I think that you'll also find that going with a new power supply will
provide the kind of connectors that you are going to need (as Russ
suggested). Some higher end motherboards will accept 2 of those 4 pin 12
volt connectors that Russ mentioned, and for a high end quad core
processor, this can be a good, although not essential, thing (certainly
essential for the overclocking crowd). Your SATA drives will make use of
the SATA power connectors, and a medium to higher end video card will
require one to two PCI-E power connectors (a 4670 may not need an additional
connector, beyond the PCI-E slot, itself; this lower power requirement makes
a fanless video card an option).
One advantage, in my mind, of using a higher capacity than necessary power
supply is that typically this means the P/S fan can run at fairly low speed
to keep the P/S cool, which is good if you are looking to keep noise levels
down. (Over-doing this too much, however, means your P/S starts becoming
increasingly less efficient.)
I think there is good reason to go ahead and upgrade yourself. You are more
likely to get what you want. While bargain mass-produced computers have
there place, corners have been cut as close as possible to keep the price
low, and this can reveal itself down the road, if you are the type of person
to start changing and adding things later. Also, you aren't going to have
to put up with (or remove) all that bloatware that new computers come loaded
with (I'm sure the fees that Asus and other manufacturers get paid to
install this software is part of why they can offer a $650 computer).
A good computer case can last through many rebuilds. I'm still using a Fong
Kai FK320 case that I bought nine years ago. Nothing else is the same from
back then, but the case is still quite satisfactory.
As to your previous question about which Asus P55 motherboard to use, I
think any of them would work. It's a question of what features in a
motherboard are of interest to you. As you go up from the most basic board,
you get things like additional power regulation for the CPU (appealing to
the overclocker), extra heatsinks (appealing to the overclocker), as well as
additional I/O features (maybe firewire, better audio, additional 16/8x
PCI-E slots for multi-GPU configuration, maybe more sophisticated RAID
options, etc.).
John Sproule
-------- Original Message Below -----------
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:52:59 -0500
From: bobwarasila <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Power supply
Mark,
ASUS page is giving me an "error on page" message. The PCPOWER page is says
520 W and the Antec 400. So I think 500W should be my threshold.
Guess my current 300W PS will not do for a new build.
Thanks,
Bob
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