Well I just put in a 500 watt power supply and my computer sounds alot better, it use to sound like it was having problems running anything, or loading anything. I would suggest everyone that buys, HP, Gateway, dell, or any other computer/workstation, buy a 500 watt power supply, you will be glad you did.

Jim R

I'd suggest people just build there own pc. That way they don't have to deal with replacing garbage from namebrand pc's. :)

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7900GT
SATA II 2x 300gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0+1
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

You can't just make a blanket statement that "everyone should buy a 500W PSU". In many cases, it would be unnecessary. And based on what you said, you may not have needed one either. If your system was having problems due to inadequate power, that's one thing...but to replace the PSU because "it use to sound like it was having problems running anything, or loading anything"?

well mine was a 300 watt, and I dont know what brand it was, I have all kinds of stuff hook up to it, 3 hard drives to dvd writable drives, 1950 graphics card and also a sound card and some other stuff that I cant think of, and it just sounds better when it is booting up. I am just saying that the minium that computer come with is just not doing it anymore, not with the demand of gaming and video editing. So there if you still think that the original power supply is good enough go ahead...

Jim R

There ya go again - "it just sounds better".

I'm not saying you didn't need a bigger/better PSU, but generally speaking, "sound" isn't any indication of whether a PSU is adequate or not. With all those drives & the X1950, your system would have been randomly rebooting (or worse) if your 300W PSU was severely overloaded.

Hopefully the replacement you bought is a good name brand unit? I always find it suspicious when someone announces that they bought a new part, then neglect listing the make/model/cost.

Ah, yes - opinions masquerading as facts

This has been one long drawn out (blogworthy) tale of Jim's computer woes - hopefully they're over now

I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter.

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I'd tell you who makes some decent psu's for a decent price and that is Rosewell. That 600w ATX 2.01 SLI psu for 64 dollars, runs quiet and it's SLI rady ontop of that. A buddy of mine has one and it shocked me. The only slight draw back is the cables aren't sleeved coverd, but other then that it's a great psu for the money

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7900GT
SATA II 2x 300gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0+1
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

Rosewill doesn't make anything...they're nothing but a repackager. If the PSU you have is the APE-650F, it's actually manufacturered by ATNG Power Co., Ltd., Taiwan.

Never the less still decent for the price imo.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7900GT
SATA II 2x 300gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0+1
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

AAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNnnnnnnddddddd

the dissenting view.

I've got a fairly fast machine here, with no less than three hard drives, a CD/DVD burner and two video cards. I had what I THOUGHT was a good quality 450 watt supply.

I kept having mysterious reboots, refusal to wake up after sleep, and hardware troubles that I just could not figure out.

Then the machine would not boot at all one day

I pulled out the 450 watt supply, stuck in an old 300-350watt supply I had lying around, and it has worked flawlessly ever since.

Not all power supplies are created equal, regardless of the "numbers."

All electronics can fail, at any time

Not all of us "sound better" with a catch all 500 watt supply.