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PC Building and Upgrading 101
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:cool: Excellent post deconduo! Very straightforward and clear.
A few suggestions...
The Samsung 830 is looking like a pretty good drive so and it's often priced close to the Crucial M4 so I think it's a worthy competitor.
I'd also throw in the 560 ti to the graphics card list as you can sometimes get good prices on it if someone can't quite stretch to a 6950. The 6950s are going up all the time too, although next month will see some changes to this list.
For hard drives, what about that hitachi drive? Deskstar D series iirc? I wouldn't normally go for hitachi but they're owned by WD now which have always been reliable for me. Sequential read & writes were very high, but access times weren't so good. Still a good option when paired with SSD. Also maybe throw in the WD or Seagate greens for the 2TB. For storage it'll make little difference and with the way hard drives prices are at the moment, any of them could be cheaper.
RAM - Maybe mention that it's for Intel systems that it makes little difference with. There's big differences for Llano, even if it's not the most popular platform. Apparently it's selling well so someone must be buying them.
It might be a good idea to throw a few different motherboard brands in there too. I see scan have started stocking them but they're not always widely available. I suggest one or two MSIs as quality, pricing and reliability has been fairly good this generation.
Well, I suppose you don't want to give too much choice as it only makes people more confused and it means that the guide requires more updating.
I think we could do with a bit more info on PSUs to add to deconduo's PSU guide. A bit of background info on OEMs and maybe a bit about efficiency curves to show people why they shouldn't overbuy with PSUs?
I could type up a bit if people wanted. I wouldn't know enough to tear a PSU down to the components but I could do an essentials guide for builders which everyone can add.
Good point about the Samsung. The M4 is still slightly cheaper for now, but if the 830 gets a speed boost from a firmware update it would definitely be a good choice.
I wouldn't go for Hitachi drives tbh, their fail rate is twice as high as the Samsung drives. I did mention to grab a good deal if you see one, but right now on HWVS the Spinpoints are by far the best choice.
I didn't mention RAM for llano because you really shouldn't be buying it :P
I might throw in a few more motherboards, I based the guide off HWVS so adding stuff from scan might be a good idea.0 -
The 830 has gone up €5 from a day or two ago, it's not worth that difference over the M4 now.
To be honest, I've never bought a Hitachi drive myself, but the max speed of 180MB/s vs the 145MB/s or so that the F3 gets is not to be sniffed at. I think that the hitachi was a single platter drive too. The 7K1000.D was a lot cheaper a while back but prices appear to be more settled now with it €3 dearer at the moment.
The F3 is an ageing drive at this stage, so I'd expect/hope for a replacement this year if the research funds are available.0 -
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Power Supply Units
What is a PSU?A PSU is responsible for transforming, rectifying and regulating the power that you get from your wall socket for your PC. All the components through which electricity flows rely upon this component, so you should choose wisely.
Why you should buy a good PSU:- Efficiency – save power and money
- Your components will last longer – cleaner power, less ripple and noise
- Your components are safer – good PSUs will be built to shutdown safely rather than blowing up
- Lives up to its rating – bad PSUs do not perform as their advertised wattage claims
- Better cables – Cheap ones don’t come with graphics card connectors
- Better warranty and support
Modular PSUs
These are PSUs with detachable cables. It’s a handy feature to reduce clutter in a case but they cost more than non-modular PSUs. The only possible downside is cables coming lose or the negligible power loss in having an additional connection in the circuit. You can get cables with sleeves that match up with the colour schemes in a case and if done right, it can look absolutely fantastic!
Does a 500W PSU consume 500W?
No, a PSU draws what it needs depending on the demands of your computer.
PSU efficiencyPSU Efficiency Ratings
Converting the power from the wall to what your PC needs is not a 1:1 process – you lose out some power, mostly in heat. Often 10-20% of the power will just go to waste in this conversion process. In recent years, there’s been a push to reduce the loss and raise efficiency.
Modern PSUs come with ratings 80+, 80+ bronze, 80+ silver, 80+ gold and 80+ platinum. This ratings guarantee efficiency at certain levels of consumption. These levels are 20%, 50% and 100% of a PSU’s rated capacity.
.| 20%|50%|100%
---|---|---|---
80+| 80%|80%|80%
80+ Bronze|82%|85%|82%
80+ Silver|85%|88%|85%
80+ Gold|87%|90%|87%
80+ Platinum|90%|92%|89%
So a 500W bronze rated PSU with a system using 250W will be running at 50% capacity and must be at least 85% efficient. A PSU is expected to achieve these number or above.
