[Bloodmyst]

Originally Posted by |Erasmus|

Why not? his system won't be drawing over 400W...

He may be saying hes not going to upgrade from this point on. But who can know that for sure? What will happen when he wants to go crossfire? That PSU just ain't going to cut it. He will have to buy another one + the GFX card instead of buying just the card itself.

It's also not entirely the watts you look at either... you need to check the amps on the rail. I've had a 550 Watt PSU running a Core 2 Duo and an Nvidia 8800GT gfx card. Yep, my GFX card was overheating and crashing because of not having enough amps on the rail. Hence, if your going to get a high end quality 500 Watt PSU with enough amps on the rail, you will soon find for pretty much the same price you can get a PSU with an extra 200/300 watts but with like a couple of less amps for the same price. I went through all of this crap before when I bought my first PC and it's now an unwritten rule I've stuck by.

In some cases, depending on a variety of factors such as how small the PSU actually is (in terms of not only wattage, but also amperage) or whats added to the PC later on.... a PSU running at say 60% capacity is always much more better then say a PSU running at 85% - 95% capacity. If he only has a power draw of 400W with a 500W PSU, we are already at 80% capacity..... not much room left.

So in short, the bigger the PSU the better. It's one thing you can't go wrong with. If a GFX Card manfacturer tells me I need 500W powersupply, you can count on it I'll up that by at least a couple of hundred watts.

Not to mention, how much have PSU's changed over the years? Not much at all really apart from modular cabling features. Get a decent size PSU, and it's very likely it will also carry you over to the time you decide to purchase your next system. Hence, not having to worry about purchasing another PSU at all.