Tough choice between PSU for new build

[NighhhT]

Hey, basically my choice is between the MSI MPG A650GF and the Seasonic Focus GM 650W. I've heard that both are great power supplies, so maybe I should get the one that has the best warranty in my country?

 

I would use it in my next build, something along the lines of:

i5 12400

B660 (will wait to see some reviews to grab a decent board)

GTX 960 4GB (my old graphics card, will keep waiting for prices to go down...)

HP EX950 1TB

2x16GB 3200Mhz Cl16 (I could probably go for 2x8GB, would save around ~40usd)

Lian Li Lancool II Mesh Performance

MSI MPG A650GF or Seasonic Focus GM 650W

[Kaaverik]

I didn't even know MSI made power supplies, LOL

 

Both seem to be great choices. I personally trust Seasonic with everything I run, but whichever one you prefer should work just fine!

[NighhhT]

24 minutes ago, Kaaverik said:

I didn't even know MSI made power supplies, LOL

 

Both seem to be great choices. I personally trust Seasonic with everything I run, but whichever one you prefer should work just fine!

They entered the market quite recently, they don't manufacture their PSUs tho. The OEM is CWT

[IkeaGnome]

5 minutes ago, NighhhT said:

They entered the market quite recently, they don't manufacture their PSUs tho. The OEM is CWT

They have slightly louder fans, but are on par with a lot of better PSUs. If there's a good price difference and you don't mind a bit louder of a fan, they're worth grabbing.

[NighhhT]

16 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

They have slightly louder fans, but are on par with a lot of better PSUs. If there's a good price difference and you don't mind a bit louder of a fan, they're worth grabbing.

Both are about ~85usd in my country. The 10 year warranty from MSI is quite tempting, not gonna lie.

[Kaaverik]

39 minutes ago, NighhhT said:

Both are about ~85usd in my country. The 10 year warranty from MSI is quite tempting, not gonna lie.

10 years is a lot of time. Especially for a PSU! I think that would be the best choice IMO. My PC barely makes a whisper until I start playing games, and an air cooled GPU is always the loudest part anyways, so why not?

[NighhhT]

I see that the man, the legend @jonnyGURUis active on the forum, maybe he can shed some light on the design/components used in the MSI MPG A650GF. I found some spanish written reviews of the PSU with some photos If that is of any help.

Maybe this PSU shares the same design/components with a Corsair PSU, iirc CWT is the OEM of some Corsair PSUs.

 

By the way, huge fan of the work you did on jonnyguru.com, used to read so many reviews there before choosing a power supply.

[Guest]

 

3 hours ago, NighhhT said:

I see that the man, the legend @jonnyGURUis active on the forum, maybe he can shed some light on the design/components used in the MSI MPG A650GF.

 

Maybe this PSU shares the same design/components with a Corsair PSU, iirc CWT is the OEM of some Corsair PSUs.

Nope.  Got to realize CWT has dozens of platforms and most of their clients modify the crap out of them if they have any kind of engineering team (e.g. Corsair, beQuiet, Thermaltake).  It's not terrible, though.  Just a cheap CWT Gold.

 

Low hold up time,. too high OCP, very loud at high loads, not efficient at low loads or while in standby.

 

I don't like the Seasonic Focus GM either.  But if those two are LITERALLY your only two choices and cost around the same, then the Seasonic is the choice this go around.

 

 

[NighhhT]

7 hours ago, jonnyGURU said:

 

Nope.  Got to realize CWT has dozens of platforms and most of their clients modify the crap out of them if they have any kind of engineering team (e.g. Corsair, beQuiet, Thermaltake).  It's not terrible, though.  Just a cheap CWT Gold.

 

Low hold up time,. too high OCP, very loud at high loads, not efficient at low loads or while in standby.

 

I don't like the Seasonic Focus GM either.  But if those two are LITERALLY your only two choices and cost around the same, then the Seasonic is the choice this go around.

 

 

Thanks for your input Jonny. Yeah, the choices around the 400-650W range here in Argentina are pretty barren (the market is filled with really bad PSUs). The only 650W gold rated PSUs available atm here are Seasonic Core GM650, Seasonic Focus GM650 and MSI MPG A650GF.

 

Things get a bit better in the 750W+ range but they are quite overpriced, but we get to choose between Cooler Master MWE Gold V2 750W, Corsair RM750X, EVGA 750GQ (and the 750W versions of the PSUs already mentioned before).

Guess I will wait a bit and buy the rest of my new build components first and leave PSU choice last to see If new power supplies show up in the market.

[Chiyawa]

9 minutes ago, NighhhT said:

Guess I will wait a bit and buy the rest of my new build components first and leave PSU choice last to see If new power supplies show up in the market.

You can try but I don't get my hopes up, especially for PSU lower than 750W. This is because with the recent nVidia RTX GPU can suck up so much power (they can hit close to 500W for 3080), stocking low power PSU is kinda pointless. Of course there are those 'office' PC, but many of them doesn't need 650W PSU as they can work quite well using 400W PSU, and even so, getting 1 from Dell or HP makes more sense and cut down all the hassles of assembling the PC. So, 500W to 700W PSU is a bit hard as they don't have much market.

