How to Buy the Right Power Supply for Your PC

Whenever you are building a PC for work purpose, or for the purpose of gaming, one of the most important components that you would need to pay attention to is going to be the power supply unit. Many people completely overlook this factor and tend to go for a cheap power supply with components that are really demanding when it comes to power. While the PC will boot, and you will be able to play games as well, the one thing that you must know is that you are putting your PC at risk.

If you want to buy the best power supply for your PC, this guide can definitely help you select the right one.

Sure, the chances of a catastrophe might not be all that high, but it is better to make sure that your PC is protected rather than waiting for something bad to happen. The good news though, is that if you do put in some careful consideration into buying a power supply, you can easily go for something that will actually make your overall experience a whole lot easier as well.

In this article, we are going to be looking at how you can buy the right power supply for your PC. Whether you want something for a high-end gaming PC, a workstation, or an entry level HTPC. If you want to buy the best power supply for your PC, this guide can definitely help you select the right one.

Choosing the Right Wattage Required

You are going to find power supplies with various wattages available in the market. More often than not, you will find the same power supply unit with different wattages. Just take a look at the Corsair RMx series, it starts with 550 watts and goes all the way up to 850 watts.

Speaking of which, wattage required is one of the most important factors that you will need to keep in mind. However, you also need to know that going for higher wattage is not always going to result in higher power consumption. Your PC is only going to consume the power it needs under minimum and maximum load. So, even if you have a 1,500 watts power supply unit on a PC that consumes a maximum of 400 watts under load, the rest is just going to be unused, unless of course, you upgrade your PC and add more power hungry components.

A high-end gaming PC or a workstation should be able to run with ease on a 750-watt power supply with enough headroom for overclocking, or inclusion of new components.

80+ Ratings

Another thing that you will see common in power supplies is the 80+ ratings, these ratings are becoming more and more common in the modern day and age. They represent just how efficient the power supplies are when running. The higher the rating, the more efficient they are.

However, the important thing that you must know here is that these ratings do not represent the overall performance of a power supply, instead, it represents how efficient the power supply is when handling electricity.

An 80+ Bronze power supply can be just as good in terms of performance as an 80+ Gold in terms of performance.

Modular vs Non-Modular

When buying a power supply, you will come across units that are going to be modular, as well as non-modular units with the former being the more expensive options.

However, there are benefits to modular power supplies that simply cannot be ignored. They allow you to easily manage cables since you can decide to not plug in the cables you are not going to need. Additionally, with modular power supplies, you have the option to go for fully sleeved custom cables rather than sleeved extensions for a color-coordinated build if you are into it.

The benefit of a non-modular power supply is that happens to be on the cheaper end, but only as far as the price is concerned, and not the performance, itself.

Factor

This is one of the most overlooked factors that people often completely, and entirely ignore. When you are buying a power supply, you have to keep the form factor in mind. Both in terms of your case, as well as the power supply you are buying.

If you have a standard sized case that supports ATX, as well as other common form factors, you would be good to go with a standard power supply. However, if you own a

micro-ATX

case, or something even smaller, you might have to go with SFX power supply, a form factor that has smaller power supplies than the ATX sized ones.

Sure, you can always buy a bracket, but that is just going to be you spending the extra money. So, it is just better that you keep the form factor in mind before you buy the power supply you have been looking for.

Conclusion

Honestly, buying a power supply has become so much easier than it used to be a few years ago. You just have to look for the right features and you are good to go. True, things can go sideways if you are not careful enough but in most cases, you will not run into any issues as far as the perfect power supply buying experience is concerned. Just make sure that you are careful with what PSU you are going with and you would be good to go if you don’t want to spend time on the internet here are some of the tested and trusted

PSUs

that we recommended for any sort of PC.