🛑STOP🛑 Making These PSU Mistakes! Best Power Supply for PC 2022

stop buying bad psus let's get you the best power supply for pc 2022. hi welcome back to pc builder i'm jason now you'd think that buying the best power supply for pc would be easy but it's not especially with new power hungry gpus and cpus launching late this year and beyond now instead buyers have to wade through an endless amount of disjointed information like single versus multi-rail new psu standards 80 plus ratings how many watts you need form factors and more because it seems so complicated many pc builders they just fall back on the myth that all you need is an 80 plus gold rated unit but unfortunately 80 plus ratings they're total garbage and they've got nothing to do with power supply unit quality so many end up buying bad power supplies and risk killing their pc but fear not you don't need to be an electrical engineer to buy the best power supply for pc and today we're going to walk you through everything that you need to know to size and buy the best power supply for your pc build or upgrade and we'll give you specific product recommendations for every budget level though this is not a sponsored video i want to thank msi for sending over their mpg a1000g 1000 watt psu for us to check out and remember if you get value out of this video give it a like as it makes a huge difference to the channel and of course subscribe and click that bell icon that way you get notified when we release cool content you can also support the channel with the super thanks with that let's jump into it let's start with the basics pc power supplies they come in two different sizes and that's something we call form factors the first it's the most common which is the atx form factor and it's widely used in regular size pc builds that utilize an atx pc case or a micro atx pc case now the second is a smaller form factor called sfx and that's intended for small form factor builds typically using an itx motherboard now if you're using a small form factor or an unusual size case it's important to check the power supply form factor that will fit into it on the case specs power supplies are separated by whether or not you can remove their cables a pc power supply that has all of its cables permanently attached that's called non-modular a pc power supply where some of the cables can be removed that's called semi-modular and if you can remove all the cables on a power supply this is called fully modular like this now this is mostly a convenience factor today as most pc cases now come with a psu shroud to hide the cables and it has no impact on the overall quality of the unit speaking of cables let's go over what each type is first for the motherboard we have at least one 20 plus four pin adapter that typically attaches on the right side of the motherboard and at least one four plus four pin eps cable that attaches to the top left of the motherboard note that some motherboards do have additional connections for a second eps cable and while most boards will run with only one eps cable attached i recommend getting a psu that has enough connections for your motherboard now for the graphics card we have pcie cables and those can come in six pin six plus two pin or eight pin configurations or the brand new pcie gen 5 16 pin configuration depending on the power needs of your graphics card you may need multiple pcie cables and while some cables come with the ability to daisy chain the connections that means connect the same cable to the gpu twice i recommend using a separate cable for each connection note that if you're getting an rtx 4000 or rx 7000 series graphics card that has a 16 pin pcie 5 connection you will be able to get an adapter to be able to use older 8-pin cables instead then of course we've got sata power connections for sata drives and some other devices like fanon rgb hub controllers and finally many psus still include the old molex power connectors though few modern devices actually use these anymore now quick warning on modular psu cables while connections on the device end are standard the connections at the psu itself are not and you should never mix and match cables with other modular or semi-modular power supplies of course you can get cable extensions from companies like asia horse to either lengthen the cable or just add some cool color aesthetics to your build including rgb cables just note that most of these cables are designed to plug into the end of the cables that came with the original psu hence the term extension and don't plug them directly into the psu itself although you can order specially made cables from companies like cablemod that do replace your existing cables thank you to asia horse for providing some sample cable extensions next we've got single rail versus multi-rail psus is one better than the other well listen your power supply provides power at three voltages 12 volt 5 volt and 3.3 volt but in reality almost all the power is provided at 12 volt so when talking about psus we just typically ignore 5 volt and 3.3 volt circuits entirely now a single rail psu provides 12 volt power on a single circuit while a multi-rail psu provides 12 volt power divided into two or more circuits hence the term multi so what's the difference effectively there is none and in fact if you look at the number of power supply models produced today you can see that the overwhelming majority are single rail with only a handful of multi-rail models still manufactured so the tldr is don't worry about it now let's talk about what 80 plus certification is why it's terrible and why you should absolutely ignore it when buying the best power supply if that's right ignore it let's start with what it is which is simply the efficiency rating of a pc power supply measured at three different levels twenty percent total load fifty percent total load and a hundred percent total load now while there are six tiers of performance that qualify for an 80 plus certification in practice nobody makes 80 plus silver rated psus anymore so we've got 80 plus white 80 plus bronze 80 plus gold 80 plus platinum and 80 plus titanium now power supply efficiency is measured at each load level 20 50 and 100 load and then it's assigned a rating by the highest efficiency that it can maintain so for instance power supplies that maintain 80 efficiency but not higher than 82 efficiency are certified 80 plus white units that hit the bronze level standards certified as 80 plus bronze and so on and so forth so jason