Check out the 80+ website and Wikipedia for more info.
Keep your eyes open for faked ratings too!
Efficiency Curve
Here’s an example of an 800W bronze rated PSU’s efficiency curve. You can see that efficiency does not remain constant across a PSU's load. Power consumption of any system will vary depending on what the system is doing at that time. Ideally, you want to keep your power consumption around the most efficient areas. Even when a system is processing a heavy load, it rarely approaches its maximum potential consumption as it would be unusual to have GPU, CPU and hard drives running at maximum simultaneously. Also keep in mind that most machines will spend a lot of time idle or with low consumption such as browsing the web. A PC with continuous heavy load should be equipped with a powerful PSU and vice versa. Therefore, to achieve greatest efficiency, select a PSU appropriate to your needs.
How much Power am I drawing at X efficiency?
NB: PSUs are rated for what they can supply to the computer, not for what they draw from the socket.
So if your PC requires 250W and your PSU is 85% efficient, you will be drawing 294W at the wall. If you were sure that 250W was the maximum power that you needed for a PSU, a 250W PSU would be sufficient.
So does efficiency matter?
The power consumed varies with the amount of work that a PC is doing, so we’ll just keep it simple with some fixed examples. Prices calculated at current ESB prices.- Cheap PSU. Draws 300W for 4 hours a day for 365 days at 75% efficiency.
300 x 100/83 = 400W consumed. €100.61 per year. - Bronze PSU. Draws 300W for 4 hours a day for 365 days at 83% efficiency; 361W consumed. €77.82 per year.
- Silver PSU. Draws 300W for 4 hours a day for 365 days at 86% efficiency; 349W consumed. €75.25 per year.
75% efficiency is not unrealistic for cheap PSUs, as some bad ones can dip to the 60s - you can see there could be definitely considerable savings. For 4 hours a day, there’s not a huge saving to be had between the bronze and the silver. In a server running 12-24 hours, this can quickly add up above the price of PSU upgrade - the marginal cost of €20 for a SuperFlower 450W Golden Green (~€63) over the SF Amazon bronze (€42) would be worthwhile.
I would definitely recommend that you look at getting a bronze rated PSU or at the very minimum 80+ to guarantee some baseline for efficiency.
Quality of Power – Ripple and NoiseRipple and Noise are variations in power that you do not want. A good PSU will keep the voltage supplied stable and constant – not varying above and below. Drops and surges in power can slowly (or speedily) damage your components as well as cause errors & data corruption.
Rails and Over-ratingModern ATX PSUs power a motherboard and system primarily with 3.3V, 5V and 12V cables. Black is ground. The colours are Orange 3.3V, Red 5V, Yellow 12V. You can remember them by position of the first letter in the alphabet (O then R, later Y).
Each power line (not each wire) is called a “rail”. You’ll see a table of these rails with their voltages and how much current they can supply in a table on the side of a PSU. Sometimes you’ll see multiple 12V rails but that’s not crucially important in most situations. For high wattage PSUs, the 12V rail is divided up like a fuse box or circuit breaker in your house. If there’s a problem with a plug socket in the bedroom, the switch will trip – similarly Over-Current Protection (OCP) will shut down a rail on a PSU.
You’ll also see 5VSB (5V Standby), in case you’re wondering what that’s about. -5V and -12V are rarely used in modern PCs.
Older systems relied heavily on the 5V rail but the heaviest consumption on a system today will be on the 12V. The heaviest consumers are the CPU and GPU. Most good quality PSUs will have at least 90% of their rated output on the 12V rail.
Why should you care about this? Well here’s an example.- Example 1:
Take a look at the specifications for this 650W Seasonic PSU.
P = V x I
Power (Watts) = Voltage (Volts) x Current (Amps)
3.3 x 25 = 82.5W
5 x 25 = 125W
12 x 54 = 648W
Sometimes there are restrictions on how much the rails can use combined, as PSUs often don’t perform well when drawing heavily from some rails or combinations. Read about crossloading here for more detail. So in this example, you could draw 82W from the 3.3V rail or 125W from the 5V or 125W in both of them together. If you add up the rails separately, you’d get a much higher number. You can very clearly see that on its own, the 12V rail can nearly make up the 650W rating by itself and its likely that Seasonic were even being conservative in rating this as 650W. - Example 2:
Cheapo Alpine PSU from dabs for €17. Supposedly 650W.
