I stumbled into a great deal on power supplies this weekend. Necessity might be the mother of invention, but it’s also the cattle prod to end procrastination. While I’ve written about my noisy PC at length (and for years now), I’ve never really gotten off my duff and done something about it. I just lived with it.

I finally had to do something on Sunday.

My PC’s power supply fan started making an incredible racked on Saturday evening. The fan was always on the loud side, but it became absolutely unbearable.

It quickly dawned on my that this was a death rattle. The bearings in the power supply fan were about to give up the ghost.

Rather than wait for the inevitable, I decided to power the PC down and went surfing for power supplies on my Mac. After some sleuthing, I found a likely candidate at Newegg. The PC’s power needs are modest - there’s nothing fancy about the old Pentium 4 tower - so I knew I wasn’t going to have to spend a hundred bucks or more on a new power supply. A modestly priced Thermaltake looked like the likely candidate.

And then I started thinking about it. My needs were immediate. I didn’t want to wait a few days for the power supply to be shipped out. And I didn’t want to incur any overnight shipping fees.

So I decided to hit our local CompUSA in the morning to see what I could turn up. I had the price point in mind (under fifty bucks) and a good idea of what I wanted. It didn’t need to be fancy or high wattage. It just needed to be relatively quiet and it had to fit in the case.

After spending 10 minutes evaluating the power supplies on the shelf, I decided on a 350 watt Antec SmartPower 2.0.

At $59.99, it was ten bucks over my predetermined price-point. It looked to be well-designed, so I headed for the register and a pleasant surprise.

Not only was the power supply on sale for $49.99, Antec tacked on a generous manufacturer’s rebate of thirty bucks. None of this was marked on the shelf.

The final cost was just $19.99 (plus tax, of course).

I rushed home and had the power supply installed in fifteen minutes. Compared to the old power supply, the new unit is blissfully quiet.

Wish I could say that for the hard drive …

But I have that handled, too. I just have to get off my duff and install the Seagate Barracuda that’s sitting on my bookcase. Perhaps I’ll get to it after I rescue the Antec rebate coupons from the trash can (where my wife unwittingly deposited them this morning) … d’oh!
[tags]power supply, quiet pc, noisy pc, comp usa[/tags]