If you over-spend on a PSU, you can get one of the “silent” models that don’t spin up the fan at all until it becomes needed. Are you in a desert or other perpetually hot location?
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WIth the cheap price of computers now, I do not even try to build my own or spec something out anymore. I don’t play games, like I did backj in the 1990s.
Hell, now I have 3 Chrome computers - and they do 99.9% of what I need. So, what I have now are not very expensive at all.
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2,500.00 on a Gateway tower in the late 90’s
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I’m looking at a Corsair or Be-Quiet PSU around 550W, but am open to suggestions. I’m inSouth Australian near the coast - pretty arid with temperature peaking at 46C where I live last year. Indoors, I would say my house gets up to around 30C. Probably only three or four weeks of the year is like that during January/February time. I guess anything that has a variable fan would be good enough. 550W is far more than my system needs (Ryzen 3 1300X, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 1TB HD, nVidia 1030GT gfx card).
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I was thinking if you got one rated higher than you intend to use it that it would work less hard (than its rating) and might run quieter. I have one of these (yes they’re expensive) and I am quite satisfied, but I don’t have the kind of heat you experience… 30C outdoors is the usual hottest I might experience, and indoors it’s usually no more than 25C.
https://www.corsair.com/us/en/Categories/Products/Power-Supply-Units/hx-series-config/p/CP-9020030-NA
HX Series™ HX650 Power Supply — 650 Watt 80 PLUS® Gold Certified Modular PSU
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Similar to what I’m considering, but a VX 550 or thereabouts. Not sure whet the differences are with the letters and whether all the Corsair PSUs have variable fans.
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I would say that these days a majority of users don’t need to spend very much for computers. They have reached commodity status, for the average user at least, and there is no need to spend over a grand these days.
That isn’t to say that I don’t lust after computers in the 1,500€ to 3,000€ range, but there is no way I can justify them for myself. I only splashed out on my Ryzen machine, because I was looking for a new job and wanted to get some experience with Hyper-V and setting up my own domain from scratch. It also helps with photo editing.
But I would say it is reverse snobbery today, getting a good deal on a cheap PC that fulfils your needs is better than spending a lot of money on one that is way over powered. Or buying a powerful one that will last a long time.
When I bought my previous laptop, a Sony Vaio Core i7 (first generation and still going strong), I wanted a MacBook Pro, but the Sony was quad core Core i7, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD and BluRay for 1,200€, the equivalent MacBook Pro back then was around 3,500€ for a dual core Core i7, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD and a DVD… I just couldn’t justify the price difference and all the software I needed ran on both Windows and OS X.
The Sony is now 10 years old and still working, still gets around an hour from the battery and runs Windows 10 - I did upgrade the HDD to an SSD. I’m looking to repurpose it as a Linux server at the moment.
For my brother-in-law, I recommended a cheap and cheerful ThinkPad, for well under a grand. It is powerful enough for what he needs and will last him several years - as he only uses it for Office and a bit of scanning.
I just noticed this just now on PCPer. It has some useful info.
Not really a personal purchase, but the most expensive system that I have owned was a Christmas gift in high school. My parents baught me a Gateway with the brand new Pentium 3 Coppermind processor clocking at 900 Mhz. It included a 27" Flat CRT monitor that I think was $1.5k by itself. All told, I believe it was just under $5k USD. My personal single most expensive pc purchase was a 32" apple flat screen monitor that was $2k at the time.
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