PC Power Supplies

michaelab

michaelab

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Where's a good place (preferably online) to get PC PSUs from?

I have a Dell Dimension 4100 PC and the PSU fan is starting to make a lot of noise - it would give a 747 on takeoff a good run for it's money!

I'm pretty sure that any regular ATX PSU will do allthough unfortunately Dell have chosen to use proprietary power connectors on the motherboard :rolleyes: so I'll have to get some kind of adapter.

Want the replacement to be a lot quieter and, as I'm about to upgrade to a Radeon 9600XT graphics card and already have 2 HDDs and 2 CD/DVD drives, something with a bit of grunt. Probably 3-400W.

Michael.
 
I'll add to the no votes on overclockers. Dodgy bunch. Spie (the owner) drives an M5 which he's afforded by ripping people off (and he drives like a muppet, wiping out a clutch in a single afternoon at castle coombe). Their service is so legendarily bad that it actually spawned a site (same url but minus the l) to tell people. It was taken down in the end though... Also, there was an article in PC Zone (or another computer magazine, I don't recall exactly) about them, where a frustrated reader had written to them to try to get their money back. They'd bought a motherboard, which had broken and they returned it. In the meantime the price had dropped £40, and they refunded the new price, and refused to refund the additional £40. When contacted by the magazine, they demanded proof that it was actually the magazine, and then demanded proof from the reader that he'd asked them to fight his case. Phone calls not returned, etc. Eventually, on the threat of legal action, the money mysteriously got refunded.

Michael... sleeve bearing fans have very limited lives before they become noisy and rapidly seize up. All you need to do is buy a new fan (£5 or so for a decent ball bearing fan, which will not die anything like as fast) and fit it to the psu (just take the psu out, 4 screws in computer back panel, take the lid off psu, unscrew 4 usually self-tapping screws from the fan, desolder or unplug it from the psu board as appropriate, replace with new one, refitting is reverse of removal, etc). Well within your capabilities, seeing as you're building your own power amp, and will save you a wodge of cash and having to find adaptors for the proprietary bits.

Edit: Try these suppliers:

www.over-clock.co.uk
www.overclock.co.uk
www.tekheads.co.uk
www.thecoolingshop.com
www.dabs.com
www.komplett.com
www.ebuyer.com
www.rswww.com

You almost certainly need an 80mm fan, btw.
 
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Oh, and the one order I placed, and one order a friend placed against my advice were both dreadfully packaged. With mine they just threw all the items (a heatsink, 4 fans, tube of Arctic silver) all into a jiffy bag with no other packaging. Result was half of a £10 tube of arctic silver all over fans and the inside of jiffy bag. With my friend's order of a bundle of motherboard, CPU and heatsink they opened the box for the motherboard, put the cpu (in it's little box... they'd unlocked it with pencil rather than conductive paint though) and the heatsink into the motherboard box, then taped it shut. The heatsink was putting significant pressure on the motherboard in the box.
 
Michael,

A word of warning. Be very very careful - it turns out that Dell's use non-standard powers supplies. Although the motherboards appear to be standard ATX form factor and the power connectors appear to be the same type of connector, the pin-outs are actually different.

A few articles confirm this:

http://63.240.93.134/articles/upgrade3_01_01.asp

http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/dellconverter.html

http://www.sysopt.com/articles/PSU_Perspectives/

Hope this helps. Connecting a standard ATX power supply to a Dell motherboard has resulted in people killing their boards. It's one reason why for home use, I'd personally stay clear of the likes of Dell, Compaq etc.
 
Originally posted by Isaac Sibson
I'll add to the no votes on overclockers. Dodgy bunch. Spie (the owner) drives an M5 which he's afforded by ripping people off (and he drives like a muppet, wiping out a clutch in a single afternoon at castle coombe).
Click to expand...

Spie's had a 911 C4S since the M5, and about 3 weeks ago got a Ferrari 575M :eek: :p <- notice thats green, envy! The M5 clutch was broken at Donington too IIRC :)

Personally I have found OcUKs service to be pretty good, but I have heard bad things off many others so maybe I've been lucky....wouldn't feel bad about ordering from them again, I can always get up to Stoke easily enough to go and have a whinge about any serious problems though (I have relatives there so visit fairly often, a detour to visit overclockers wouldn't be a problem should the need arise ;)).

If you want good service check out www.Kustompcs.co.uk... a little expensive compare to some etailers but really top notch service and pre/after sales care.

:)
 
Thanks for the info guys. I think I'll take Isaacs suggestion and try and replace the PSU fan myself rather than get a whole new PSU.

Nsherin - thanks, I was aware of that issue with the Dell non-standard connector. God knows why they do it, at least they could use a different shape connector to prevent cock ups.

Michael.
 
I've just spoken to ServerSource (www.serversource.co.uk) who supply parts for ex-warranty Dell machines (Dell no longer have the parts and gave me their contact details) and they'll supply me with a replacement PSU for £55 + £35 p&p to Portugal. When I get back I'll check out the fan replacement option first otherwise at least I know the PSU is replacable.

