VOGONS


First post, by johndutch1987

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Working on a windows 98 build using a athlon 64 3000+ 1.8ghz and trying to figure out what modern power supply would work.
I will use a socket 939 MB like a asus a8v or something.
512mb to 1gb ram.
AGP card, probably a geforce4 ti.
Plus a couple of optical drives, floppy, and 2 hdds.
Any recommendations?

Reply 1 of 16, by aha2940

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I got a Corsair 550W for a build similar to yours. It works perfectly so far. I think so much power is a bit overkill, but better safe than sorry.

Reply 3 of 16, by Baoran

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I used Seasonic 520W S12II psu with my similar system. I used more power hungry FX-60 cpu though and Geforce FX 5950 ultra video card with my A8V motherboard, so I don't think you need that high wattage in your system.

Reply 5 of 16, by RandomStranger

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I generally use FSP PSUs whenever I can. They are cheap and reliable used by many reputable OEM companies for their work stations. For your PC I'd go for something around 300W. Even that has twice the output you would need.
For used PSUs I lean towards Seasonic, FSP and Delta Electronics.

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Reply 7 of 16, by hwh

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I think back in the day my Athlon 64 had a 300W supply. Wattage irrelevant though, practically any power supply you buy will meet that. When I got that system back from overseas the supply had failed. I threw in a Corsair (because it was cheap), I forget what it is but it's rated far beyond the originial.

Also needed SATA/Molex adapters, several.
You likely will need a special adapter for floppy power if you're buying a new power supply.
Also nice to get a modular one. That didn't exist back then but unless you're doing a "contemporary" build they help keep things orderly.

I recommend Seasonics. Best in the business. Probably overkill, you know, why spend extra on something, but on the other hand if you just want a name...

Reply 8 of 16, by texterted

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I use a Corsair TX-650 on all three of my retro machines, they are a few years old now but have been great so far.

Cheers

Ted

98se/W2K :- Asus A8v Dlx. A-64 3500+, 512 mb ddr, Radeon 9800 Pro, SB Live.
XP Pro:- Asus P5 Q SE Plus, C2D E8400, 4 Gig DDR2, Radeon HD4870, SB Audigy 2ZS.

Reply 9 of 16, by gdjacobs

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RandomStranger wrote on 2020-12-01, 15:51:

I generally use FSP PSUs whenever I can. They are cheap and reliable used by many reputable OEM companies for their work stations. For your PC I'd go for something around 300W. Even that has twice the output you would need.
For used PSUs I lean towards Seasonic, FSP and Delta Electronics.

Zippy/Emacs, Etasis, Lite-on, and Flextronics are excellent, on par with Delta for build and engineering capability. Seasonic isn't quite at that level. Superflower is also a capable OEM in the consumer sector along with FSP and Seasonic -- they make a lot of very good supplies for EVGA among others.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 10 of 16, by KCompRoom2000

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I'm using an EVGA 600W Bronze power supply on my Athlon 64X2 rig (also with an ASUS A8V motherboard) and it's been pretty solid since I bought it new 3 years ago. Definitely overkill, but better safe than sorry.

Reply 11 of 16, by Socket3

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Any 80+ power supply, even a 350w will work great. I use refurbshied FSP group and Delta Electronics 80+ bronze and 80+ gold (depending on model) in most of my pre 2005 computers.

You don't need to go and buy an expensive 600w corsair PSU for such a machine, the athlon 64 3000+ and gf4 ti barely use any power compared to modern machines, and going overboard on PSU output means it will not run in it's optimal load scenario witch leads to a (insignificantly) higher power bill.

One great thing about FSP and Delta Electronics PSUs is that most of these OEM models have rather strong 5v rails making them useful for socket A rigs, and others (older 200-250w models) even provide -12 and -5v, great for older builds with ISA slots running an ISA sound card (some sound cards require -5v and or -12v rails). Just make sure you buy one that is 80+ certified, as older non-certified Delta Electronics units are known to be unreliable.

