 400-450 watt PSU is more than enough for most of us. I would take this number up to 500 Watts, taking some amount of overlcocking into the picture. Anything more than this is simply overkill for a single GPU setup.
Taking a similar setup with 2 X AMD 6970's in Crossfire leads to a wattage of around 600 Watts. Add some margin for overclocking and redundancy and a good 750-800 Watt PSU should suffice. So, what do we do with PSU's that are rated in the 1000 Watts and above range. Well, unless you plan to run Tri/Quad GPU setups, I really don't think you would need something that powerful. Bottom line, stick to a quality 500 Watt PSU for a single card setup and a quality 700-800 Watt PSU for a dual card setup.
Once you have decided on the wattage that you are looking for, the next thing you need to do is to take a look at some of the better known review sites across the internet, before taking a decision on any brand. Some of the sites I do suggest are:
Jonny Guru - One of the best sites for PSU testing and reviews
Hard OCP
Techpowerup - Just started doing PSU reviews but seems to be doing an unbiased job till date
I usually dont look beyond these three sites simply because they have are unbiased to a large extent and tend to do the reviews in the right way, with normal and hot box testing. Keep in mind that testing a PSU requires a lot of equipment, which in the real world costs a whole lot of money. These sites mentioned above seem to have the necessary equipment in place and I would rather trust them than most others. I have seen a lot of PSU reviews which are really mediocre at best, using multiple GPU's and software to test the efficiency and power output of a unit. Stay away from using these as your main source of information.
Once you have gone through the reviews, take into account availability of the units and then make a choice depending on your budget. If you take the time to read through some of the reviews on the sites mentioned above, I hope you will end up with a unit that will give you years of faultless service.
In the next section, I will deal with some of the technical specifications to look out for in your new PSU.
Technical Specifications and what they mean
This section is going to deal with some of the more common specifications that we see on power supply units and what they mean for us as consumers. I am not going into the more macro aspects as of now. Lets start with something basic.
Efficiency - Well efficiency is the output power of a PSU divided by its input power. Basically a PSU takes power from the wall socket and distributes it to various components in your system. The efficiency of the PSU calculates how much power it will draw from the socket for a fixed amount of power required for the computer to run. So, if a PSU takes 500 watts from the wall but your computer is only using 400 watts of it at the time, then a 100 watts is lost in the process and the efficiency of your PSU is 80%. Most branded PSU's are rated for their efficiency using the 80 plus certification.
80 Plus Efficiency - This is an initiative to promote energy efficiency in computing. This is run by an independent agency and they offer 6 types of efficiency level certifications, from 80 Plus all the way to 80 Plus Titanium. An 80 Plus certified PSU should run at a minimum at 80% efficiency at loads of 20%, 50% and 100%. And a platinum certified unit should run at efficiency of more than 90% plus from 10% to 100% load. If you want to know the exact specifications, you can visit wikipedia here :
80 Plus
Wattage - This is the total maximum output that a PSU is capable of taking all the rails into account. These days, most of the wattage is provided to the 12V+ rails as these are the rails that run the CPU and GPU.
Continuous and Peak Power - Most PSU's are rated at their peak power, while some of them tend to go with Continuous power. Continuous power is the total load at which a PSU can run without any problems for a long period of time. Peak power is the load at which a PSU can run for only a small amount of time before its shuts down. While choosing a PSU, Continuous power is a more important aspect than peak power. A 500 Watt rated continuous power PSU can run at 500 Watts all day and may have a peak power rating which is higher. A 500 Watt peak power rated PSU will not run at 500 Watts continuously and running ti at this wattage is sure to reduce the life of the unit.
MTBF - Stands for Mean Time between Failure. Its an indication of the total life of the PSU and is normally given in hours. The MTBF is usually rated for a particular operating temperature and unfortunately this temperature is usually not very realistic in India.
12V rails - This is the most important rail in a PSU as it powers both the CPU and GPU. There has been a lot of discussion on how a single 12V rail improves overclocking and stability, but all that talk has no basis. A multiple 12V rail PSU has all the advantages of a single 12V rail, with the added benefit of Over Power Protection on each and every rail. This is not an issue in power supplies below 500 Watts, but on higher wattage supplies OPP is an added benefit with multiple rails
Over Power Protection - Well, this simply means that in case any of the rails start to pull more power than specified for your power supply, the PSU will shut down before harming any components
Power Factor Correction - There are two types of PFC's out there. Active and Passive. The active systems work better for you, so try and look for this when buying a new PSU. For more details on PF and PFC head over to this link:
Power Factor Correction
Ripple - Ripple is the amount of "noise" that is produced when a rail of the PSU is used. This is normally governed by ATX specifications and ripple should not be more than +/- 5% of the rated values at all times and +/- 10% of the negative rails like the -12/5 V rails. Ripple in higher end power supplies tends to be much lower than the specifications. High ripple can have an adverse effect on overclocking.
