[superstar]

I was supposed to buy a psu at the end of last year before I went on vacation but didn't have the chance to do so. Well I finally have time to complete this task after coming back from vacation and working through the first bit of this year. You see I had a built my own system about 2 years ago with the help of SRX600 and SAMM here at geekstogo.com. I decided to purchase a temporary cheap $20 psu by a no name brand called DEER while I was building my pc back than. Well as you know one thing leads to another and heck this darn psu is still in my pc. LOL!

Anyways it's time for me to purchase a real psu by a major brand before this one decides to go down the toilet. Nothings wrong with it but I've had it for far too long. And I rather have my equipment powered by a professional psu. In the end I came to just two choices:

1. Enermax FMA II DXX EG465P-VE 460W V2.2 2Fan 20/24P 2x6P RoHS ATX PS

Store Info: http://www.canadacom...d...&cid=PS.808

Official Manufacturer Info: http://www.enermaxus...products_id=132



2. Enermax NT II DXX EG495P-VE 485W V2.2 2Fan 20/24P 2x6P RoHS ATX PS

Store Info: http://www.canadacom...d...&cid=PS.808

Official Manufacturer Info: http://www.enermaxus...products_id=132






I don't know which of the two I should get. This will be my first time buying a professional psu. You can see the list of hardware I use on my forum signature. I've got quite a bit of pricey hardware in my pc so I want to get what's best for me. The cheap no name DEER brand psu I'm currently using is 450watt.

I'd like to know three things:

1. Which of the two psu's is better for me to get for my current setup?

2. Does anyone know if the first one keeps the fans on for 2 minutes after you shutdown your pc like my second choice? I don't even know if that small time frame when the fans would keep spinning after shutdown would even matter. Check the product specs if you don't know the feature I'm talking about.

3. I currently have a lot of things plugged into my outlets surge bar. My pc is one of them... As I said I have a 450watt psu in my pc case. So I'm a bit iffy about buying one of the two psu's above because they are higher in wattage. I don't want to trip the breakers in my home because I use a higher wattage psu. But does switching my current 450watt psu for a higher wattage psu even matter? I mean psu's only use the amount of electricity the hardware inside a pc needs right? It doesn't necessarily mean that if I switch my 450 watt psu to a higher 460 or 485 watt psu, that it'll be drawing the max amount of wattage listed on the psu will it? I basically want to know if psu's run at the wattage amount of all the inside hardware connected to it in a pc, or the electricity always runs at the max wattage listed on the psu.

Edited by superstar, 23 May 2008 - 04:44 PM.

[Advertisements]

Glad to see your still around superstar.

I would pick the higher wattage simply because of the equipment you have in your computer. The plus of this is that if you ever decide to upgrade to a new computer you will has the PS needed for it. The 495 has 6 SATA connectors( which you don't even use now)instead of the 4 of the 465 model. Thats the only real difference i can see is a few more connections. You are correct in thinking that the hardware in the computer uses only what power it needs from the PS. A higher wattage PS may run at slower speeds on the fans simply because it does not heat up as fast , making it slightly quieter.

I did not find a answer to your second question. I really don't think a pentium 3 would get hot enough to worry about a cooling down timer on the PS. The only thing it would cool is the PS.

SRX660

[SRX660]

Glad to see your still around superstar.

I would pick the higher wattage simply because of the equipment you have in your computer. The plus of this is that if you ever decide to upgrade to a new computer you will has the PS needed for it. The 495 has 6 SATA connectors( which you don't even use now)instead of the 4 of the 465 model. Thats the only real difference i can see is a few more connections. You are correct in thinking that the hardware in the computer uses only what power it needs from the PS. A higher wattage PS may run at slower speeds on the fans simply because it does not heat up as fast , making it slightly quieter.

I did not find a answer to your second question. I really don't think a pentium 3 would get hot enough to worry about a cooling down timer on the PS. The only thing it would cool is the PS.

SRX660

[superstar]

It's better knowing that YOUR still around SRX600. I still read up on a lot of your posts in the hardware forum even when it's not my problem. You give out some really useful advice that takes years of trial and error to aquire. & well look at me now... You and SAMM created a monster a couple years ago because I'm a certified geek now! All my friends and family come to me when they have pc problems thanks to all of the knowledge you and others have given me at this site. Your still on my signature as one of the most valuable geeks here. & that's never going to change I'll tell you that much.

Well back to the task at hand...

I just bought the first choice I made:

Enermax FMA II DXX EG465P-VE 460W V2.2 2Fan 20/24P 2x6P RoHS ATX PS



Official Manufacturer Info:

http://www.enermax.c...ay1.asp?PrID=53

http://www.enermaxus...products_id=132


I bought it because they only had one left at the local store and it's Saturday so they sell units out quick. So did I make a bad choice? I really just want this psu to last me a few years. I really don't think I'll be upgrading to a new mobo, ram, cpu, or all that kind of stuff for a long time. I hope I didn't make a bad decision by rushing this. It's just that the other brands and psu's are a bit more pricey than what I can afford, and this one fell in my price range for a brand name psu. Well in the end I guess anything is better than my 450 WATT no name brand "DEER" psu right? Lol.