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Reply 12 of 16, by ODwilly

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Id second the any modern 80plus unit. The 450watt 80 plus bronze EVGA's and the like are my go to's for light systems.

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 13 of 16, by gdjacobs

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Socket3 wrote on 2020-12-02, 08:29:

One great thing about FSP and Delta Electronics PSUs is that most of these OEM models have rather strong 5v rails making them useful for socket A rigs, and others (older 200-250w models) even provide -12 and -5v, great for older builds with ISA slots running an ISA sound card (some sound cards require -5v and or -12v rails). Just make sure you buy one that is 80+ certified, as older non-certified Delta Electronics units are known to be unreliable.

Anything beyond the nominal 10 year lifetime, especially if it's hard use, can be unreliable, but no Delta models I'm aware of in the last 25 years suffer any design flaws which make them more problematic than others. You're also recommending features which are largely contradictory. Delta adopted ATX12V 2.x power distribution fairly early on most of their models as the bulk of their PC power supply work is in the OEM and server markets powering Intel hardware. Heavy 5V rails were a requirement of 32 bit Athlon motherboards except the odd few which generated core voltage from the 12V rail, but Athlons weren't really popular in the OEM sector. The first 80 plus rated power supply came out at the start of 2005, well after ATX12V 2.0 was released, which makes finding an 80 plus rated Delta PSU designed to the ATX12V 1.3 (or earlier) standard difficult to impossible.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 14 of 16, by Socket3

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gdjacobs wrote on 2020-12-02, 15:43:

Anything beyond the nominal 10 year lifetime, especially if it's hard use, can be unreliable, but no Delta models I'm aware of in the last 25 years suffer any design flaws which make them more problematic than others.

I specifically mentioned refurbished. The PSUs I get have had all capacitors replaced with panasonic caps, regardless of the PSU brand. I checked several FSP, delta and other brand of PSUs, they have all been recapped with low-ESR panasonic caps. That brings reliability up a little bit.

As for Delta PSUs, alltough generally very reliable, have had problematic units specifically in 2005-2008 HP OEM PCs, but also some older 1998-2000 eMachines computers. Most of the failures we saw back in the day regarding these PCs were PSU related, and the PSUs were 250w delta electronics units.

gdjacobs wrote on 2020-12-02, 15:43:

You're also recommending features which are largely contradictory.

How is that? I recommended 80+ certified FSP/Delta electronics units. Perhaps the confusion stems from me mentioning strong 5v rails on select PSUs. That would be of no help to an Athlon 64 system, but greatly benefits Athlon XP socket A builds. Some units, even as new as 2010 have pretty decent 5V output.

English is not my first language, and I do tend to jump from one idea to another, maybe that caused the confusion....

Reply 15 of 16, by AntiRevisionism

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My Athlon 64 3400+ machine uses a TurboLink ATX-CW500WP4. Can't speak for wider experiences, but I never had a problem with it. Used pretty extensively as a guest machine for LAN gaming for a few years time and with games that really pushed the limits of the system.

I replaced the prior OEM PSU when I upgraded the video card from an Radeon X800 to 3850. (I got this power supply specifically because a lot of recommendations at the time were saying you should have two independent 12v rails feeding the card)

Reply 16 of 16, by gdjacobs

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Socket3 wrote on 2020-12-03, 14:54:

As for Delta PSUs, alltough generally very reliable, have had problematic units specifically in 2005-2008 HP OEM PCs, but also some older 1998-2000 eMachines computers. Most of the failures we saw back in the day regarding these PCs were PSU related, and the PSUs were 250w delta electronics units.

I've had Lite-on supplies fail in OEM machines as well, although that's almost always in SFF systems with completely inadequate air flow. So, context does matter a lot. The other side of PSU evaluation is if a PSU reliably fails in such a way that none of the attached hardware is killed.

Not all is champagne and berries with Delta power supplies. It wasn't uncommon for them to ship a CPU with lower tear components from LTEC (and similar vendors). The difference between Delta, FSP, and Bestec is plague era power supplies from the two former manufacturers not having a reputation for killing components while power supplies from the latter in the same era do have such a reputation.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder