I had previously written about building a new gaming rig, and I described some of the parts I had purchased. One of the parts I used was a case that came with a 585 watt power supply at $69.95 and free shipping. The unit [power supply] failed within a week of use.

A link to the item I had ordered is located here.

When I was ordering the new case and PS I remember thinking to myself that this price was very good but wondered how good the power supply would be. I found out quickly that it wasn’t so good for my hardware. For some this case would be just fine. If one was running a single hard drive, using the onboard video only, and using a lower powered cpu and not using a PCIe 16x 2.0 video, than maybe, just maybe it would hold up under the stress.

But when good power supplies along cost in the $60 to $80 range, it would only seem logical that this PS would be of lower quality. I also recalled reading that just because a PS states a certain wattage, doesn’t mean it will pump out the wattage when the system demands it.

So yesterday I ordered a Thermatake 500 watt unit as a replacement for the dean unit see here. The unit was on sale for $49.95 and with a $20 rebate will cost $30. So my thinking was this. I paid $70 for the original case plus $30 for the new power supply, which would actually be just about what I would of paid had I chose a separate case & power supply units to begin with.

My point is this. After buying good parts for the system, buying an el cheapo case/power supply unit was a no-no and did raise a red flag that I ignored.

So how big of a power supply do you need? Check out this site that calculates your power needs here.

Comments as always are welcome.