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cool I've been issued a challenge by the cameraman to start today's episode with

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a word other than so so that was my attempt at it and

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moving on we are going to be looking at power supplies today I get a lot of

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personal messages on YouTube asking me for especially power supply

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recommendations because everyone can look up benchmarks for a video card or a

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CPU and everyone can look up a price that's easy okay I need this much

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performance I want to pay this much easy done however for power supply it starts

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to get a little bit more complicated because there's so much misinformation

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out there about what kind of a power supply you need like for example you'll

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see you'll see specs on a CPU like uh

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140 Watts well that's a TDP that's not actually the wattage that that CPU

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consumes from a power supply so there's there's and then you've got a video card

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that might output uh you know a 150 watt

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heat load but that's watts in heat so that's that's not useful for for this

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either so basically I wanted to do a quick recommendation video on a basic

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power supply that I think is just one of the best No Frills no gimmicks power

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supplies out on the market now these two you look at them and they look pretty

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similar but for power supply all of the important stuff is what goes on under

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the plain metal casing so let's start with looking at what I would call uh not

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a very solid power supply this is what I would consider a door stop okay so

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there's no particular markings you can find uh you can find a rated output on

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here so 18 amps total on the 12vt rail

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is not very strong by today's standards the 12vt rail is very important so

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that's part of what makes it a a budget Cheapo power supply okay you can see

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that it doesn't have uh this is one that I use for testing fans actually but the

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actual stock connectors on it are very few it doesn't even have a PCI Express

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connector because honestly if you have a dedicated video card you shouldn't be

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using a door stop power supply it also uses an 80 mm fan for cooling which

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means it's not going to be as quiet as a quality power supply and it's not going

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to run as cool so that brings us into what I believe is one of the best value

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power supplies on the market this is the cic SS 400 it is a 400 wat power supply

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and unless you're looking at a very basic system 400 WTS is pretty much

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where I would start now yes you can probably power uh you know integrated

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video AMD quad core with uh you know a

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hard drive all your standard stuff off of 250 or even 300 watt power supply no

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problem but a 400 wat power supply is going to be built a little bit better

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you're going to get 80 plus bronze certification and you also get

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expandability for the future that is a big thing that I always stress when

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people ask me for a power supply recommendation is that it's not always

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about what you're hooking up to it today it's more about what you may need to

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hook up to it in the future so you can see this one it doesn't have all the

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bells and whistles that you'll find on the higher-end models but what it does have is a 24 pin connector for the uh

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for the motherboard it has either an8 pin or four pin connector so you can see

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on a cheaper unit you might only find a four pin P4 connector okay so that gives

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you the proper connectors you need for a modern motherboard it's got proper SATA

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connectors so you got four SATA connectors which means you can actually

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add more hard drives to your system whereas a really basic unit might only

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have one or two SATA connectors on it I mean yeah you can use adapters but then

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you're just adding more cable clutter and More in efficiencies to it and then

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you've also got an adequate number of Molex connectors as well as one PCI

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Express connector so really the 350 W 400 watt range is where you start

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getting into power supplies that can genuinely power a dedicated graphics

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card and a 400 watt unit like this with great efficiency is going to be good for

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even up to like a mid-range video card like a 5770 so so this gets my

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recommendation gold star um also yeah here's another thing to look at you can

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see that when you start to look at a quality built power supply you find dual

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12vt rails capable of providing up to 360 Watts combined so those 12vt rails

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are almost capable of providing the full power of this power supply that's how

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you can tell it's a modernly designed well-built unit because most modern

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systems are going to rely very heavily on that 12volt rail you also get silence

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cic is really known for their quiet power supplies and you can see that even

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on their low-end models they equip them with 120 mm fans as well as 80 plus 80

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plus goes a long way towards making sure that this fan is not spinning really

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hard to get rid of excess heat from Ane efficiency you got a nice efficient unit

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running a nice quiet 120 mil fan that's how you're going to make sure you have a

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good power supply experience on the back

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you've just got a standard honeycomb Grill so that's where the exhaust air is

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going to come out from that 120 m F and then you got your standard power input

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as well as an onoff switch this is very convenient that's another thing again

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you may not find on a low-end power supply in order to completely cut the

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power off from your system with this unit you have to pull the power cord

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it's just not convenient like I know you don't have to turn off the system

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manually at the back very often but if you ever do it's nice to have the switch

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just those little things are what makes buying a decent quality power supply

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very very important it also just does cost that much more and it's going to

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give you better reliability overall for your computer because the power supply

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is often one of the first things to fail so if you buy a good quality power

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supply and a good quality motherboard that's the other big one then you can be

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sure your system's going to last for a long time