[danny87]

hey i appreciate that, i totally understand now thanks heaps

[Carbon]

Just to show you guys the perils of buying PSUs on wattage alone, this Apevia PSU is $50 now after mail in rebate. So why shouldn't you buy it over, say, a Corsair 650TX which is a little more expensive?

Simple. Skip the "wattage" and stupid LEDs and look straight at the label. All PSUs on NewEgg should have a picture of the ratings label showing all the current at each voltage.

This power supply has 38A on 3.3V and 40A on 5V. This means that this power supply's wattage rating of "680W" is buttressed by 38A x 3.3V = 125.4 and 40A x 6V = 200W of current that is unusable by anything that needs it, as components today use 12V. Technically, the combined amperage may be slightly lower (as 5V is down-regulated to 3.3V) but as far as the sticker is concerned, 325W of the "680W PSU" is completely unavailable for your graphics card, CPU, etc.

So that leaves us with dual 22A rails. APEVIA clearly knows that anyone reading this much into their PSUs isn't going to want to know what the combined rating of these two rails is. It's likely something bad - simply adding them together usually isn't representative of full output. A fair estimate is perhaps 35A on 12V+.

Tangent: when searching around for what the actual number was, I found this "review": even with a transparent top on the thing, this "reviewer" spent 4 pages discussing the external assembly, the manual, cables, and the LED, and not one discussing in detail the actual internals like the capacitors and build quality. What's worse, his grueling test of the power supply was undertaken with a multimeter and not actual testing equipment, meaning that he was only able to show one load condition. If you don't have a system that is exactly the same as this reviewers, his sparse analysis of ripple isn't going to tell you anything. Also lacking is any sort of discussion of efficiency. He does whine about performance in one paragraph later but overall this is a good example of why nothing but professional outfits should bother "reviewing" these sort of units.

Back to our APEVIA junker. If we can trust our reviewer and this PSU is the same one he reviewed internally (a good bet), this PSU actually has 16A and 18A rails despite claiming otherwise on the label. Just for fairness' sake, let's ignore that and say that this PSU has two 22A rails at probably a combined max rating of 35A.

So what's the competition?

It's not the Corsair 650TX @ 52A.

It's probably not even the Corsair 550VX @ 41A.

Rather, this unit even in the la-la amperage land independent of testing likely resides in competition with the Corsair 450VX, a "450W" PSU at 33A.

But you'd have to be insane to buy the APEVIA over this unit, even at its $20 or so cheaper price given the load tests. And since unless you're running at least a 4890 the 3A or so of amperage won't really be mixed, instead of this "bargain" $49.99 APEVIA, I could easily recommend the Corsair 400CX, a 30A 12V rail PSU at $50 with a $10 MIR. In quality, this unit dwarfs the APEVIA - it's difficult to prove, though, as APEVIA/Aspire doesn't make their OEMs very known since half their "reviewers" don't even bother cracking open the case. It's pretty clear from the few objective tests we've seen, though, that the APEVIA is using some pretty poor caps with its drop in 12V+ from idle to load. So much for sale "bargains".

The lesson here is that dumb, flashy PSUs on sale at NewEgg often like the ModXStream and APEVIA/Rosewill units should be avoided. Anything not Cors/PC P&C/some Antecs/Seasonic should be avoided, but anything on sale nearly every week more so.

[Kie]

The motherboard in some of the builds "Gigabyte 790X-UD4P", appears to be DDR3 compatible. Is it compatible with DDR2? Or will i have to shell out for DDR3?

Built up a system specification. Thinking of swapping to AMD from Intel based upon the above. But i guess if i take too long to decide on the system specification i will already be too late and intel will win the battle for the next few months at least.

[Carbon]

The 790XT is the DDR3 one, the regular 790X is DDR2.

[Carbon]

Sorry for shirking updates to this, guys. Stuff like the high-end Phenom IIs would be enough for a new one, but I'm waiting for i5 to launch and for the dust to settle on that. Aim is mid-Sept. All that really needs to be said is that if you want something hobbyist and not professional for video editing or if you have discretionary income and might use a quad the 945/955/965 are good buys and are slightly faster than the 720 (they just won't overclock as well). They've come down in price. The 945 also has a 95W TDP version for the same price as the 125W so you might as well get it!

Also, the Athlon II X2s and such are excellent, excellent buys for budget systems with the 65W TDP Regor at 2.9ghz for $66. Since AMD is slightly less work per clock, that's a little less than the Intel equivalent, but certainly equivalent to the E7400 which is $100.

[Carbon]

And we're updated. Didn't want to post here because it's only an incremental thing, I'll wait for i5 and 5xxx to do a whole new one, but there are some fresh not-so-outdated builds.

[philthomas]

Nice one

[Carbon]

I guess it's time for a new one. Expect it within the week, I suppose. The P55 motherboards may or may not have issues because we haven't seen a lot of adoption yet (and therefore reviews) but I think I'm comfortable enough recommending Gigabyte's stuff as the P35 and P45 boards were great and the Ultra Durable features are still there.

[Carbon]

Sorry for the delay, I'm writing everything but the graphics card section at the moment because the NDA lifts on the 5xxx series on the 22nd. Once that NDA lifts I'll quickly wrap that section up based on the impressions of Anand and co (unless I get a review sample ;)), do the builds, and post it.