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Power Supplies: How Much Power Do You Need?



Component Requirement
AGP Video Card 30W - 50W
PCI Express Video 100W - 250W
Average PCI Card 5W - 10W
DVD/CD 20W - 30W
Hard Drive 15W - 30W
Case/CPU Fans 3W (ea.)
Motherboard (w/o CPU or RAM) 50W - 150W
RAM 15W per 1GB
Processor 80W - 140W

For overall power supply wattage, add the requirement for each device in your system, then multiply by 1.5. (The multiplier takes into account that today's systems draw disproportionally on the +12V output. Furthermore, power supplies are more efficient and reliable when loaded to 30% - 70% of maximum capacity.)

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Recent Reviews


Viperlair
Overall we were very impressed with the Silencer 750 Quad Power Supply.Viperlair Viperlair

OCIA.net
Silencer 500 - Given its performance and silence, it's definitely a great bang for the buck.OCIA.net OCIA.net

Anandtech
Silencer 500 - The build quality is very good as always.Anandtech Anandtech

Driver Heaven
The Silencer 610W is yet another exceptional high performance PSUDriver Heaven Driver Heaven

The Tech Report- 2008 System Guide
PC Power & Cooling's Silencer 750 won an Editor's Choice Award in our enthusiast power supply round-up, and its output capacity makes it a good companion for any quad-core, dual-GPU system.The Tech Report- 2008 System Guide The Tech Report- 2008 System Guide

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