How to Choose the Right Power Supply for Your Build
Building a new PC is always an exciting thing to go through and that is the best part, to be honest. You don’t have to do a lot in the modern-day and age because the knowledge that you need to build a new PC is already easily available to you through the internet and you can use to get sorted.
Now, the good news is that for most of the parts, you already have a good amount of information at hand. However, the power supply is the one part that easily gets overlooked by a lot of people and that is not what we are trying to go through here, in the first place.
A good power supply is a very important part of building a new PC because without that you might not be able to go far, and we have to avoid that at all costs. Thankfully, we have years of PC building experience under our belt and to ensure that our readers are properly helped out, we are going to dispense all of the knowledge that you need to get the best possible power supply you can buy.
So, let’s not waste more time and start looking at how to choose the right power supply for your upcoming build.
How Much Output Do You Want?
Honestly, most power supply debates can start and end at just how much output is required, in the first place. But I wish it were that easy because then you would not have to worry about it and this guide would not have been necessary, to begin with.
Granted, the more output, the better the power supply with more demanding hardware. However, that is not as easy as it might seem. For instance, you have to be sure that you are buying into a brand that is good and delivers on the amount of output that is advertised, otherwise, things start making little sense.
With that said, if you are building a PC that is equipped with a single RTX 3080 and the best possible parts that you can find, going for a 750 to 850-watt power supply by a reputed brand is the way to go. We can assure you that you will not be second-guessing yourself in the safe hands.
Don’t Overlook the Efficiency
When you are spending money on a power supply, one of the things that are easier to overlook happens to be the efficiency of the power supply. I have seen this happening so many times that people just overlook the efficiency altogether, and while it might make sense, it is not the sensible thing to do.
For starters, a power supply starts from 80 Plus certification which is often known as 80 Plus White; this is the first tier. To make it easier for everyone, we have made a table below that should help people decide.
| PSU @ 115V | 10% Load | 20% Load | 50% Load | 100% Load |
| 80 Plus Standard | – | 80% | 80%/PFC 0.90 | 80% |
| 80 Plus Bronze | – | 82% | 85%/PFC 0.90 | 82% |
| 80 Plus Silver | – | 85% | 88%/PFC 0.90 | 85% |
| 80 Plus Gold | – | 87% | 90%/PFC 0.90 | 87% |
| 80 Plus Platinum | – | 90% | 92%/PFC 0.90 | 89% |
| 80 Plus Titanium | 90% | 92%/PFC 0.95 | 94% | 90% |
As you see, the more you go up a tier, the better the efficiency becomes at different loads. Normally, I would suggest that people just pick up a good 80 Plus Silver or 80 Plus Gold for high end, consumer-grade systems, and you would do just fine.
Modular, Semi-Modular or Non-Modular
Perhaps one of the biggest debates that surround power supply is whether you are going with a modular design or a non-modular design. Believe it or not, it might seem like a no-brainer when you are discussing it, but a lot of the times, people just end up surprising you.
For the uninitiated, a modular power supply is the one that has detachable cables; which means that you are no longer limited to using all the cables that have shipped with the power supply, but instead, you can just use the ones that you need, and ignore the ones that you need.
On the other hand, you have semi-modular, that has the power and EPS cables attached to the power supply unit, while the other cables can be detached. These are somewhere in the middle of the road as far as the price is concerned but are not as common.
Lastly, we have the non-modular designs; these are the cheapest, and as the name suggests, have all the power supplies coming straight out of the unit. These are the cheapest power supplies, and if you are looking for a higher-end unit, you will not be running into a non-modular power supply in most of the cases.
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