PSU or SSD

What you want to get is a quality product that will maintain its stability over a long life time. And one that will give you fair warning it's about to let the magic blue smoke out.
Digital power supplies have monitoring capabilities that are far more accurate than analog and can be manipulated by the user to customize power settings to match functions like hard gaming. But not every one knows how to use this function and it carries a hefty price tag.
 
My Seasonic PSU saved my system twice so far due to brown outs. A loud click and it's off.

Worth the money IMO. :)
 
No gold isn't worth it. Electricity is ridiculously cheap, especially in the US. Don't know about the UK but bronze efficiency is plenty.

I am guessing it's not as cheap for him as it is for you Americans.
EU's policies for making electricity is different from that of the US. For an example, We don't like nuclear power plants for obvious reasons. In Denmark we pay between $0.25 - $0.30 per kWh. That's about 2,7 times more compared to the average in USA. And giving England is our neighbor, i don't believe the prices are much different.
 
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I pay .12 cents per kWh here!! .30 cents is insane. Hell sometimes the electricity drops to .08 cents per kWh. Still idk how much electricty gold will save vs bronze. Over the life of the computer maybe its worth it but that would be an interesting figure to see.
 
One thing You have to consider is the draw on the wall socket. The higher the wattage of the PSU the more it draws regardless of how much you use. You choose the PSU that's at least 20% more than your system uses.

I have a 520 watt in mine that's most likely overkill.
 
jarlmaster:
Yeah it's very expensive. England is properly cheaper because if i remember correctly Scandinavia has the highest electricity cost in the world. The lag of cheap energy via nuclear power plants and the fact that we are very much against pollution, makes it expensive. They raise the electricity cost among other things like increased "green tax" on inefficient cars to make the citizens think more about the nature.


Anyway. i found this guy on Tomshardware. He made a good post about if high efficiency PSU's are worth it.

Here is some quick math for you, lets suppose you have a 500 W power supply, a system that pulls 250 W at full load, and is on 8 hour a day running at full load all the time(unrealistic but makes for much easier math), that puts your PSU at 50% load so its going to be at peak efficiency.


Power drawn from the wall:
Basic - 312.5 W
Bronze - 304.9 W
Silver - 294.1 W
Gold - 277.8 W
Platinum - 271.7 W

That means that over basic you save 7.6 W/h with bronze, 18.4 W/h with silver, 34.7 W/h with gold, and 40.8 W/h with platinum. With 8 hours a day at full load that comes out to be 1.82 kWh, 4.42 kWh, 8.33 kWh, and 9.79 kWh saved per month with bronze, silver, gold, and platinum respectively. If you pay 15 cents per kWh that means that over the course of 1 year having a platinum rated PSU over basic saves you about $17.62 so it could take quite a while to pay for the difference with energy savings alone, but in general silver rated units and up are much better quality than basic rated units.
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/327742-28-80plus-bronze-silver-gold-platinum
 
Sorry, I only just realised there was multiple replies, I just ordered a psu, I have gone cheap, I've gone Corsair because it seems cheap for 750w, £64.99, I've ordered it on Amazon, it hasn't been dispatched yet, so I can probably change it if necessary, is this a reliable psu? thanks in advance, I haven't fully read through the replies as yet because I have no idea when they'll dispatch the order so I got this, thanks in advance Corsair CX750 Builder Series CX 750W ATX/EPS 80 PLUS Bronze PSU: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

Just looked again, they're working faster than usual, preparing to dispatch, the money has been taken, I was thinking it's a reputable brand, the reviews are over a thousand 5 star, but only 75 1 star
 
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One thing You have to consider is the draw on the wall socket. The higher the wattage of the PSU the more it draws regardless of how much you use. You choose the PSU that's at least 20% more than your system uses.

I have a 520 watt in mine that's most likely overkill.

I read this slightly too late, I did an online psu calculator and it recommended 430, so I'm guessing the wattage for the psu you have would have been more than enough, but then, I do plan to upgrade again at some point
 
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