Chieftec PSU's

Diabolus

God never knew there was so much in a PSU.
But tell me this. Got a chieftec Matrix tower case from Komplett.ie and set it up. Amd XP 2200 1.5 gig of DDR RAM 80 gig drive cd burner + dvd drive Geforce 4 4400ti. After a while the pc just stoped working.. then i got the chip replaced (as it was broken) and that worked but the connection to the mobo was bogey or something as if i moved the case it turned off for a while.

I think this crappy 360 W psu broke my pc. Am i right?

Also what PSU should i get and from where?
I appreciate your comments.

mackanz

The psu is one of the parts that i would spend more money on.

Think about it: You can spend 3-400 euros on a cpu that probably will be old in 1 year, maybe 1,5 years. A good psu for 100-150 euros will last forever and on both Amd and Intel, unless they change the ATX standard which i highly doubt.

As for which PSU to get? Well, i have always bought Antec, i have 2 of them and they have never let me down yet. One of them, i even turned up the +5V line so much that the overvolting protection kicked in, but that didnt matter. Itdirect has the Antec 412 (400W) and it is known for its good overclocking capabilitys.

Apart from that, well, search for reviews of PSU´s, but dont use Toms Hardware, they are bought by the bigger companys.

Also, Enermax works well, but mostly on Intel setup and i really dont know why, its just is that way. My best bet for a good PSU and availability is Antec 412.

What should you look at if you see a psu that you never seen before? Well, theese days with power hungry graphics and soundcard, they steal a lot of 3.3V power from the psu, cpu-voltage draws +5V and the fans, hd´s cd´s etc. draws 12V.

So, a good PSU should have theese specs: At least 370W with the +5V line´s max load: 35 amps or more, -5V at 1 amp or more, +12V at 17 amps or more, -12V at 1 amp or more and the +3.3 volt at 25 amps or more.

Cheers!

Marcus

BabyEater

Is that Antec 412 a True power or a normal one

mackanz

Its the normal one.
The truepowers is a little bit overpriced in my opinion. The normal one holds the lines better as well.

Mac

Gerry

Originally posted by mackanz
Im sorry, but that is so wrong. You cant really compare win 2 k and XP (not that xp is mentioned) when it comes to overclock. Win2K is far better than xp in that case. My chip does 1950 in 2k but only 1900 in xp. And i know i am not he only one.

Why should we try Linux if we never use it?

Think about what you are saying. It makes no sense. An unstable cpu will eventually crash under any operating system. To say that win2k could somehow "smooth over" the problems caused by an unstable cpu is utter tripe. If xp crashes sooner, this is because it must be putting more strain on the cpu under what you would consider to be "no load" conditions.

When you say the chip does more speed in 2k, do you mean that the chip actually makes it to the desktop in both os's, but when you fire up your stress test, it only crashes on xp?

When I was referring to linux, I was talking to ppc who said his chip worked fine in SUSE linux 8.0.

mackanz

What i am saying is that under stress or idle, win 2k is much more stable at high overclock. XP crashes much more easier than 2k, it is as simple as that.

Do you understand now?

Gerry

I think we'll just agree to disagree, on the stability under "full load issue". I'm coming at this from a theoretical viewpoint. I don't have xp here to test this, since xp sucks. From my experience with win98 and win2k, the machine would boot to the desktop at a much higher speed in win98, but when I actually started running programs, the top stable cpu speed was the same in both os's.

Perhaps you should read this article about the intel p3 1.13.

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q3/0008281/index.html

mackanz

Well, if you ask just about any overclocker, and not THG since they are the biggest flaw in the history, looping 3dmark, prime 95, folding...all at the same time. You cant get the pc more loaded or stressed than that. I can do that in 2k at a much higher clock than on xp.

Mac

Gerry

I am an overclocker, and I do know how to stress a pc. However I have not got win xp installed anywhere. I was purely saying that it makes no sense, but hey, maybe xp has some flaw that makes it behave like this. It is very strange though.

WRT THG, well thomas pabst is mainly a **** stirrer, occasionally he is on the ball though. In that article, it ended up that 3 review cpu's were tested by kyle bennet of hardocp and an intel engineer, and some were stable in prime95 testing, but not on linux kernel compiles.

mackanz

Speaking of Kyle.....you haven´t missed the latest have you?

What a story! Takes the best part of 2 hours to go through.

Gerry

I should have pointed out in the previous post that I know kyle is a muppet. Whereas thomas pabst just likes to cause trouble by being as controversial as possible, kyle hasn't much of an idea about hardware, or impartiality. His writing style infuriates me, however as a news site hardocp used to be pretty good. Reviews always laughable though. "We were impressed by the fancy packaging" sums them up.

WRT to recent events, I see someone in the "bunker" changed a benchmark. Hardly surprising, and they never had consistent benchmarks anyway. Anyone who bases a buying decision on a hardocp review needs their head examined.

mackanz

Very true, however i dont think i ever have read a single review from Hard, not that i remember of anyway. The same goes for THG who i really cant say that they know their hardware either.

How´s"Oops, we forgot to use a fan on the radiator" as an excuse for Swiftech stuff getting a bad review? Seen the video on how to build your watercooling? It´s insanely fun but pure dangerous to people that actually do what they are showing on the video. Seen how they apply thermal paste on cpu´s? Jesus!

Mac

Dooom

it says "meant for ATX systems" what's an ATX system? i have an ASUS a7n8x pro with an AMD XP2400+...will it work?

mackanz

Yes, you have the right choice there. In fact, the old system, named AT doesn´t exist or being made anymore, so that leaves ATX the only standard now.

I cant exactly tell you the difference but i know AT where stopped being used on the Pentium or Pentium 2 time. Also, the motherboard that was AT had a different size as well.

You should have ATX.

Mac

Gerry

I think the swiftech cock-up was a disgrace. I think Tom knows his hardware pretty well ( he is aware that he doesn't know everything ), but some of his staff are utter retards. Their arrogance is amazing also.

AT was dropped by intel before they even stopped making the pentium I. However it was prolonged by the fact that the amd k6 worked in pentium boards, and this chip kept on scaling in speed, so newer AT boards came out so people could upgrade to ( for example ) a 550mhz k6-2, without changing their case.

Only a few AT boards came out for the P2/P3. Theres plenty of info about AT and ATX on the web, but the main difference is the layout of the board being changed completely, to facilitate better cpu cooling the cpu socket/slot was moved to the back of the board at the top. This stops pci cards clashing with the heatsink also. The shape changed also so, ATX boards are taller, so won't fit in an AT case, ( though most ATX cases can take AT boards ).

ATX also brought in a new power supply which can be controlled by the computer ( soft power ), and it supplies 3.3v in addition to 12v and 5v to cater for newer, lower voltage components. It was also specified that this psu should be extracting air from the case, not drawing it in.

Jesus, must be a bit bored