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| Thread ID: 34718 | 2003-06-22 03:31:00 | Please give me some advice on a new PSU and hard-drive. | PoWa (203) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 154164 | 2003-06-22 03:31:00 | Hi I'm going to be upgrading my 1.1athlon PC so I can do some heavy video encoding. For this I need a new hard drive as the existing 20Gb isn't near enough. Whats something thats a good brand, that won't fail, will last for many years to come, not be too noisy, and be about 80Gb and 7200rpm. 120Gb might be a little too much to manage. Also it has to be in my price range of well under $200. Was there an article about hard drives in the pc-world magazine recently? What month? Also if I'm going to be putting this hard drive in I will likely need a new Power Supply. Already I am running a motherboard,floppy,harddrive,cd-rw and cd-rom drive. Add another hard drive, I might just be running short of power :). I will be keeping the old hard drive, for linux or experimentations. hmm :p I might also be adding a dvd-rw drive in the near future, so a PSU with lots of power cable things would be handy. Already I've run out of them. So what sort of wattage power supply will I need? Whats the best brand for these things? Do they all protect your motherboard etc from power spikes etc? Does having more wattage in your PSU cause your power bill to increase dramatically? Any help much appreciated, I know you guys answer questions like this every week, just do it once more :) |
PoWa (203) | ||
| 154165 | 2003-06-22 05:27:00 | What is your current psu rated at? You can get Y splitters from DSE, etc, if you run out of molex plugs to install goodies onto but your psu will have to handle the extra load . Seagate drives are very quiet, $148 . 50 PC Sale ( . co . nz/) , and I've heard good things about Western Digtal drives, $178 . 88 ETC (http://www . etccomputers . co . nz/" target="_blank">pcsale . co . nz/) , and I've heard good things about Western Digtal drives, $178 . 88 ETC (http:) , info care of PriceSpy ( . pricespy . co . nz/cat_3 . html" target="_blank">www . pricespy . co . nz) Cheers Murray P |
Murray P (44) | ||
| 154166 | 2003-06-22 07:30:00 | As was said, what rating has your current one got? > So what sort of wattage power supply will I need? Unless you have a fancy graphics card you could probably get away with a _good_ 300w. > Whats the best brand for these things? I would reccomend Enermax. They come with an insane number of connectors and are nice and quiet. I got a 350W one for ~$130. > Do they all protect your motherboard etc from power > spikes etc? Not really AFAIK. > Does having more wattage in your PSU cause your > power bill to increase dramatically? The wattage is the maximum loading that it can handle (but don't expect to cheap ones to manage what their rated). They only supply as much power as needed, so a 500W PSU won't use more than a 300W. A 500w might actually use less power, because their efficiency drops when they are heavily loaded. |
bmason (508) | ||
| 154167 | 2003-06-22 12:46:00 | Thanks for the replys so far :) I just opened my PC up, and whatta ya know it has a max output of 110Watts! Whoa is that bad!? That thing is running a 1.1Thunderbird Athlon cpu, a Geforce 4, NIC, 1 hard drive, 1 floppy, and 2 cd drives! Maybe thats why I'm getting the odd freezeup? :| I will be upgrading my vid card to a slightly better geforce4 or radeon, so will I need a higher PSU than 300w now? Who is a reliable/cheap online dealer that will sell this to me? AFAIK stands for? I'll have a look on pricespy for a nice 80gb seagate. Any model number in particular? Or doesn't that sort of thing matter? |
PoWa (203) | ||
| 154168 | 2003-06-23 00:54:00 | *bump* | PoWa (203) | ||
| 154169 | 2003-06-23 01:12:00 | You need a Power Supply that can handle the amount of hardware you have, I use to have a 300W power supply (suitable for P4s apparently) but over time the capacitors start degrading and the power drops. My specs were probably more than what most people would use as it was a server pc running Dual Processors, maxed out RAM and a lot of peripherals, I decided to get a 500W PSU even though it was way more than what I would need (I think a 400W would have been fine) I just liked how it was with it's fans so it'd keep the system cooler. AFAIK stands for As Far as I know, well AFAIK that's what it means :P 300W sounds alright for your system spec as you don't have as much on it as my server pc which was maxed out hard drives with onboard raid as well. |
Kame (312) | ||
| 154170 | 2003-06-23 01:20:00 | > Thanks for the replys so far :) > > I just opened my PC up, and whatta ya know it has a > max output of 110Watts! Whoa is that bad!? That thing > is running a 1 . 1Thunderbird Athlon cpu, a Geforce 4, > NIC, 1 hard drive, 1 floppy, and 2 cd drives! I take it your running a hp/compaq/etc . 110w would have just been enough to run your system when you 1st got it . > Maybe > thats why I'm getting the odd freezeup? :| Possibly . > I will be upgrading my vid card to a slightly better > geforce4 or radeon, so will I need a higher PSU than > 300w now? Who is a reliable/cheap online dealer that > will sell this to me? Would be a good idea . A good 300w would probably handle it, but since you have to get one anyway, a brandname 350-400W would be safe . I got mine from http://www . pcgamer . co . nz/ in dunedin . > AFAIK stands for? as far as i know . |
bmason (508) | ||
| 154171 | 2003-06-23 01:24:00 | > I'll have a look on pricespy for a nice 80gb seagate. Any model number in particular? Or doesn't that sort of thing matter? Yes, of course it does matter. The different model numbers relate to hard drives with quite different specifications as you would see if you looked closely. Do a search on Google for each model to find out the differences. Remember that you will have to settle for a lower-performance model for the price you are wanting to pay. |
tommy (2826) | ||
| 154172 | 2003-06-23 03:07:00 | Both drives I mentioned above are 80GB 7200rpm ATA 100 2MB cache drives. You will pay more for an 8MB cache. Any higher than a ATA 100 won't be used by your system, its probably using ATA 66 as it is. HTH Murray P |
Murray P (44) | ||
| 154173 | 2003-06-23 03:18:00 | Just check the physical size of the power supply in your case PoWa. Some like hp, compaq have different physical size. Want to get out your tape measure and give your size (don't be rude :) ). | Pheonix (280) | ||
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