Power Supply

The power supply or the PSU (Power Supply Unit), converts AC (Alternating Current, the type of power that comes out of your wall) into DC (Direct Current, type of power commonly found in batteries). The power that comes out of the PSU and the standard measurement for a power supply is in watts.

Example: a 400 watt PSU would put out 400 watts

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. A quality power supply is very important to your PC’s health and will determine how upgradeable it is. Every one of the sensitive components in the PC needs a

specific amount of watts to function properly and that amount varies by component. A bad PSU can cause many glitches and bugs that may be hard to relate back to the PSU, buy a reputable, name brand PSU that clearly states its specifications. A lot of PSU’s will lie about the amount of watts they put out. Companies will state peak wattage under optimal conditions instead of the PSU’s useable wattage or RMS (Root Means Square. To simplify: Roughly 50% of max.)

To choose a PSU, add up the wattage of all the components you chose to put into the computer then add 20% to be safe or 60% if this PC has a motherboard capable of large upgrades. A decent video card can be a large power consumer, using 100+ watts by itself, so make sure to check that first.

A note on power: Whether from the wall or from an internal PSU, the quality of that power will greatly affect your electronics performance. Most people use surge-suppressing equipment but are unaware of the other dangers. Brownouts and noise being the most common. Brownouts strain the equipment by forcing it to work on less power then it needs to sufficiently run. Noise is added in many different ways and greatly affects the performance by giving the equipment less usable power. Same as the human body, electronics will perform better when given the proper “nutrition”; clean filtered electric is their food of choice for healthy, long lasting performance.

In addition to surge suppression, look for power conditioners, line filters or power strips with:

AVR: (Automatic Voltage Regulation) This ensures that your equipment gets a constant 110/120 volts at all times, eliminating spikes and brownouts.

Noise Filtering: This eliminates any unwanted noise introduced into the system and ensures clean power.

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