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450W Power Supply Roundup Boring, Useful
You'd think that little in life could be so extravagantly tedious as a 17-page roundup of ATX power supplies. HardOCP's unnervingly precise overview goes as far as to target models within a 50W range, bringing the piece close to being like a nerdy story from The Onion. But cards in the 450-500W band are the men of the moment when it comes to PC gaming, thanks to the ever-hungrier demands of the latest video cards.
Specifically, we're talking about console-spanking DirectX10 models which cost more than an XBox 360 and eat power like Tesla coils. At the meatier end of NVidia's 8800 series, for instance, cards require two hookups to the power supply and use, all by themsleves, about 180W. With the rest of the system needing a similar amount of juice, 450W is the recommended minimum, meaning that a look over the available models is timely and handy.
The short form is that HardOCP recommends the $87 FSP BlueStormII 500w. Avoid the Apevia ATX-AS500W-BL and the cheap allure of PowerTek's 500w, which is "the worst $20 investment a user could ever make."
450w-500w PSU Battle Royal [HardOCP]
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