 

Anyway, it's okay to get a higher wattage PSU because of a few advantageous:

1. No need to worry if you decided to upgrade your component later on. Well, I used to tell people this last time. Today, it is not a good advise because GPU can pretty much consume so much power. Still, let's say if you want to upgrade your CPU to 12900K, you don't need to worry about upgrading your PSU, and you definitely don't have to worry if your PSU can provide adequate power for CPU overclocking.

2. They run cooler. Many high quality PSU runs cooler and quieter when your power usage is low. In fact, many PSU will not turn their fan on if the power usage is less than 20% of their rated wattage. Since your component are not stress out, your PSU life expectancy is higher. Of course, that really depends on the quality of the component, but less stress means longer lifespan. This is purely subjective, so your mileage may vary.

 

The only real disadvantage I can find is that under utilising your PSU can lead to high power loss and reduce its efficiency by a lot (from close to 90% to as low as 81%, and even lower if your load is less than 20%). Usually, for PSU to achieve peak efficiency is about 50%. So, let's say you have 750W PSU but you use less than 300W of power, you're losing efficiency significantly. You can refer to the power chart from the PSU manufacturer to see the power efficiency curve. The second disadvantage is the price. Higher wattage PSU can be a bit pricey, but for me, if it is well within my budget, I don't mind paying extra for it.

[NighhhT]

1 hour ago, Chiyawa said:

You can try but I don't get my hopes up, especially for PSU lower than 750W. This is because with the recent nVidia RTX GPU can suck up so much power (they can hit close to 500W for 3080), stocking low power PSU is kinda pointless. Of course there are those 'office' PC, but many of them doesn't need 650W PSU as they can work quite well using 400W PSU, and even so, getting 1 from Dell or HP makes more sense and cut down all the hassles of assembling the PC. So, 500W to 700W PSU is a bit hard as they don't have much market.

 

Anyway, it's okay to get a higher wattage PSU because of a few advantageous:

1. No need to worry if you decided to upgrade your component later on. Well, I used to tell people this last time. Today, it is not a good advise because GPU can pretty much consume so much power. Still, let's say if you want to upgrade your CPU to 12900K, you don't need to worry about upgrading your PSU, and you definitely don't have to worry if your PSU can provide adequate power for CPU overclocking.

2. They run cooler. Many high quality PSU runs cooler and quieter when your power usage is low. In fact, many PSU will not turn their fan on if the power usage is less than 20% of their rated wattage. Since your component are not stress out, your PSU life expectancy is higher. Of course, that really depends on the quality of the component, but less stress means longer lifespan. This is purely subjective, so your mileage may vary.

 

The only real disadvantage I can find is that under utilising your PSU can lead to high power loss and reduce its efficiency by a lot (from close to 90% to as low as 81%, and even lower if your load is less than 20%). Usually, for PSU to achieve peak efficiency is about 50%. So, let's say you have 750W PSU but you use less than 300W of power, you're losing efficiency significantly. You can refer to the power chart from the PSU manufacturer to see the power efficiency curve. The second disadvantage is the price. Higher wattage PSU can be a bit pricey, but for me, if it is well within my budget, I don't mind paying extra for it.

I don't agree with you on this, most people aren't going to run an RTX 3080 or AMD equivalent for gaming, you got to look at the market share/units sold (or look at steam hardware usage, or whatever it's called).

 

I would bet that the most common combination would be along the lines of Ryzen 5 5600X/5600G or i5 12400/12600K paired with RTX 3060/3060 Ti/3070 or RX6800, these GPUs used 175W-250W on a stress test like furmark. So If you add up ~200W/250W for your 12600K+fans+HDDs+SSDs you will end up with 400W-500W power consumption for the whole system.

 

So a 600W-650W PSU would be more than enough to drive systems like what I previosly mentioned.

[Chiyawa]

10 hours ago, NighhhT said:

I would bet that the most common combination would be along the lines of Ryzen 5 5600X/5600G or i5 12400/12600K paired with RTX 3060/3060 Ti/3070 or RX6800

I don't think that's a good assumption. If I use assumptions, I would already push everyone to get a 1600W PSU because I would assume everyone will eventually upgrade to Threadripper and 2 RTX3090.

 

Even if majority of users use that, I would always look at what they wanted to build and make recommendation.

 

10 hours ago, NighhhT said:

So a 600W-650W PSU would be more than enough to drive systems like what I previosly mentioned.

Yes, for your current build. Everyone who told me this back in 2018 freak their pants out when they saw how much RTX3080 suck their PSU (with some have their PSU toast because the GPU draw too much current), which drive the cost of high wattage PSU (more than 750W) high for a few months. So, guess if you are okay, sure, why not. I'm just giving you advise and my opinion.

 

My initial response is what you have stated: It's hard to find a high-tier 650W PSU in your area. I say I don't get my hopes up because the 650W 'high end PSU' market is not much (yeah, maybe I should emphasised on 'high end PSU'. I think you may be confused and thought why I claim like that when everyone is buying 650W PSU. Sorry, my bad.), and not many manufacturer are concentrating on this wattage with their high tier product. So, if you want high end PSU with 650W, your chances are slim. Most 650W PSU are mid-tiers, because they are aim for those mid-tier gamers with budget constrain. You will get a better chance in 750W category for high end tier PSU.