In article , Yousuf Khan wrote:
It's possibly time to upgrade my power supply. Haven't shopped around
for one in ages. What's the new features that I have to look for these
days? My last PS was a 450W ATX from maybe 5 years ago. I expect my new
one would have to be at least 500W now.

Why? I have seen power supplies at Fry's rated for 1 kW (!) and up, but how
much of this is actually needed by the average system and how much of it is
little more than stuff to enable dick-size contests among gamers? My
fastest system is a Core 2 Quad Q6600 with a couple of hard drives and a
9500GT; it runs just fine on a 380W power supply (Antec Earthwatts, if
you're curious). I've built servers with sixteen hard drives configured as
hardware RAID-5, and a 650W RPS is sufficient for that (staggered spin-up
helps here).

Getting a good-quality power supply from a reputable vendor is more
important than going for the biggest number. The high-efficiency power
supplies that have become available in the past year or two (look for "80
Plus" on the box), in addition to using less power for a given output, also
run cooler, which should help them last longer.

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