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Power supplies incompatible?

Started by Thunderdog, March 12, 2004, 09:58 hrs

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Thunderdog

As of now my basic plan is to get as much "bullet proof" top quality HARDWARE now, and at the end, get the CPU, MB, Memory, as Im still 4-6 months away, and prices should drop for those items a little, andI get a faster system.The sim Im looking at running is a notorius frame killer, so I have reason to wait.

Are Enermax Power supplies cross compatible with both P-4/AMD chips? Im looking at the 550 Watter (E-bay $115.00) Will this be in the description? Ive seen poewer supplies only for AMD, for example.

Thanks

Neon

To my knowledge, "P4 compatible" only designates that the power supply has the extra 4-pin power connector that P4 motherboards require. However, many Athlon motherboards use it now, so it makes sense to get it. Otherwise, I do not think that the power supply cares what CPU is used.

Another thing to consider is whether you will use any SATA hard drives. The power connectors are different, so either get a power supply with the new connector, or get a converter cable (~ $4).
Area 64 project|Asus SK8N|nForce3 Pro 150 chipset|AMD Athlon 64 FX-51|2x 512MB Kingston HyperX PC3200R|eVGA GeForce 6800GT|WD Caviar SE 1200JD SATA|Plextor PX-708A 8x DVD+R|Plextor PX-116A 16x DVD-ROM|Lian Li PC-60H1S|Antec TruePower 430W ATX|WinXP x64 edition

query

The distinction is blurring, because many AMD boards now require the ATX12V connector that used to be the sole province of the Pentium4.  Conversely, there are some P4 boards that don't use the ATX12V connector.

If you're going to wait on the CPU, and plan to get a new mainboard, I'd wait until Summer.  ATX is about to be replaced by BTX, starting with the P4 but quickly migrating to AMD as well.  BTX power supplies won't be compatible with ATX cases and mainboards - the format is completely different.

Even if you wind up buying ATX, you may find prices have dropped as  BTX takes hold of the market - ATX won't go away for a while, but if you're planning to build a cutting-edge system, that will be the province of BTX by summer.


trav

What does BTX do that ATX doesnt?
New Powersaving features?
CygBox | ASUS A7V400-MX| Athlon XP-2600+ (Barton core) (1900Mhz) |Gigabyte Radeon 9200SE| Onboard 6CH Sound|PC2700 400Mhz 768DDR

query

Take everything you know about ATX and turn it upside down and you get BTX.  BTX includes support for things like separate power to video cards, SATA power connectors built into the power supply - along with an almost completely inverted layout relative to ATX.

http://www.formfactors.org/developer/specs/BTX_Specification%20v1.0a.pdf


Thunderdog

Great, so my $115 550Watt turns into a $230.00 580Watt.Yay, more $$$ to spend!! Not sure why Im happy about this!