3.3V 22A, 5V 34A, 12V 36A, 5VSB 2.0A
Total = 3.3 x 22 + 5 x 34 + 12 x 36 + 5 x 2 = 72.6 + 170 + 432 + 10 = 684.6W
Except that there’s probably restrictions on using combined rails, so you’d be lucky to get close to 650W. A PSU can be rated at its peak power which means that they can reach this rating very briefly but not for long. Sometimes ratings can also be based at certain temperatures which don’t live up to real life environment scenarios – i.e., when a PSU is heating up in a case because it is powering a system!
Take a look at the 12V rail. 432W. Most of your power draw will be on this rail, so this PSU is only equivalent to a 450W PSU.
How much power is actually needed?So how much power do you actually need for a system? Well for a typical system with 2 RAM modules, a single mechanical HD, a DVD drive and a few case fans you are looking at roughly 40-60W excluding the CPU and GPU.
For the CPU under maximum load:Phenom II X4 @ 4GHz ~140W
i5-2500k @ 4.5GHz ~ 100W
i5-2500 ~ 60W
For GPUs it varies wildly, so look a review at xbitlabs.com to get an idea.
As a quick reference, this chart is useful (for total system consumption including PSU inefficiency):
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4239/36072.png
If you intend to overclock the GPU, you should research the marginal power demands and adjust your estimates accordingly. Standard overclocks don't increase power draw dramatically but voltage increases, mods and unlocks can increase consumption rapidly.
Where does that leave us? Well for an i5-2500k OC + 560Ti for example, it leaves you at 60W (System) + 100W (CPU) + 160W (GPU) = 320W. Now, a PSU operates best when its between 65% and 85% of its full load. For example, a good 450W PSU would be operating at ~70% under the largest load that this system could pull.
This is the full system power consumption. Ideally you would want a PSU that would put the PSU at ~75% load, so multiply the figures there by 1.25 to get an idea of what sort of PSU you want.
You should note that most websites stating GPU power consumption will measure their consumption (i) including the rest of a system (ii) from the wall socket, so you will have to discount power inefficiency to get a true rating. Reviews on www.techpowerup.com usually give an accurate measurement of GPU power consumption.
Buying above your needsShould I just buy the 1000W PSU and then I’ll have a load of room for expansion?
You should plan for expansions and always leave a bit of room for random additions throughout the lifetime but a new sound card and extra RAM is not going to cripple your PSU. Be cautious with overbuying PSUs for two reasons:- High end PSUs are expensive.
- Efficiency.
PSU efficiency ratings only cover between 20% and 100%, not below 20%.
Suppose we have a light system that runs idle at 90W and load at about 200W.
A 1000W bronze rated PSU, could drop to 70% efficiency at the lower levels but would keep 82% efficient at 200W. For a draw of 90W with a 450W bronze unit, it would be at 82% efficient and 84%-85% for about 200W.
Idle and load consumption with the 1000W PSU would be 128.5W and 244W respectively while the 450W PSU would consume 112.5W and 238W with the second.
It’s only a few watts and you’d save more by changing to an efficient lightbulb, with about €4 or €5 per year. Okay, you’re not going to get rich but it’s something to consider, especially if your PC is idle a lot.
PSU CalculatorsFor a general guideline, these calculators will help you along, but don’t rely on just a wattage rating:
http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp
http://www.overclock.net/t/1140534/psu-calc-final-release
Who made my PSU? - What are OEMs?Most of the companies who sell PSUs don’t make them themselves.
Those who make the PSUs are known as OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers). Many of these OEMs also sell PSUs themselves, such as Seasonic and Superflower.
A few example of PSUs and their OEMs:- Corsair uses mostly CWT and Seasonic as their OEMs
- Antec uses Seasonic, Delta and FSP
- Kingwin and NZXT use Superflower as their OEMs
It’s an important factor in choosing a PSU; €10 difference might be buying you the exact same internals. Antec’s HCG and Neo Eco, XFX’s Pro series and some of Corsair’s PSUs have been based on Seasonic’s S12II PSU lines. What’s interesting is that these PSUs are often cheaper than Seasonic's own PSUs!
The level of difference between each PSU is variable; it might be just a fan change or slightly cheaper components can be used to save cost. It’s wise to have a look at a company's support, especially warranty length.
It’s also noteworthy that an update by Seasonic in their platform, such as an increase in efficiency may be passed onto the derived products without specifications being updated – for example, recent reviews of Antec’s Neo Eco demonstrate 80+ bronze level efficiency as opposed to the rated 80+.
It’s also helpful to be aware of seemingly reliable brands who switch to unreliable OEMs. Companies also often interchange OEMs for each model along a PSU series. For example, Corsair have switched between CWT and Seasonic for various generations of the TX series.
