Cheap, cheap, cheap!

[Asterix]

What impact does the power supply have to the system? Speaking naively, you could expect that as long as it's giving enough power, it will do the job. Please can you just give me a quick summary of why it's important to have a good power supply.

Thanks once again, Ste.

 

[Ste]

Quality of components.

The cheaper a power supply is the more likely the internal components are cheaper and are therefore of less quality, lower quality parts are more likely to cause more flucturations in voltage and amperage output. This can cause among other "things" instability in programs, random shut downs or kill parts.

If in the worst case, the power supply "blows up" the lower quality of the parts and design can allow it to take other parts with it..

A bad power supply to a computer is what a bad heart is to a human, nothing but problems..

 

[Asterix]

Thanks Ste. This is the only supply eBuyer stock from your cheapskate list.

Thermaltake TR2 500W PSU 12cm Fan 12vATX 20+4pin - Ebuyer

 

[Ste]

I am certain it is better than the one included in the bare bone kit.

 

[Asterix]

I don't doubt that. It's just the price that I'm not happy with. Another £40 on an extremely affordable system is a lot of money. Hmmmm

 

[Ste]

Buying a quality power supply is always worth the money.

 

[Asterix]

I've just noticed, the hard drive is SATA-300, but the motherboard only supports SATA-150.

Am I right?

Edit: It needs a laptop hard drive, doesn't it?

 

[Ste]

Why would it need a laptop hard drive?

SATA 2 is backwards compatible.. So it is fine.

 

[Asterix]

I don't know. I got very confused. So the current drive is okay. What about the optical drive I've chosen? It seems as though there is only 1 SATA connector on the motherboard, when I would need 2 (1 for hard drive and 1 for DVD drive).

MSI Saturn 890 AM2 Mini Tower Barebone - VIA K8M890Pro Chipset With 350W PSU - Ebuyer

Edit: Don't worry about the above question!!!

 

[Asterix]

Okay, after doing more research, here is what I've got:-

Barebone MSI Saturn 890 AM2 Mini Tower Barebone £59.99

Power Supply Arctic Power 500W PSU £27.35

Processor AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2GHz £27.91

Cooling Fan Arctic Cooling AC-FRZ-7P £15.24

Memory Extra Value 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz £24.72

Optical Drive Pioneer DVR-215BK 20X SATA £17.99

Keyboard & Mouse Extra Value Black/Silver Wireless Multimedia Keyboard and Optical Mouse £6.98

Speakers Logitech Black S120 2.0 Speakers - 2.3W RMS £7.13

Total: £187.31

I've removed the hard drive because I've decided to buy a hard drive for myself and donate my old one to this system.