Power Supply Help

Well, the calculator says I need a 284W power supply but the 750 Ti that I have says it requires a 400W.

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Other than wattage, what else should I look for when purchasing a power supply?

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Use the calculator posted above for wattage, then read this to actually select the right brand/model (Copy and pasted from my guide):


Knowing what brands are good and which ones to avoid is the biggest hurdle of this whole process. There are dozens of brands out there, with several tiers of quality within each brand. Sorting through all those brands is laborious, and mostly an exercise in futility since quite a few brands sell power supplies made by the same manufacturer. There’s an incredible disparity in quality between lowest- and highest-end PSUs, so the easiest thing to do is rely on the opinions of experts and enthusiasts with more resources and years of experience devoted to testing PSUs.

Because of the vast amount of PSU brands and models at various price points, brand bias has become a necessary evil. The PC enthusiast community has more or less reached a consensus on the PSU brands that are considered “fully trusted.” The common top names you’ll find are:

Antec
Corsair
Enermax
PC Power & Cooling
Seasonic
Silverstone
XFX

This doesn’t tell the whole story, however. As I said, some of these brands use different manufacturers depending on the model, so it’s not enough to choose the cheapest of the above brands that meets your needs. To get a clearer view of the models to look for, and which to avoid, refer to this well-researched post that places PSU brands/models into various tiers: https://community.newegg.com/eggxpert/computer_hardware/f/135081/t/45344.aspx. The top tier lists include a few brands that I did not put in the list above, simply because they aren’t as common or because it’s a brand with more “bad” models than good ones. The above brands are considered “safe”—and most importantly, none of these brands have PSU models in the lower tier categories.

As you’ll see in the tiered lists, there are other brands that have quite a few good models, but require a little more research to be sure it’s not from a low-quality manufacturer (the tier list is helpful in that regard).

A few notable high-quality units that fall outside the general list of trusted brands and can sometimes be found at bargain prices:
Rosewill Hive series and Capstone series
Zalman ZM series
NZXT HALE
EVGA Supernova
Thermaltake Toughpower
Cooler Master V series
Kingwin Lazer series


Then here's a segment about rails and amperage, which is the other thing you need to consider beyond wattage:

Quite often, the entire concept of PSU rails is overlooked by newbies, and it’s actually more important than calculating wattage. Every PSU has multiple rails, each rated for a certain voltage that never changes. The rails that are relevant today include:
> +3.3v—Provides power to chipsets, other various low-power onboard chips, and expansion cards.

> +5v—Mostly provides power to USB ports and the devices connected to them

> +12v—The most important rail, which provides power to the rest of your system, including the CPU, graphics cards, hard drives, optical drives, case fans, and so on.

Those rails produce their respective voltages at specific amperages. Multiplying this amperage by the rail’s voltage will give you the total wattage provided by that rail. Knowing the amperage per rail of a PSU is vital. Without this information, advertised wattage means nothing, as many companies like to exaggerate the wattage advertised on their PSUs. The main reason it’s so important is because the +12v rail alone powers up to 90% of a gaming system, which means 90% of your wattage will need to be provided by that rail. For example, let's say you need a 500W PSU today but decide on a 750W just to account for capacitor aging and some potential future upgrades. Taking 90% of that wattage (675W) and dividing it by 12 will give us a safe number to look for in terms of amperage. 675W/12v = 56.25A.

Since we already know who the good brands are, it will be incredibly easy to find a PSU with more than enough +12v rail amperage—and once you’ve found it, there’s no need to worry about the +3.3v and +5v rails. Accordingly, they’ll have plenty enough amperage. To show how easy it is, let’s look at a few 750W PSUs that carry a label from our short list of fully trusted brands. Here are some random PSUs: (NOTE: The pricing is way out of date)

First up is the PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III 750W PSU, a Tier 1 model with a price tag, as of this writing, of $109.99 after promos and rebates. Take note of the information in the red box. Our amperage requirement is more than covered with 62 amps on the +12v rail.


Next, we have a Seasonic SS-750AM 750W PSU, a Tier 2 model that provides the same comfortable amperage. It often has promos and rebates that put the price around $60–$75. These deals are quite common among PSUs in Tier 2 and Tier 3, and it’s a wise use of your money to take advantage of those deals in lieu of premium priced Tier 1 models.


Finally, there’s the Corsair CX750M 750W PSU, a Tier 3 model—again, 62 amps.




Or, if you don't want to read the wall of text and learn something, here are a few picks at various wattages based on today's pricing:

500W -- Corsair CX500M ($34.99 after $5 promo code and $20 mail-in rebate) LINK
550W -- Rosewill Hive ($59.99) LINK
600W -- Antec HCG ($63.98 after $20 mail-in rebate) LINK
650W -- Rosewill Hive ($69.99) LINK
750W -- EVGA SuperNOVA ($49.99 after $20 mail-in rebate) LINK
Or you can get the 750W Rosewill Hive for $80 by following the Rosewill Links above.

Pricing is basically all over the map, so I presented some options that require a rebate and others that don't. If you don't get the 500W Corsair, you might as well grab the EVGA, assuming you don't mind dealing with rebates.

you're the man. great post. thanks a lot.