Which PSU should I buy?The key to buying a good PSU is reviews. The more reviews, the better. Don't rush to accept any single review as samples can vary, reviewers can be bribed and one group can pick up something that was missed.
The best place to check out first is the PSU Review Database. This is an excellent site which lists the big review sites such as hardwaresecrets, HardOCP, jonnyguru and kitguru. You’ll also see OEM lists and ratings.
PSU brands which are good (general idea, not to be taken as an absolute ruling)- Superflower amazon/golden green/golden king –available on hardwareversand.de
- Enermax
- Coolermaster modular PSUs
- Antec (most of them) – check out before buying the cheap models
- Silverstone (most of their modern ones)
- Seasonic
- XFX
- Corsair aside from CX series*
- OCZ ZS, ZX, ZT series
PSU brands to avoid (again just a general statement, rule isn’t absolute)- Any cheap PSU lighter than a sponge cake
- Any PSU that doesn't have clear, transparent specifications
- PSUs that comes with a cases (some Antec/Silverstone or equivalent are OK)
- Cooler master cheap models (essentially, just avoid any of their non-modular ones)
- Dabsvalue/Best Value
- Superflower cheap models
- Kiss
- CIT
Remember: A manufacturer with a good PSU does not mean all PSUs from that manufacturer are good. Similarly a few bad PSUs from one group doesn’t imply a completely bad set, especially since they can switch OEMs.
Power Supply Connectors.Here’s a good site showing the connectors on PSUs.
http://www.playtool.com/pages/psuconnectors/connectors.html
The ones you’ll need on a modern PSU are:- 24 pin (sometimes as 20+4 as older systems just need 20)
- 8 pin EPS 12V (sometimes as 4+4, some boards only need 4)
- SATA power connectors for your hard drives, optical drives and SSDs
- PCI-express cables. These can be 6 pin or 8 pin. Low end cards don’t need additional power. Mid cards will need one (Radeon 6850), higher cards will need a 6 pin and a second 6 pin or 8 pin. The 8 pin connectors are usually detachable to 6+2 for compatibility.
- 4 pin molex for older hard drives, optical drives and fans.
Additional InformationCan I take my PSU abroad?
It depends on the PSU. Older PSUs will have a switch at the back to change between 230V and 115V. Ensure that this is set correctly if you don’t want to destroy your system. Most new PSUs will automatically switch between various voltage inputs but check the manufacturer’s specifications to be sure.
Graphics card box says I need X number of Watts.
They often overstate the ratings because of the bad PSUs around. Firstly, find out if your PSU is of good quality. Then research actual power requirements for a graphics card.
Can I upgrade my Dell's PSU?
Some Dells will accept any standard PSU. Some do not and you need to be careful.
The first issue is size. Many PC makers will have their own shapes of PSUs with screw holes in differing places and you'll discover that standard PSUs won't fit into the cages holding the old one. The cables are often of unusual lengths to suit the needs of that case design.
Secondly, and very importantly, Dell and possibly other manufacturers have produced proprietary PSUs that don't conform to power pins of the ATX standard! This means that you can destroy a PC by connecting a new PSU! Dell have stopped this in recent years appear to be now using ATX PSUs more regularly. You should still search online for others with experience upgrading PSUs for a particular model to ensure that it follows the standards.
What can happen with bad PSUs?
Jonnyguru - The Bargain Basement Power Supply Roundup
Jonnyguru - Death of a Gutless Wonder
Tom's Hardware - Don't Be Surprised When Your Cheap PSU Blows Up
Links
80+ Ratings
Power factor & Correction
PSU Review Database
Huge PSU list with OEMs and 12V ratings
Tom’s Hardware OEM List
Tom’s Hardware - How Much Power Does Your Graphics Card Need?
Jonnyguru.com – Excellent site for PSU reviews
Jonny Guru’s PSU FAQ
Jonny Guru OEM list
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Credit of course to deconduo for his parts. Feedback welcome.
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Oh actually, could u include - is there a difference between VGA-to-VGA, DVI-to-DVI and HDMI-to-HDMI cable connecting to the monitor? Like if you have the option of all 3, does it make a difference if you were gaming/watching videos?
thanks buddy 0 -
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Serephucus wrote: »It'll probably be tomorrow before I can get this up - scanning a 260 page book at the moment. >.<
Ouch lol. Haven't used scanner in 10 years!!! Last time I used it: scanning some porn magazines...
( yeah yeah, Internet was not that awesome back then!
) 0 -
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