what's wrong with that don't we want more power efficiency well there's three issues the first issue is that the difference between the ratings it's very very tiny with a 115 volt titanium unit only being about 10 percent more efficient than a similar bronze 80 plus certified unit while typically costing up to twice as much while an 80 plus gold rated unit is only four percent more efficient than the same 80 plus bronze unit that's right only a four percent difference between bronze and gold the second issue is that the 80 plus color rating it's often confused with build quality of the pc power supply with many thinking that an 80 plus gold unit it must be better quality than an 80 plus bronze unit right but unfortunately there's no direct connection between 80 plus color certification and the quality of the components used or the design of the psu and there are many many terrible and even dangerous gold rated units that you should avoid well there's quite a lot of bronze rated units out there that are good quality we'll go through how to actually judge psu quality in just a moment now the final issue is that you simply can't trust the way psus are 80 plus certified as manufacturers gain the testing system by submitting a high quality unit often called a golden sample when the power supply units that they actually sell to consumers they've got lower quality components leading to a false rating being assigned now taken all together 80 plus certification it doesn't really tell us anything and we should only rely on power supplies that have been independently reviewed using a unit purchased from a retailer rather than a demo unit sent by the manufacturer if you want more information on the problems with the 80 plus certification system gamers nexus did an amazing deep dive video on it and i'll leave a link to it down in the video description so if 80 plus certification doesn't help us find the best power supply for pc what does well a number of factors go into it but let's keep this simple so it breaks down into three factors the first factor it's how cleanly the unit supplies power in particular reducing something we call voltage ripple the second is the quality of the psu design and the materials used especially the capacitors or caps as they are often abbreviated to ensure good operation and reduce the risk of things going wrong and third the protections present and working on the power supply to ensure that if something does go wrong with that power supply it handles it in a way that doesn't lead to a dangerous or explosive situation remember fire's bad some of those protections include things like over current protection for when the unit finds itself drawing too much current over temperature protection for when the unit runs too hot and short circuit protection in the case of a short circuit i'll leave a link to an article that discusses these and other power supply protections in more detail down in the video description and here's the part where i feel like most people get totally overwhelmed and they give up now luckily there's an easy way to determine if a power supply is good or bad you just look it up on the psu cultist list yes the name is a little scary but this is a group of power supply and electrical engineering enthusiasts who compile one big list of all the psus based on quality with ato rated units being the best and f2 rated units being the worst now each tier it's broken out by a set of design protection and quality standards the a-tier includes a breakout of single and multi-rail units and each tier includes units ranked in that tier as well as in what are called low priority and speculative positions for power supplies that don't quite have a full formal review but where we've got enough information to roughly place the unit on a tier i'll leave this list linked down in the video description so what tier of psu should you use in your next pc build or upgrade well no matter what i would never go below c tier and i always prefer to get a better rated unit if the price is similar at the budget level a c tier rated unit it's likely fine but as we go up in component power draw and the price of the system increases we can think of going up a tier a little like buying insurance so for mid-range price builds i'm looking for a b or a-tier rated unit at the high end i would only use an a-tier rated unit in a build with a high power drive gpu like an rtx 3070 rx 6800 or higher including the new rtx 4070 and rx 7800 or higher and if i'm intending to heavily overclock the cpu or gpu then i would go straight for the a-tier the easiest way to search the list is simply to use your browser search function and search each tier by manufacturer until you find your unit so for instance the msi mpg a1000g we just search for msi and we find it immediately in the a tier under single rail for evga b5 750 watt unit we search for evga and we find it in the c tier in a long list of similar power supplies made by evga now note that sometimes a rating will only include certain sizes of a unit so pay close attention so let's talk about how to size your pc power supply unfortunately with cpu and gpu power drives going up to insane levels a trend that only appears to be increasing i've had to rethink my previous sizing rules which was simply to take the total estimated power draw in pc part picker of all the components in your build and multiply it by 1.5 so if our system was going to draw 400 watts of power as estimated by pc part picker we'd multiply by 1.5 and we get 600 watts or higher psu that would leave us a little bit of a cushion if we had a power spike from one of the components like the gpu and it would give us some breathing room for future upgrades or simply adding in another ssd but a recent investigation by gamersnexus found that the higher end nvidia and even some amd gpus were spiking in power usage up to two and a half times their rated draw often leading to an immediate shutdown thanks to the protections in the psu which are there to prevent component damage now the only real way to deal with this is to get a bigger psu unfortunately even though a lower draw on a higher capacity unit will mean lower efficiency and more money spent on the psu itself so i've come up with a concept of the nvidia tax that is any time we're using an nvidia gpu that is the the 070 series or higher so 30 70 30 80 30 90 40 70 40 80 40 90 we add at least 100 watts of power to the recommendation so if we have a system with a high-end amd or