Question though: the guy at ServerSource told me the PSU has a 200W rating. Is that going to be enough for 2 HDDs, 2 DVD/RW drives, a Radeon 9600XT (Asus) gfx card plus, FireWire, network and (el cheapo) sound cards?

Michael.
 
I reckon 200W is a bit wimpy for the number of devices you're trying to run. I'd go for a 300W power supply, as if the PSU is under heavy load, its a know fact that system stability starts to suffer. Additionally, faster graphics cards suck more power than slower ones.
 
PC power supplies are funny things.

First off, there's two ways of working out it's rating. Either you can look at the peak current available on each voltage line, multiply it by the appropriate voltage to get the power, then add them all up. This gives a bigger number than the other way, which is essentially the same, but doesn't treat the voltage lines in isolation (as the PSU can't supply peak current on all voltage lines simultaneously), but uses the values of current that can be sustained when the other lines are drawing current too. The second method actually tells you something about the stability of the power supply, the first does not. Dell and other OEMs use the second method because it is relevant and they're not selling the psus on the basis of how many W they supply. Retail manufacturers (like Q-tec, Enermax, etc) use the first method because it gives a bigger number. A Q-tec 550W psu is actually only around 400W by the second method.

The other issue is voltage stability. Does the voltage vary as differing amounts of current are drawn? A lot of people have had problems with Enermax PSUs having unstable +5V lines.

If the machine works ok then replacing the PSU with a similar one is probably the best thing in the light of the non-standard connections used by Dell. However, in the interest of saving the money, I'd replace the fan.
 
Thanks Isaac. It's currently fine with the existing PSU, the only problem is the noisy fan so I think the 200W is probably enough.

I never use both DVD/RW drives at the same time and the 2nd HDD is just a backup disk which is only ever used during backups so most of the time only 1 HDD and one optical drive are in use.

The new gfx card might need a bit more power than the old one but I'm probably more likely to have cooling issues than power issues...especially in the summer when the indoor temp. in my flat can reach 37 deg :eek: ! (no aircon :cry: ).

Michael.
 
Originally posted by michaelab
...especially in the summer when the indoor temp. in my flat can reach 37 deg :eek: ! (no aircon :cry: ).

Michael.
Click to expand...

I know only mad dogs an Englishmen go out in the midday sun. But do you actually like to slowly roast alive? I would get an air conditioning system right now!!! When my house reaches 27º I go to our house on the beach (facing north, cool and nice). I can't have an air conditioner because of the harpsichord :(

Off topic, but I truly don't know how you can stand it!

Weather is getting warmer, too :JPS:
 
I know, sitting in my home office in my boxer shorts with sweat dripping off me isn't particularly pleasant but I don't think a portable aircon unit would really be that effective and I think that because the building is so old we're not allowed to mount the usual external box that a proper aircon unit has :(

I can manage...and the weekends at the beach make up for it :MILD:

Michael.
 
37 deg, Pah ! ;) Whilst working in the middle east there was a rule on the Airbase that all outside work had to stop if the temp hit 50 deg, unless it was essential. Strangely the 'official' temp never got above 49 deg in the 4 years that i worked there, despite the fact that our own thermometers told us it was over 50, (slave drivers ), and the humidity was so high that you just couldn't escape it. If you had to do something like Jack an Aircarft up to change the wheel or similar there just wasn't enough oxygen in the world to fill your lungs- it hurt.
Stragely i thought that i would get used to it , but i find that the human body soon adapts, I've been back 4 years now and even a british summers day of about 25 deg's still feels hot and uncomfortable despite what i've been used to in the past. The hardest thing to get used to was the lack of noise, not having the A/C whirring away in the background, luckily i 've put that right with the cooling fan on my Aquarium.

Couldn't you 'stealth' a self contained external A/C unit onto an outside wall , out of view ? From a purely Hi-Fi point of view it might not be a good idea though. The western compound where i lived in Saudi had about 500 of the things all fed from the same sub station, talk about mains 'hash'.
 
Took the PSU apart yesterday and replaced the fan with an Asaka one I got locally. It has a cool little feature which is a wire with a small Philips head screw on the end of it which is a speed control. I managed to get the control outside the PC case after putting it all back together :cool:

Odd thing though was that the fan has a 3 pin power connector, red, black and yellow wires. The old fan only had red and black. The new connector fitted the pins on the PSU board but only the red and black wires are connected. Seems to work fine though - anyone know what the yellow wire would be for??

Best bit of all (and the reason my PC has suddenly got 3 times more powerful)? The fan has 4 BLUE LEDs around its edge :D .

I actually wanted a plain one but couldn't find one :eek: ! I thought that maybe the yellow wire (see above) was to power the LEDs but clearly not as they are working fine :cool:

Michael.
 
You've missed the idea with blue LEDs Mike! They power themselves! The yellow wire would have been if you DIDN'T want them to light up! Would have drawn current away from them!
 

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