TalesinOur own little well of hateJoin Date: 2002-11-08Member: 7710NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators
Also, if you can afford it go for a single-rail PSU. More expensive, because the parts have to be quality to output the same amount of power through one transformer, instead of two or even three smaller, cheaper ones. Cuts down on potential phase harmonic issues (which are a PAIN to sort out if you run into them).
PSU is the foundation of your machine, even moreso than the motherboard. If you don't have stable, clean power, you'll get glitches, crashes, and unexpected behaviours all over the damn place. Mobo is next, of course. I'd actually argue that CPU cooler is more important than CPU. RAM is the next step down. Then HDD performance. Video card comes right after that, and sound card hangs out toward the bottom of the heap (as most onboards at least do a passable job) with the optical drive(s). If a higher-priority component eats some of the budget for one further down the chain, so be it.
douchebagatronCustom member titleJoin Date: 2003-12-20Member: 24581Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
right. never buy Rosewill. This is the second thing i've bought from them. the first was a 2 dollar wireless mouse that broke literally 2 days after i got it. then there's this wireless card. the antenna started messing up shortly after i got it, and now it's been wreaking havoc on my entire system.
Download a program called PC Check, make a boot disk, run it. It will check just about every aspect of your hardware that software could test and rule out anything. Could also be driver issues or software conflicts.
Comments
PSU is the foundation of your machine, even moreso than the motherboard. If you don't have stable, clean power, you'll get glitches, crashes, and unexpected behaviours all over the damn place. Mobo is next, of course. I'd actually argue that CPU cooler is more important than CPU. RAM is the next step down. Then HDD performance. Video card comes right after that, and sound card hangs out toward the bottom of the heap (as most onboards at least do a passable job) with the optical drive(s). If a higher-priority component eats some of the budget for one further down the chain, so be it.
Rosewill blows. fact.
Trivia: Corsair PSUs are made by Seasonic but are more expensive.