Athlon PSU Lies?

[kingtbone]

Here is what a local computer salesman just emailed me. I am very tempted to call him up so that I can laugh in his face. Am I right or am I an idiot?

The model number is FSP300-60GT.
We have found, though important, the power supply issue with the new PPGA T-Birds is a little over rated.

I understand he is probably just trying to make a sale but...

What is your opinion? Should I buy this PSU that's not on AMD's list?

[Ruslan]

Unless You're familiar with those PSUs for long enough period of time,I would definately recommend You stay away from uknown PSUs (especially if those PSUs are cheap ones).

[Milenko]

I have about 40 - 50 athlons and t-birds on my network, all of which are running on power supplies that are NOT on AMDs list. They all run flawlessly save maybe one or two.

Most of the supplies are only 250W, but some of the newer ones I've gotten are 300W, and I can't tell a darn bit of difference.

I guess if you want to be safe, stay with what AMD says. But if you wanna do it cheap(er), then get a half decent supply and you should be all right.

[Sorry_I_Win]

I would have to agree with him somewhat. AMD is a bit harse with it's PSU recommendations. Even though the 1.4GHz will run fine on a Sparkle 250W PSU (yes I have been using this combo for about a month now), they recommend a 350W (or high-end 300W) supply. It makes sense that they should cover themselves by overrating the cpu power consuption, but in reality, just about any 300-350W supply or high-end 250W PSU will work just fine. Beleive me, I have tried many different combos without any real problems.

[Scuba]

I have a 300W Hi End PSU that is NOT on amd's list.
Work fine

[Ruslan]

Originally posted by Sorry_I_Win:
<STRONG>.... but in reality, just about any 300-350W supply or high-end 250W PSU will work just fine. Beleive me, I have tried many different combos without any real problems.</STRONG>

I agree with You... I even have posted my similar PSU-relayted topic here: http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin...&f=17&t=003983

[Willy Paycheck]

Well in my experience I have found its a 60% to 40% case. 60% being the approved and 40% the latter. There are a lot of good PSU that are not on the recommended list but you have to be careful. We had a batch of non-approved and we got shafted. Couldn't handle the power the CPU needed. Usually I would say better safe than sorry because the PSU could do some damage to other components in your box or boxes. Just my 2 cents. <IMG SRC="smilies/biggrin.gif" border="0">

[sdrawkcab]

I have used every cheap PSU out there with every breed of Athlon/TBird/Duron and haven't had many problems that was traced back to the PSU... about the same rate as I have always had with PSU issues and Intel or AMD platforms.

[http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum1/noncgi]

It's been my experience that it's VERY rare that a person will use even 250W of power. I did a power audit on this company's product, a digital video recorder that has an 815 motherboard, Pentium III-733, 128M of RAM, 4 80G Maxtor hard drives, a floppy drive, a SCSI DAT drive, a SCSI card, a NIC, a modem, a Rage Fury Pro video card, and a custom video compression board. It was using a mere 86W! That's not a typo! Eighty Six Watts!

These systems are equipped with 200W power supplies. At first I thought they were crazy, but when I did the testing, I realized they were perfect.

Even the most powerful Athlon or P4 should be just fine with a 250W power supply, unless you have a really power intensive setup (SCSI hard drives, GeForce 3 video cards, Peltier cooler, etc.) or are using a dualie. The most power intensive items in a computer are the hard drives, and these usually draw their maximum power at startup when the drives are spinning up. Once they settle down, they draw a lot less power. And most power supplies are designed to draw as much as 30% over their rated limit for a few moments.

[Auric]

well man, depending on what you are going to put in the system, 250watt is ok for anything 800mhz and below, from 850mhz up you would want at least 300.. but any standard 300watt PSU will work fine.

[unknown4x]

It's been my experience that it's VERY rare that a person will use even 250W of power. I did a power audit on this company's product, a digital video recorder that has an 815 motherboard, Pentium III-733, 128M of RAM, 4 80G Maxtor hard drives, a floppy drive, a SCSI DAT drive, a SCSI card, a NIC, a modem, a Rage Fury Pro video card, and a custom video compression board. It was using a mere 86W! That's not a typo! Eighty Six Watts!

Were you running the cpu at 100% power.. and using all the devices....

[PitaBred]

If they rate power supplies anything like they rate audio amplifiers, you can expect a constant throughput of 40-60% of the total power of the PS... just remember that the more devices (hard disks, everything) that you have attached, the larger a PS you'll likely need... I saw a calculator for this once, just not motivated enough to go try to find it again <IMG SRC="smilies/smile.gif" border="0">

[kingtbone]

Well, all I'm looking to put in it is an ABit KT7A, 1.2 GHz, 40 GB 7200 HDD, Leadtek Geforce 2 32MB, and other standard stuff. Anyways, I'd really like to get an approved PSU, but I can be convinced that it's not necessary. So you think I should just get a 300 W PSU that's not approved?

[AlienDyne]

Well, this is common with the salesmen. They think they know everything and they try everything when they want to sell you something. Of course he's an idiot!

[mahdi]

If you don't have every PCI slot filled, every IDE channel occupied and you have clean power comming into the powersupply (UPS is a good option) you should be fine with a 250w approved or not. I've never spent the extra cash just to get my power supplies 'approved'.
True, the faster Athlon's eat up power like an 8 year old on a candy binge (72w if remember correctly), everything else won't add up to very much unless you have it loaded.