Is a cheap non-80+ rated psu good for this?

[xFluing]

I am trying to make pretty much a glorified steam machine that im gonna use purely for streaming games from my main pc and I dont want to spend that much on it.

 

Chances are it wont be needing too much horsepower and I already have an old athlon x4 860k which should be more than enough for this. I will also be using my old r7 250 as a display adapter.

 

I already used this setup with a cheap psu my old case came with and it didnt have issues, however its way too loud which is why i want to get a better one.

 

[Chikensoops]

10 minutes ago, xFluing said:

I am trying to make pretty much a glorified steam machine that im gonna use purely for streaming games from my main pc and I dont want to spend that much on it.

 

Chances are it wont be needing too much horsepower and I already have an old athlon x4 860k which should be more than enough for this. I will also be using my old r7 250 as a display adapter.

 

I already used this setup with a cheap psu my old case came with and it didnt have issues, however its way too loud which is why i want to get a better one.

 

What’s exactly your budget here? For $10 you could maybe get a used low end bronze unit from a reputable brand, or maybe a no-name chinese brand with at least a decent fan. Any psu would do tho, as long as it’s not on the explosive side of the spectrum.

[manikyath]

go to your retailer of choice, go to power supplies, sort by price, and compare each one to a psu tier list (or just look at some of the specs... sometimes it's so bad it's obvious.)

 

the first one that isnt blatantly awful will probably be fine.

[PDifolco]

Unless you live in a country/house/whatever with very clean power and UPS, cheaping out 20 bucks and risking to fry your setup seems to me a bad bet...

[xFluing]

2 hours ago, PDifolco said:

Unless you live in a country/house/whatever with very clean power and UPS, cheaping out 20 bucks and risking to fry your setup seems to me a bad bet...

Chances are whatever im using wont need enough power to fry anything

[NF-A12x25]

1 hour ago, xFluing said:

Chances are whatever im using wont need enough power to fry anything

Not how it works. A bad PSU is a bad PSU, no matter whether you’re drawing 10 watts or a thousand. It’ll be more sensitive to power fluctuations etc.

[Blue4130]

6 hours ago, xFluing said:

Chances are whatever im using wont need enough power to fry anything

Low power psu can fry parts just as well as a 1200w beast. It's about quality. 

[Coaxialgamer]

Here's the way I see this: power electronics should be respected. Anything that consumes several hundred watts of mains voltage should be regarded with a healthy level of skepticism.

 

Power supplies are cheap, even more so in relation to the cost of a whole built. You could probably find a 400W unit with 80+ certification on sale for 30 USD, if not less. Best case scenario if you don't replace your old unit? You save a buck and end up with a noisy power supply. Worst case? You might kill parts of your machine if the PSU dies and takes them out with them. And while admittedly unlikely, the idea that a cheap PSU could catch fire and cause a house fire isn't exactly  implausible either.

 

The manufacturer who built your current unit couldn't even be arsed to meet the lowest of PSU efficiency standard. What does that say about the build quality of the unit, its potential longevity, or the care with which it was designed and built? Do you want to risk your build in order to cut a few dozen USD off your total build cost?

[Blue4130]

6 minutes ago, Coaxialgamer said:

 

The manufacturer who built your current unit couldn't even be arsed to meet the lowest of PSU efficiency standard. What does that say about the build quality of the unit, its potential longevity, or the care with which it was designed and built? Do you want to risk your build in order to cut a few dozen USD off your total build cost?

Or they didn'twant to pay the cost. Fun fact, manufactueres need to pay the 80+ company to be tested and it isn't a small amount.

[Coaxialgamer]

8 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

Or they didn'twant to pay the cost. Fun fact, manufactueres need to pay the 80+ company to be tested and it isn't a small amount.

Nearly every company in industry pays metrology/certification companies for the label that says "yeah, your equipment holds up". It's hardly new, and it's hardly exclusive to the PC industry either. Your local supermarket pays companies to come calibrate and certify their produce scales regularly too. It ain't cheap, and it's admittedly seen as a something that costs money by most execs (as opposed to creating value), but what does it say about a company when they can't be arsed to get their stuff certified?

Sure, that PSU might be 80+ compliant, but it probably isn't realistically. If they were it would have made far more sense to amortize the cost of certification over the lifetime of the product considering how terribly non 80+ units are seen.

 

[Blue4130]

1 hour ago, Coaxialgamer said:

Nearly every company in industry pays metrology/certification companies for the label that says "yeah, your equipment holds up". It's hardly new, and it's hardly exclusive to the PC industry either. Your local supermarket pays companies to come calibrate and certify their produce scales regularly too. It ain't cheap, and it's admittedly seen as a something that costs money by most execs (as opposed to creating value), but what does it say about a company when they can't be arsed to get their stuff certified?

Sure, that PSU might be 80+ compliant, but it probably isn't realistically. If they were it would have made far more sense to amortize the cost of certification over the lifetime of the product considering how terribly non 80+ units are seen.

 

Why do laptops not follow suit and have 80+ ratings? No one bats an eye with the lack of 80+ on laptops? Just desktops.

 

To be clear, I always advocate for getting a quality PSU, but I just think the 80+ is a bad way to judge quality. It's a pay to win mechanic. The testing has been shown to be iffy. The mfg seeds selected units for review. More than one company has been caught cherry picking units that pass at one level but retail bought units don't meet the same specs.

[xFluing]

I just realised a good alternative would be upgrading my PSU and use the one I have now in the "steam machine"

 

However I still feel like I'd overspend as I've watched my power consumption (albeit through rivatuner) and cpu + gpu wouldn't consume more than 200W total so I still feel I'm way within spec of my current power supply, even in a very demanding game like Callisto Protocol (which I got for free with my card, however the game is too boring for me)

[Coaxialgamer]

11 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

Why do laptops not follow suit and have 80+ ratings? No one bats an eye with the lack of 80+ on laptops? Just desktops.

 

To be clear, I always advocate for getting a quality PSU, but I just think the 80+ is a bad way to judge quality. It's a pay to win mechanic. The testing has been shown to be iffy. The mfg seeds selected units for review. More than one company has been caught cherry picking units that pass at one level but retail bought units don't meet the same specs.

Because laptop power supplies are not standardized beyond the voltages they output. 80+ does not apply here.

 

And while I agree that 80+ ratings shouldn't be used as a sole metric for quality, power supplies which can't meet this specification can be safely disregarded as poorly built.