Oh and don't get me wrong the new Enermax psu I bought works well and everything. But for some odd reason I hear a very, very, very faint "pulsating" noise coming from inside my pc case now. I can't pinpoint exactly where it's coming from but I'd have to say it's got to be the psu because the sound was not present before. I'm a sound engineer so I can hear the smallest and faintest of sounds. I have a "good" ear for these things. It sounds like electricity running through water like you see/hear in the movies. It's faint though, almost to the point that it sounds mute. Should this be present or am I just losing my mind? Maybe it's the fact that there's two fans on the psu instead of one like my last psu. & I guess it's probably making the noises as one of them turns? Or could this faint pulsing sound be the psu cleaning the energy coming into my pc? No one else seems to hear it but me... Am I losing my marbles? I think I'm going insane...

[SRX660]

The only difference i see between then 2 PS's was the amount of connections and 30 watts. Thats not enough difference to matter unless you are pushing the edge of the power needed. I really doubt that your system runs much more than 350-370 watts. Your choice is still good.

One night i was playing a new game on my gaming computer and after i shut the game down i let the computer run for a while at idle to cool off. A while later i noticed the same phenomenon. So i started looking into the computer to find out why i was getting a rhythmic sound. I did find out by trail and error that it was caused by the 2 fan power supply i was running. Stopping one if the fans by unplugging it( i cut the power wire) also stopped the rhythm between the 2 fans. I also noticed that by running one fan at a time they had different sounds. I could not just run one fan alone because when i was playing a game the PS overheated and shut the computer down. So, now i just listen for the rhythm of the fans. I really can't hear it that often, but its fun to try. Of course, i have fun watching defrag, so what does that tell you, LOL.

SRX660

[superstar]

I bet it's the rhythm of the fans too... I think I'm just paranoid when it comes to these types of things. I just really work hard to buy my pc equipment so when I do I take things to the max if something seems out of place. Hey gas isn't cheap anymore and neither is living! I can't afford to lose this baby... That's why I had to buy a new psu and actually did so. I consider myself lucky to have had that no name DEER 450 watt psu in my system for 2 years without it failing on me. It's got to be nothing short of a "miracle". I've read some forums online where people who owned generic psus had their entire systems die when the psu gave out. And one of the most frightening psu names out there was "DEER". I just don't understand why mine lasted me soooo long and gave me no problems. I must be lucky, and I should also be a bit more careful. Because I knew it was in my system, and I knew it was the cheapest thing in my pc. I should have changed it long ago. I had originally bought it to build my pc and check if it would work with my system when you and SAMM helped me convert my old pc into Frankenstein. Well regardless of anything I'm quite happy with my pc. I have had no problems with it at all during it's use with the Deer psu. The only thing that ever died on me was my secondary hard drive which just gave out. But I would actually attribute that to the fact that I had my pc plugged into the wall during a lightening storm once and forgot to unplug it when some lightening struck fairly close to my home. I can say that my pc felt it because my screen shook when it struck. It was probably the only component that was hurt by that strike since nothing has given out since than [this happened a year ago].

My case is much more crowded now with the new psu in my system. It's wires are long and bulky so it's blocking a lot of things. I didn't really expect the psu's wiring to be so bulky. But I guess that's what you get with a higher end psu. The 4 pin molex plugs on the new psu are harder to plug in than the normal white kind. They have this special bump on the ends that Enermax puts on them for some reason. The 4 pin molex plugs are quite shaky and loose so it took a while for me to plug them in steady.

Oh by the way this probably won't matter to you but remember how you and SAMM tried to help me find out what the largest hard drive size I could put on my HP Vectra VL400 motherboard was a couple years ago? & you both came to the conclusion that you couldn't attach a drive bigger than 120GB in size? Well I'm currently using a 160GB hard drive as my secondary drive attached to this motherboard and it actually worked from the start. I was speaking to a friend of mine who works for HP and he said that it probably works because new hard drives have their own bios on board which sort of overrides a mobo bios, and the fact that I am using windows xp. So maybe back than you were trying out a big older drive with windows 98 or something? Just something I wanted to mention because I remember you said that you owned or worked at a pc shop so you may still want to give some life to those old Vectras. My pc runs fine and is quite fast. I do a lot of gaming on it and also sound engineering. Vectras do have a life after death. They're still great pcs so if you have any lying around get rid of them. I'm sure a bunch of people could use them as their first systems. I think it's because I bought an adapter off ebay to be able to use the rare Tualatin 1.4GHz Pentium 3 processors that actually run as fast as the first Pentium 4 processors. This was studied when they did a comparison between both chips. It turns out that the Tualatin Pentium 3 processor was a prototype of the first P4's. & the only way to use one is to have one of the last made rare tualatin mobos or to buy a FC-PGA to FC-PGA2 adapter off ebay. Actually you know what I was going to ask you? If you still have some lying around how much would you sell a HP Vectra VL400 mobo for just so I could have a spare in case mine ever fails? You can pm me with that info if you want to speak on that matter privately. Heck if you have an ebay account I'd buy it from you there so you can get ebay seller points. I like having a spare of everything... & I don't know where else I could find a HP Vectra VL400 mobo around here.

Edited by superstar, 25 May 2008 - 10:04 PM.