nvidia gpu with a pc part picker says we'll draw 600 watts we multiply by 1.5 and get 900 watts then we add in 100 watts for the nvidia tax and we get a thousand watts as our minimum psu remember you can decide to add in more for additional safety this is just my absolute minimum recommendation especially since at the time of this video we don't have exact specifications from amd and nvidia on their high-end gpus launching in late 2022 and beyond if i've made any changes to this guidance i'll leave a pinned comment on this video below let's go through my personal recommendations from the a b and c tiers all of which are going to be linked down in the video description below let's start off at the ultra high end of psus just note that at the time of this video we still don't have any of the psus out and reviewed that are coming with the new pcie 5.0 16 pin power cable for your gpu so as soon as those do come out as soon as we do have some of them rated on the psu cultus list i will leave links to them down in the video description and also remember the psu market up down different regions different availability different prices so make sure you check those links for what's currently available in your market let's start off with the high high-end super high-end wattage units corsair hxi and its older hx platinum series absolutely great units a-tier rated fully modular what else to say about them other than if you need a lot of power yeah they cost a little bit more but certainly worth the money if you're going to deal with this level of power another one to take a look at is the evga supernova 1300 watt unit just note that there's a number of the evga supernova units that are at rated the g2 here is one of those there's also the p2 remember check that psu cultures list if you have a unit that i'm not specifically recommending go look it up make sure it's at a tier if you're going to get this much wattage then we've got the be quiet straight power 11 80 plus platinum series this is a really popular series outside of the us uh doesn't really sell for the best price in the us but certainly in european uk other markets does sell at a really really good price really really good unit now let's jump to units a thousand watts or less but still on the a tier of the psu cultists list let's start off with the unit we saw today don't have to take my word for it it's interior rated msi mpg a1000g looks really nice too by the way i just want to say if you do have a psu cutout in your psu shroud so you can see it these look really cool with the dragon and the mag on the side i'm not gonna lie i absolutely love it in builds thousand watts fully modular of course if you need less wattage than that can go with the msi mpg a650 gf a 750 gf or a 850 gf obviously 650 750 850 watts also really really good units and i also think these really do look good in builds with psu shrouds that have cutouts on the side as well as being fully modular of course if you need about a thousand watts if you're going to be using if you're going to be hit with that nvidia high-end gpu tax then one to take a look at and as well as the antec hcg 1000 that just stands for a high current gamer it's all just branding marketing but it's a really good unit overall fully modular 1000 watts from antec and finally if you've watched the number of builds on the channel you know that we like the enter max revolution df 750 watt 650 watt and 850 watt units we've used the 850 in a build here a great unit a tier rated and this is a multi-rail unit if that's something that's important to you again i don't think it's that important but if it's important to you this is a unit that i would recommend you take a look at what do you do though if you're not building that high end to build and you just need something affordable and decent let's go through a couple of b and c tier rated units on the b tier antec neo eco gold for about 70 for the 600 watt unit but they also make it 500 and 700 watt units i like this one while it's not a modular psu it's non-modular all the cables are black which is really nice they're not sleeve but they still look fine i tend to use pc cases with psu shrouds but if you don't then you may want to consider something more like the cooler master mwe gold v2 this is fully modular on the b tier typically sells for a better price than we're looking at right here again check the prices down in the video description comes in a 550 650 750 850 and so on and so forth the other one to check out especially outside of the us is the be quiet pure power 11 comes in 5 6 700 watt variants another b tier rated unit and another non modular unit however you will note that the cables here are all sleeved which is a really nice touch finally on the seats here if you're here it's because you're building an ultra budget build and you just need to get something that works not going to blow your system up now i will say that the evga br and evga ba units i'm about to show you they are listed on the low priority or speculative list to me i've done a number of builds with these that's good enough especially if we're doing ultra ultra budget here if you can find something better go for it however i will say that you know a unit like the evga 600 ba for 40 that's a really tough deal to beat especially when you're really scrimping and saving every last couple of bucks to get a better graphics card now you can typically find the 700 watt units about the same price as the 500 watt units and i know that kind of sounds insane but that's just usually the way it is for these particular units and of course should these go out of stock or should the prices change we'll list some new ones down in the video description if you got value out of the video give it a like it makes a huge difference to the channel especially this guy right here and of course subscribe and click that bell icon that way you get notified when we release cool content remember to check out the links down in the video description for all the psus that we've talked about in the video especially if you're not sure what to buy and if you're looking for the best 1440p gaming monitor check out this video right here we go through everything that you need to know to figure out how to buy the best 1440p gaming monitor for you and we'll catch you on the next one

Channel: PC Builder

Views: 564,343

Keywords: best power supply for pc

Id: UZKAhXl5VQw

Length: 19min 22sec (1162 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 02 2022