PSU question

[RandomPING]

Are PSU brands really all that important? I mean i know you're getting a higher quality product and stuff, but I ask because I bought a cheep case (30$ USD) that came with a 400W PSU, since then i've scrapped the case and got myself a nice cool looking Antec P160, but i'm still using the old power supply. I was looking at prices, and considering mine is pumping out enough Watts, i decided not to upgrade.

So pretty much, what is the difference between different power supplys that pump out the same power? What's the negative things that could happen from using a cheep power suply unit? Advice on if I should upgrade the PSU?

I'm not positive it is crappy though, it's a "Hercules Switching Power Supply, 400W Max" That's pretty much all the info that's printed on it. Any help would be great.

 

[ImJacksAmygdala]

Yes it matters. Go to Anadtech and search for their powersupply round up article and read it. A cheap power supply can cause havoc on a computer system. Undervolts cause brownouts can lock the computer, reboot the computer randomly, loose rails (loose parameters of voltages) cause instability. Bad power supplies can even blow up.... Yes it matters. If you want a cheap case and PSU combo go for the Antec Sonata, its a great case and the 380watt powersupply is a Antec Truepower that is strong enough to handle most systems out there just fine. Go to Newegg and read the reviews on it. You can go to bestbuy.com right now and snag it for $40 with a rebate posted at the site good till Jan. 11th I think. Thats the best deal you'll ever find I can promise you that.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=cat12105&type=page&rebateid=43294&skuid=5318881&h=387

http://secure.newegg.com/app/CustratingReview.asp?item=11-129-127

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1841

What a cheap PS can do..

http://www.mikhailtech.com/modules.php?name=Articles&rop=showcontent&id=63

http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6255-1041735.html

Your welcome.....

 

[Asus]

See, not only does signal strength and clean power matter but usually the name brands or good brands will have a good amount of power to each rail.
A poor PSU will give you enough power for CPU etc but when you add 3 harddrives or so it might be too much for it because the 12v rail doesn't have sufficent power to it. The PC will crash everytime because the Powersupply now doesn't have enough power for all the devices.

Always look at the ratings for each rail on the side of PSU and it would be a good idea to get to know which rail the main parts in a PC use (or what the voltage of the parts run at).

 

[RandomPING]

Alright cool, thanks for all the info on it. I was pretty sure it probably was going to need to be upgraded, i just wanted to guage how important it is, probably going to be my next upgrade now.

A side note, do better power supplys have more connectors? Because the one i'm running now only has 4 i believe, and i'm looking for like 6 so i can power all my hard drives.

 

[Asus]

It will vary by model but yes they usually have 6 or more standard molex connectors and 2 mini molex.