And finally, There is no difference between using modular and non modular systems. Modular systems will help you manage your cables better. Secondly, a higher rated power supply will not use more power. All power supplies will only draw the amount of power required by your computer and not more. And thirdly, a 400 Watt rated power supply should be able to supply 400 watts to your computer and will probably draw more from the power point depending on efficiency of the unit. SO an 80% unit will draw 500 W from the power point to supply the 400 Watts it is capable of.
Well, I hope that about covers most aspects that you would normally see in a review and I hope its not too technical and have tried to make it as easy to understand. There are a number of other aspects, like capacitors, transient filter components, Switchers, Diodes etc. These are more to do with the build quality and components used in a power supply and I will not be going into them at this point of time.
Recommended Power Supply List
Coming into the most important part of this article, lets head on to the recommended power supply list. This is a list based on various reviews from recommended sites and not based on what I have used in the past. Like I have said earlier in the article as well, testing PSU's is a difficult and expensive hobby and there are very few review sites out there which have the capital to setup a testing center. I hope to add to this list over time to keep it up to date. Lets start with basic systems:
< 400 Watts:
- Seasonic 400W SS-400-ES - Rs. 2,400
- Antec 350W Power Supply - Rs. 2,000
- FSP Saga II 400 Watts - Rs. 2,000
- Corsair CX 400 - Rs. 2,800
These are mainly for lower power systems, with on board GPU's or a single lower end GPU.
400 - 600 Watts:
- Seasonic S12II/M12II Bronze 520 - Rs. 3,500
- Antec High Current Gamer 520 - Rs. 4,800
- Cooler Master Real Power Pro 460W - Rs. 3,600
- Cooler Master GX 450W - Rs. 3,100
- Antec TP 550 - Rs. 5,400
- Seasonic S12II 430B - Rs. 2,650
- Corsair Build Series CX430v2 - Rs. 2,200
- Antec VP 450 - Rs. 2,600
Enough for all single GPU solutions available out there. Please choose from this list where ever possible. Some of these may not be available in India yet.
600 - 800 Watts:
- Seasonic X-750/X-760 - Rs. 8,500
- Antec High Current Pro 750w - Rs.
- Antec TruePower New 750w - Rs. 7,000
- Corsair TX750 v2 - Rs. 6,400
- Antec High Current Gamer 750w - Rs.
- Seasonic X-650/X-660 - Rs. 7,500
- Antec TruePower New 650W - Rs. 6,500
- Corsair HX650 - Rs. 6,550
- Corsair TX650 v2 - Rs. 5,400
- Antec High Current Gamer 620w - Rs. 6,250
- Seasonic S12II / M12II 620w - Rs. 4,600
- Coolermaster Silent Pro Gold 600W - Rs. Rs. 8,500
700/800 watts is enough for most crossfire/SLI setups.
800 - 999 Watts:
- Corsair AX 850 - Rs. 12,100
- Seasonic X 850 - Rs. 9,900
- Antec High Current Pro 850w - Rs.
- Antec High Current Gamer 850w
- Coolermaster Silent Pro Gold 800W - Rs. 10,600
- Antec CP850 - Rs. 8,200
- Corsair TX850 v2 - Rs. 7,050
- Antec High Current Gamer 900w - Rs.
Good for high end SLI/Crossfire Setups and 3 card setups as well. And finally,
> 1000 Watts:
- Antec High Current Pro 1200w - Rs.
- Corsair AX1200 - Rs. 17,900
- Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 1200w - Rs. 16,000
So there you have it. The complete list of recommended power supplies for your needs. This list has been chosen after reading a number of reviews across creditable sites and also taking the help of more informed users from across the internet. I have to thank Tator Tot from Overclock.net for his indepth list on recommended list as well. This is not a all inclusive list and some power supplies may have been left out, simply as I am not able to find creditable reviews for them.
I hope this list will help you to make a informed decision the next time you go out hunting for a new Power Supply. Thanks for reading and till next time.
