Seasonic 400W OEM Power Supply Recommendation Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,201 words · ~6 min read
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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